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The End of the Culture Wars
J. Scott Applewhite / AP Photo
Forget Iraq and the economy. Barack Obama’s greatest feat may be ending the ruinous, decades-long battle over race and religion that has plagued the Democratic Party.
For several decades now, analysts have divided American politics into three categories: economics, foreign policy, and culture. About categories one and two, Obama is voluble. On economics, he wants to stimulate short-term economic recovery while laying the foundation for greater long-term stability and equity. On foreign policy, he wants to restore America’s diplomatic capacity so we don’t have to rely so heavily on the military, and restore our good name, so we can help solve common global problems like climate change. But on culture? Here Obama goes mute. When was the last time you heard him speak unprompted about abortion or gay rights or gun control? He has positions on those issues, to be sure. But he’s determined not to be too publicly associated with them. That’s why he chose Rick Warren, who disagrees with him on abortion and gay marriage, to give the invocation at his inauguration. It’s why he chose not to repeal the Bush administration’s ban on U.S. aid to international organizations that provide abortions on the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. He did so the day after instead, so his decision would garner less attention. “It’s time,” he declared, “that we end the politicization of this issue.”
When it comes to culture, Obama doesn’t have a public agenda; he has a public anti-agenda. He wants to remove culture from the political debate.
When it comes to culture, Obama doesn’t have a public agenda; he has a public anti-agenda. He wants to remove culture from the political debate. He wants to cut our three-sided political game back down to two.
As recently as the early 1990s, the idea that a black man could end the culture war would have been unthinkable, because the culture war was—more than anything—about black versus white. From busing to crime to welfare to affirmative action, race saturated the politics of the 1970s and 1980s, making it extraordinarily difficult for candidates to appeal to black voters and white working-class voters at the same time. In the mid-1980s, when Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg went to Macomb County, Michigan, to interview Democrats who had defected to vote for Ronald Reagan, he found that they saw government in almost wholly racial terms. Every time Democrats talked about fairness or equality, they interpreted it as an effort to redistribute wealth from white to black. In the 1980s, Barack Obama—for all his political brilliance—could never have dreamed of ending the culture war. As a liberal black Democrat, he would have been the culture war, like it or not.
In the 1990s, things began to change. Crime declined, welfare was radically scaled back, and affirmative action receded from the political stage, in part because of the deep support it enjoyed from such conservative bastions as corporate America and the military. But the culture war didn’t end: It simply morphed from a struggle primarily about race to a struggle primarily about religion. In the 1990s, as the affirmative action, crime, and welfare debates subsided, the void was partly filled by gay marriage, an issue that pits not black against white, but secular against religiously orthodox. The impeachment of Bill Clinton was not a racial battle, but a battle over what standard of public morality would govern political behavior. Bill Clinton’s legacy, noted political scientists William Galston and Elaine Kamarck, was to relieve some of the racial anxiety that white working-class voters felt about the Democratic Party but substitute for it a new moral anxiety, felt most acutely by whites who regularly attended church.
For Barack Obama, this shift has been useful. A black politician running in the midst of a racial culture war is virtually doomed. But amidst a religious culture war, being black is less of a handicap since blacks are the least secular element of the Democratic coalition. Barack Obama was more successful than John Kerry in reaching out to moderate white evangelicals in part because he struck them as more authentically Christian.
That’s the foundation on which Obama now seeks to build. He seems to think there are large numbers of conservative white Protestants and Catholics who will look beyond culture when they enter the voting booth as long as he and other Democrats don’t ram cultural liberalism down their throats. In this effort, Obama has two big advantages. The first is the economic crisis, a trauma of such historic magnitude that it makes issues like guns and gays seem trivial. The second is a generational shift taking place among evangelical Christians, in which younger leaders like Warren are broadening their agendas to include issues like poverty and the environment, thus signaling at least a partial willingness to look beyond the culture war.
