This interview originally aired on In the Moment on SDPB Radio.
What comes next in the American political culture? And who gets to choose?
Neil Fulton is the dean of the University of South Dakota's School of Law and author of the Washburn Law Journal article "What comes next."
He discusses party polarization and a culture of permanent political outrage. More importantly, he covers five possible pathways forward and how to choose them.
__________________________________________________________________
Lori Walsh:
You are listening to In the Moment on South Dakota Public Broadcasting. I'm Lori Walsh.
Neil Fulton, dean of the University of South Dakota School of Law, watched the vicious 2020 election cycle and all that followed it with one question on his mind. What comes next?
Did he find a concrete answer? Not quite, but in a recent article for the Washburn Law Journal, Dean Fulton argued that the United States stands at a crossroads.
Before us, five possible paths forward. He's with me on the phone now to explain what each path means and how likely it is that our country will head down one of them.
Dean Fulton, welcome back to In the Moment. Thanks for being here.
Neil Fulton:
It's a pleasure to be here, Lori. Thank you.
Lori Walsh:
So let's give the listeners of this show a certain amount of credit where they understand that there is a lot of polarization, that there is a lot of political or policy paralysis, and that they know that it's not necessarily a new thing. America has a long history of division even to the point of civil war.
And let's start with some of these possible things that could happen next. You do such a great job in this piece laying out the past and what we saw in 2020. But one of the compelling things that might happen next, which seems sort of likely, is nothing. Stasis.
So let's start there if you don't mind. What is the indication that doing nothing is likely and what could the impact be?
Neil Fulton:
So I really looked at where we were and a lot of people, as you say, have talked about that and tried to say where might we go?
And the first obvious place that we might go, to me, is nowhere. That we might, because of our political structures and our political approaches, just kind of remain in some level of this bubbling animosity and not much policy progress for the foreseeable future. I think that's not an unlikely scenario because our structure constitutionally requires compromise. We're not so great at that right now and it's just kind of easy to do nothing.
But two big reasons I'm a little skeptical of nothing happening is if you look historically in the United States political environment, we don't stay the same. There is change and it seems to me there's an increasing amount of social and political pressure that at some point releases in some way, positive or negative.
Lori Walsh:
So did COVID, the political unrest of 2020, the uncertainty of the pandemic, that all had to sort of interrupt that stasis and send it tilting in ways that we're still recovering from.
I think some people think of staying the same as going back to what was before, like what was normal, but is that possible do you think, or we are way beyond being able to go back prior to 2020?
Neil Fulton:
I mean, I think we continue to work into the future from the past always, and so you are not going to go back to pre-2020. You just have enough events that impact us that way.
When I talk about stasis, it's really just sort of are you stuck in this spot? That, however it's manifesting with the current political issues of the day, we really aren't coming together collaboratively to attack them. We're really in a very polarized and paralyzed environment. Maybe it's playing out differently across the board and maybe post-2020 there are a few more people who are really willing to look collaboratively at how we solve problems.
But unfortunately, I feel like there may be a few more people who feel like I'm going to choose up teams now because my perceived team is somehow losing this larger political game.
So, do we go back to 2020? Not in all ways, but I fear it's possible you could go back to just kind of the frozen polarized environment you had.
Lori Walsh:
I wonder if the exhaustion that people have that lingers from the pandemic and the extra work that so many people had to do makes political engagement even more exhausting.
So let's talk about reform and renewal.
First, reform. There are some popular ideas about rank choice voting and open primaries that would address electoral reform in some way.
How likely is it some of those reforms will actually come to pass?
Neil Fulton:
It's tough because change is tough, and you have a lot of interests that want to keep the current system the way it is. There's a lot of money in politics, and so to try and do things that open up the electoral process to more participants, to making voting easier, kind of takes some money out of certain political consultants and other folks' pockets. You have increasingly a lot of jurisdictions, both state levels and at your local congressional district and legislative district levels, that are very safe districts, and so there's a lot of incentive from the parties in those safe districts not to give up their districts and make them more competitive, even though that probably pushes people towards the center, towards more collaboration and problem solving.
I think there is potential, but I think there's going to be a lot of resistance to change in general because we all know change is hard, particularly systemic change, and there are a lot of people who benefit from the current system who will have resistance to changing it, whether from benign or more malevolent motives.
Lori Walsh:
And you say legal education may provide somewhat of a model in the area of form. What do you mean there? As dean of the law school, what do you think legal education has to offer this conversation?
Neil Fulton:
Well, I mean your listeners are probably stunned that I'm an optimist on legal education as a model for how we can make things better, Lori.
