A Political Journalist Explains Why the United States is Polarized
A review of Ezra Klein’s forthcoming book
I’ve been waiting for this book ever since Ezra Klein first mentioned he was working on it during one of his podcast episodes. As the title explains, Klein’s book tells the story of how and why the United States is currently a polarized nation. Klein defines polarization as the phenomenon when the opinions of the public change which results in them splitting and gathering around two ideological poles leaving no true moderates in the country.
Klein addresses how the U.S. transition from a depolarized mid 20th Century to a polarized 21st Century. One of the biggest reasons has to do with the issue of race and how the Civil Rights Act of 1964 brought about a realignment between the Democrats and Republicans.
I love that Klein makes it clear from the beginning that this is a book about how systems cause polarization rather than people. He shows this by referencing high quality research across different fields of study such as political science, psychology, sociology, and history. One of the fascinating studies that he mentions in the book to explain how bad polarization has become dealt with college scholarships. The study found committee members were less likely to vote to give a scholarship to a student if they were of a different political party than the committee member.
Klein also effectively shows how policy issues such as the individual mandate for health insurance, cap and trade, and Russian aggression have become polarizing. Using history he shows that the political party that once supported these issues came out in opposition when the opposing political party came out in favor of the policy.
Klein concludes his book advocating for reforms not to end polarization but to help the country adapt to it. I have heard of many of the solutions that he proposes such as eliminating the filibuster and the Electoral College and adding more justices to the Supreme Court. I found the proposals that were new to me to be interesting such as automatic economic stabilizers and multi member congressional districts in conjunction with ranked choice voting.
Ultimately, Klein’s book should be read by all concerned citizens and policy makers who are interested in reading a non-academic book on the roots of polarization and are interested in creating systems within the government to lessen the negative effects of polarization.
Thanks to NetGalley and Avid Reader Press for the free ARC copy in exchange for a honest review.
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Originally published at https://www.goodreads.com.