Obama’s effort could fail. After all, he’s not offering to split the difference with cultural conservatives, only to make his cultural liberalism less conspicuous. And while gay marriage may gradually fade as an issue as public attitudes shift, immigration may well gain in salience, perhaps igniting a whole new kind of culture war, pitting not white against black or secular against religious but immigrant against native-born.
Still, culture wars do end. In the 1920s, immigration, Darwinism, and the Ku Klux Klan dominated political debate, but in the 1930s, they receded as Washington turned its attention to the Depression and the specter of war. It is no surprise that the end of the last culture war coincided with a shift from conservative to liberal dominance. If Obama can end this one, liberals may be in power for a very long time.
Peter Beinart is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations
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As usual Beinhart is being naive. Liberals were - and are - furious about the choice of Warren. Meanwhile the right is still fighting hard against abortion, gay marriage, etc. Look at Boehner's dishonest comment about the stimulus plan spending hundred of thousands of dollars on contraceptives, referring to money to expand Medicaid's family planning program. Currently the Texas board of ed is still trying to get evolution trashed in their curriculum and textbooks, which will affect textbooks nationally since Texas adopts textbooks on a statewide basis.
Obama can make nice as much as he wants on culture issues, but the right will still expect to get their own way, election or no. It is time pundits like Beinhart wise up and stop thinking appeasing these radicals will work.
Correction: Obama and Warren agree on gay marriage. Don't give Obama too much credit. He is painfully moderate in his approach to cultural issues.
I really wish you were right and that we could, in fact, remove cultural and religious elements from the political discussion but check out a website like www.townhall.com or any other conservative website on any given day and you will notice that Obama's election has ignited what conservative Christians see as a new battle. They seem almost pleased with the fact that they have such a defined enemy to fight against and I assure you, speaking from unforgotten past experience, they view this prospect of battle as a blessing.
Bernie O - Sounds like you missed the whole point of the piece. Try it one more time with feeling.
Peter makes a good point. I am a conservative who will never vote for a pro-abortion candidate. That leaves pretty slim pickins. However, in the evangelical circles I run there are enough squishy believers that, if the economy improves, forget foregin policy, will embrace Obama. His strategy may work with enough values voters to tip the balance in the democrats favor.
The score on gay marriage is 40-0; 40 states that have adopted either statutes or constitutional amendments banning it. Liberals, like Beinert, keep saying that the tide has turned because a bunch of gays turned nasty in California. Really? The only way that gay marriage is going to be legal in all 50 states during my lifetime (I'm a young man) is if the Supreme Court imposes it. After the culture wars over Roe, want to bet on that?
Has any elected black politician dropped the culture war? No. It is the #1 agenda. As Beinart says, it will not be forced down the throat of citizens. It will be silently but inevitably inserted in another bodily orifice.
"Obama was more successful than John Kerry in reaching out to moderate white evangelicals in part because he struck them as more authentically Christian."
You've GOT to be kidding. After the guy had been raised a (nominal, at least) Muslim and spent the past 20 years in a radically Afrocentric church? True, Kerry didn't really strike anybody as a true Christian either, but this whole treatise is an obvious exercise in liberal self-delusion.
It's difficult to understand how anyone can be confused about the state of business affairs aka The Economy. Our Government exists to protect and provide infastructure for a productive and fair business climate - dictating behavior has or will not be successsful.
Who cares about your personal beliefs or behavior as long as you do not harm others. If you're cold, hungry and getting less affluent by the second what difference does it make if your gay or Pentacostal? Your are primarily cold, hungry and poor.
The sane middle meaning only those who do not want special attention for their personal actions or desires, would be vehemently protesting if Obama were wrongly focused on the noisy irrelevant. Also, he would not have a 68% approval rating. It's the right time to get down to strictly the business of government.
Isn't it time that US citizens become absorbed in considering and evaluating the proposed programs to get our country financially on track.