But I really think that if you look at the opportunity for us to move forward productively, particularly with what I kind of tried to describe as a vision of renewal. One thing legal education does really well is promotes fidelity to process over personal interest.
And I think that is a thing that could move us forward positively on our political engagement to really think how do I stick to the process even when it disadvantages me in this instance? I think that another thing that is really out there is because of that commitment to process and a degree of forbearance that I think legal education develops, I hope there's more opportunity for more lawyers to be involved in public policy.
I think in South Dakota, if you look at the legislature, lawyers are a little bit underrepresented, and I think the legislators being lawyers can be really valuable in there. And I think just lastly, commitment to neutral process is really significant.
Lori Walsh:
There are some other options here which are basically surrendering to the strong or authoritarianism. And there are days when that seems so impossible because we are the United States of America, and there are other days when it seems like it's right around the corner.
What do you want to say about authoritarianism and how easy of a path that would be to surrender to?
Neil Fulton:
I mean, I think the thing I would say about authoritarianism is the impulse to say it can't happen here in the United States. Sinclair Lewis wrote about that at the start of the 20th century. It can happen here and I think that there's strong commitment in the United States to liberal democracy, that's important, but coming at it from the view that it just can't happen here is part of the problem.
Tim Snyder has written about this very effectively. Madeline Albright wrote a book about fascism before she passed.
I think if you look at some of the attacks on the media, attacks on open elections, just the way we engage in our political language, do we dehumanize opponents as opposed to critique ideas? Those are things that are tools of authoritarianism that creep in a pretty greater amount than when I first got exposed to politics.
I think that the danger of tipping points is you get to them slowly, right? I mean, you ride up to the top of the rollercoaster before you go down over from the tipping point, and the danger is do we recognize that we're going up on our way to the heading down before we do something to stop it?
Lori Walsh:
You're right. Authoritarians de-legitimatize and dehumanize political opponents. Authoritarians encourage political violence. Authoritarians target or co-op the media and reward loyalty above all, use nostalgia to emotionally connect their adherence to an idyllic past that must be restored.
Some of that sounds pretty familiar. It's not out of the realm of possibility even here at home.
Neil Fulton:
No, unfortunately. I mean, as I looked at all of these scenarios, I didn't really come to them and then go look at current events to try and find examples. I sort of looked at current events and those were the trends that leapt out at me.
I was really surprised that it felt like you could make a case for authoritarianism as to what comes next in the United States because it just doesn't seem like it could or should be, but it is possible.
Lori Walsh:
So let's talk about renewal and re-imagining our political identity, which sounds hopeful, but it also sounds like hard work, but it sounds like important work. Tell me a little bit, and you touched on it a little bit, but what more do you want to say about Americans re-imagining what it means to engage in politics?
Neil Fulton:
I mean, I think that renewal to me is obviously the most hopeful but the most difficult scenario because it requires both individual and systemic work.
I think as individuals there's a real need to reimagine our political identity. Are we able to step back from the competitive aspects of modern politics and engage in what Aristotle and others described as civic friendship, this viewing of your community in a certain way and engaging with them in a certain way that transcends issues of the moment? I think really working on virtues as individuals of civility, how do we engage and treat people?
And I think one of the things that's most pronounced to me as you think about re-imagining our political identity is the idea of forbearance. Forbearance that we're able to let individual slights or disagreements go and not make them existential.
I think one of the things that's really striking to me is we tend to take every concern to about DEFCON 2, maybe all the way to DEFCON 1. So doing some of the I didn't get what I want or I was treated badly, to step away from that, and give some degree of grace and forbearance to people on the other side. If we think about our individual political identities with those ideas at their root, I think it makes it a little bit easier to then start reframing our political engagement to move towards the classical republican idea of civic engagement and deliberation, small R in that iteration of republican, that a lot of classical philosophers love. That the value of deliberation is inherent, that that process of wrestling with what matters makes us better as individuals and as a population.
It's also an idea that philosophers write about in the idea of an infinite game, that it's a game not played to be won but to continue the playing.
And I think as we think about American politics, would we be better if we stepped back and said the goal isn't really to win but to keep playing as a society?
Lori Walsh:
All right, well, it's called What Comes Next. It's an article in the Washburn Law Journal. It's a great conversation starter, or even with your book club you could spend some time talking about this. Dean Neil Fulton with the USD Knudson School of Law. As always, we appreciate your time and insight. Thanks.
Neil Fulton:
Thanks so much, Lori.
