When American politics turned European

摘要

Until 25 or 30 years ago, if you were asked to explain to an intelligent foreigner what were the issues that divided the Republican and Democratic parties in the United States, you would have had to explain that their divisions could be understood only in terms of the civil war and the Reconstruction in the 1860s and 1870s, of the blue and the grey, the "peculiar institution" and the bloody shirt. The Republicans preserved the Union and freed the slaves; the Democrats represented a Solid South that had not forgotten defeat and subsequent humiliation at Republican hands. To be sure, there were always other important issues that went to define the principles and the platforms of both major parties. If the Republicans were the party of the Protestant business classes, from both Wall Street and Main Street, the Democrats were the party of "rum, Romanism and rebellion", an alliance between upholders of states' rights and the southern way of life, with immigrants―often Catholic or Jewish―and unionised industrial workers. The Republicans were the party of the tariff, the Democrats of states' rights.