Wow! He didn't expand a huge increase in spending on abortions on the anniversary date of Roe v. Wade! He waited until the next day to issue the death sentence for children all over the world! Is this writer nuts or what?
Obama didn't have to make increases in abortions his Number One priority, but he did. He is evil and needs to be ejected from office as soon as possible.
"threedy" uses the word "Christian" in a weird underhanded way that exasperates me, but I try to listen and consider what he is saying and not about Obama.
It startles me when I encounter such raw and ugly evidence of an opaque mind!
Maybe they are not culture wars, but just the echoes of white paranoia repeating the same twisted misinterpretations of what is and could be!
Beinart captured some, but not all of the facets of the cultural war in which the country's been embroiled. Yes, race issues are the centerpiece, but more specifically, proponents of conservative versus liberal values are the combatants in this war, which has now wasted the energy of two generations. The liberals who came to power in the 1990s (Clintons, Gore) were footsoldiers against Nixon in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The men who entered public life working for Nixon first came into prominence in the 1990s (Gingrich) and got their revenge in the 2000s (Cheney, Rumsfeld).
Obama, thanfully, is not involved in this ideological struggle that has lasted over forty years, and which he wants the country to move past. As Beinart noted, Obama wishes to end the struggle over Roe vs. Wade. In his nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention last year, Obama said that Americans can agree that we desire to prevent unwanted pregnancy. It seems to me that in order to justice to the subject he's tackled, Beinart ought to have written a longer article.
Have you noticed that people with "opaque minds" strangely discover that quality in those who disagree with them? Strangest thing. As for Beinart, does he really think convictions and principles disappear because of atmospherics in the Oval Office?
Peter; generally I find you on target, and I'm inspired by your insight, but this time there is a big gapping hole in your evaluation of the cultural divide in our country.
Denver Nicks less we forget, "In the Land that Obama Forgot", is reminding us there's a constituency in this country that feels their entitlement to the Presidency has been corrupted. He mentions asking a man what he felt about Barack Obama, and his reply was, "I'm surprised he hadn't got killed yet".
This appears to be acceptable chatter through out the sunbelt, and the internet---which is disturbing---for people that do not see Obama as the last great hope; in fact they see him as a reflection of the hopelessness that is occurring In THEIR country---the rest of us are just visiting---as the anti Christ explained through that Rorschach blot called the bible code.
This is madness perhaps a little too high brow for reviewing in CFR, but its well worth perusing through truthdig.com.
For Obama to immediately prioritize his agenda with what you call a cultural war is silly. For one it would immediately exacerbate his relationship with our brothers south of the mason dixon who are drawing straws and bluing their guns as we speak; and for you to second guess him at this time precludes events at best that will have to occur gradually flying low enough in an attempt to avoid the media's one good eye.
It is day six Peter since he took office, and the ink isn't even dry where he signed in. We can say that for stem cell research and what's left of Mohammad Ali things are getting brighter; and we can say that the Pope, and nothing but the Pope after calling Obama arrogant, have galvanized a group of Catholics to create a sub-division right out side the White House by day four......................Mr. Beinart it's going to a long bumpy night, strap yourself in; yall comon back now hear.
FYI to wonder boy Beinart: the culture wars DID NOT end in the Depression.
Read the excellent book "White Protestant Nation". Father Coughlin spewed on the radio. FDR opposed an anti-lynching bill because he feared that the South wouldn't support him in 1936. Prohibitionist sentiment was still out there.
Exactly 2 days after Obama reversed the "abortion gag rule," Christian groups (especially Catholics) groused. The culture wars aren't going anywhere; they're mutating into a more oppositional character. Which could be worse?
Is it too much to ask wingnuttia to just shut up and let people govern while they go on about an issue that should be a decision between a woman and her doctor?
The majority of Americans feel the same way and the rest of the world has gotten beyond this issue.
Get out of women's uteruses you bunch of freaks!!!
Time will tell, but the likelihood is that Beinart is right. Obama is the most culturally liberal president we have had JFK. LBJ, Clinton, and Carter are all products of their cultural upbringing in the South, though Clinton struggled hardest to break that tie.
The key will be whether Obama can govern as an example that you don't need to be religious to be moral.
I think Bush has done more to kill the religious agenda than many give him credit for. People readily saw how his tied religion to virtually every act, and nearly all of those acts ended in disaster of one sort or another. I think many, many, many Americans have made the connection and want nothing to do with either Bush or religious governance.
I understand these are editorials, but must they be rife with factual BS? He says "It simply morphed from a struggle primarily about race to a struggle primarily about religion". What?? I'm sorry, but LIBERALS believe that conservative culture issues with the Democrat party is about religion. Anytime somebody espouses that all conservatives are radical religious zealots, it reveals their reliance on information gleaned from the over-eager liberal friends, blogs, and nonsense from the television. In fact, if I walked into a church right now, I would likely burst into flames.
Good article, but there are new culture wars brewing, they just don't get much media coverage, especially considering how strong these movements are becoming. The gay community and many women's groups both feel betrayed by the Dems after a difficult year, and gay rights and women's rights have now been pushed to the forefront as the civil rights issues of our era. In fact, if Republicans pay close attention, this is how they can rebuild their party. If they throw gay marriage and abortion out of their platform entirely and appeal to these groups, they would have a big chance of taking power again.
oops, typo. "is about religion" should be "are about religion". :(
Mary50, yes, and if Catholics would get rid of that pesky "believing in God" stuff, they would do much better too!
Interesting. Is it your premise that President Obama is going to practice the 'don't ask, don't tell' technique of dealing with cultural issues?
As a social liberal and a fiscal conservative, I find the dismissal of conservative issues as little more than wihite working-class fears far too casual. The racial divide in this country is still just as real as the religous divide, but cultural issues are not nearly as simple as what standards will govern public morality.
Cultural values, those that express a nation's definition of itself, are founded on common core beliefs. As times and people change, as technology enters the picture more and more definitively, the expression of those core beliefs may change. It is when the core beliefs themselves change that real cultural wars occur.
From what I read, from what I hear in my community, Americans belive in freedom, the worth of the individual, and the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The argument lies in the expression of the beliefs. The war happens when one group or another decides that it has the right, nay, the obligation to shove their beliefs down the thorat of everyone else. Such beliefs got us the Civl War, Jim Crow, Prohibition, Joe McCarthy, assinations and riots. However, the struggle to respect the beliefs and rights of others to hold those beliefs got us Barack Obama.
I wish Peter were right. BUT so many right- hand leaders and pundits and talk show hosts have their BUSINESS to lose that they THRIVE on DIVIDING AMERICA and the American people/
THE NICHIFICATIONof AMERICAis a business.
IT IS UP TO THE LISTENERS to CHANGE
mikecrone
"Has any elected black politician dropped the culture war?
number one: the highest elected black official; judicial, legislative, executive, or other wise, has little to no comparison to Obama. This is simply due to the fact he is PRESIDENT. number two: although most over look it, his "black" struggle or involvement in the culture war is far from the same struggle that of decedents of slaves and those who came up in the civil rights movement. So for Obama culture wars definitively will not be on his agenda. and this is coming from a black man, so you can bet on that. number three: What is portrayed as the collective black position in this and any other cultural topic is misconstrued by our small numbers(effectively...white people elected Obama), be it in the polls or just the fact that we only make up about 13 to 14 percent of the total population. The cultural war you see on TV and read in the papers is not the war the African American is fighting. In fact as it were, out side of color, you could dice up our numbers and departmentalize us along with all the other sub categories. Most black Christians are right there with pro-life, anti gay marriage, pro or anti gun control, pro or anti affirmative action, pro or anti creation theory education, and so on.
Maybe its too early to call but I believe we will see Obama homogenize the cultural war for his term, or as long as this economic crisis persist.
Thank you.
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