A HOUSE DIVIDED:

A portrait in red and blue: The great American political divide, as seen through the congressional districts of Nancy Pelosi and Dennis Hastert (The Economist, Dec 30th 2003)

In the House, Dennis Hastert is the Republican speaker, Nancy Pelosi the leader of the Democratic minority. Mr Hastert, a hulking former wrestling coach, is a fairly straightforward conservative: he is against abortion, gay marriage, the Kyoto protocol; for the invasion of Iraq, the death penalty. Ms Pelosi, a tiny bird-like woman, is an unabashed, card-carrying liberal.

The districts they represent provide an even bigger contrast. Remember those maps of the 2000 election that divided America into the “red” states that voted for George Bush and the “blue” states that voted for Al Gore? Ms Pelosi's district, California's eighth, is more or less coterminous with San Francisco, the bluest, most liberal city in America. Mr Hastert's district, Illinois's 14th, is deep scarlet. It begins in the suburbs 30 miles (50km) west of the Chicago Loop, and then stretches out through miles of cornfields to a point just 40 miles short of the Iowa border. [...]

The second big difference between the two districts lies in the relative importance attached to family life. Most of the people flocking to Mr Hastert's district are doing so for one reason: to bring up their children. They want space to build big houses, as well as freedom from the drawbacks of urban life, particularly crime. In upmarket St Charles 85% of people own their own homes; even in meat-and-potatoes Elgin, home ownership runs to 70-75%.

In the first half of the 20th century, San Francisco was one of the most family-friendly cities in the country, with magnificent parks and schools and an abundant supply of family houses. One of America's most popular radio programmes between 1932 and 1959, “One Man's Family”, was a hymn to the joys of bringing up a family in the shadow of the Golden Gate bridge. But San Francisco now has one of the lowest proportions of families with children in the country (it has more dogs than children, say some). Almost 70% of the population is single. This is not just because the city is the capital of gay America. San Francisco also has lots of young singles, and of older people living alone.

Both the property market and the school system discourage families. Only 35% of San Franciscans own their own houses, compared with a national average of 70%. At the same time, rent control both freezes rental housing and institutionalises an anti-growth mentality. The public-school system is strained both by high immigration—half the city's schoolchildren speak a language other than English at home—and by poor management. Most middle-class people either send their children to private schools or move out.

There is also a class difference. Mr Hastert's district is as resolutely middle-class as it is cheerfully mid-American. A few businessmen live in multi-million-dollar houses, and send their children to private schools. But most people send their children to public schools, shop in giant shopping malls and eat in chain restaurants. The region's varied economy means that you do not need a higher degree to get ahead: people do well in farms and factories as well as in office suites. And the almost universal commitment to the public schools reinforces the sense of equality. Sue Klinkhamer, the mayor of St Charles, points out that her local school district is so big that people living on fairly modest incomes can send their children to the same schools as do millionaires.

San Francisco is both higher- and lower-class. The city is home to some of the richest people in the country, many of them, like the Hearsts, Haases and Crockers, the heirs to rather than the creators of huge fortunes. It also has a disproportionate number of single professionals with big disposable incomes. Yet it is also host to one of the country's biggest concentrations of homeless people. Over 8,000 of them, perhaps twice that number, many drug-addicted or mentally ill, live on the streets. “A mixture of Carmel and Calcutta”, is the verdict of Kevin Starr, California's state librarian, on his native city. [...]

Two other differences in values are striking. The first concerns religion. Mr Hastert's district is building new churches or expanding old ones. In the Chicago suburbs some churches have thousands of members. Out in the sticks, some small towns have seven churches and just one bar. San Francisco, by contrast, has been closing churches for years. There was a time when the Roman Catholic archbishop was one of the most powerful political figures in town. Today he is not merely a marginal figure in a largely secular city, but also just one voice amid a religious cacophony that praises everything from Buddhism to the Church of Satan.

Then there are the two districts' attitudes to social disorder. Mr Hastert's district is meticulously well kept. The mayor of St Charles says she recently received a call complaining about cobwebs on a local bridge. She had them removed that day.

San Francisco's army of homeless can give it a medieval feel. Beggars line the streets and doss in doorways. Deranged unfortunates roam free. The United Nations fountain in the Civic Centre had to be walled off recently because it was being used as a public lavatory. The homeless get a monthly stipend from the city and state governments, and free food from religious groups. A recent ballot initiative to give street people care rather than cash was struck down on a legal technicality, though the voters had approved it. [...]

The bigger lesson has to do with America's political future, not just nationally but also internationally. Most foreigners are at ease in Ms Pelosi's America. They know San Francisco from films or even personal experience: tourism has been the city's biggest industry since the early 1960s. Europeans, in particular, feel at home with the city's compact structure, leftish politics and permissive atmosphere. Mr Hastert's America, on the other hand, is a mystery.

Yet most of America's growth is coming from places like Mr Hastert's district. The proportion of Americans living in suburbs has risen from just under a quarter in 1950 to more than half today. And increasingly people work in the suburbs as well as live in them: Joel Kotkin, of Pepperdine University, points out that suburbia accounts for 57% of office space in the country and 90% of new office building. Suburbanites prefer Republican to Democratic policies by a 15-point margin, according to Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster. [...]

[I]f the Democratic Party as a whole is not necessarily doomed in suburban America, the San Francisco version of the party assuredly is. Democrats can survive in the land of mega malls only if they make their peace with mainstream America—if, that is, they adjust to the priorities of people who own their own homes and go to church on Sunday.

It is possible to imagine voters in districts such as Mr Hastert's returning a Democrat. But it is impossible to imagine them sending their sympathies to the French consulate during the recent row between America and France, or tolerating an invasion of beggars. Whether America becomes more Republican is debatable; there seems little doubt that it will become more conservative, and less cosmopolitan. In the long term that may have more profound implications for America's relations with the rest of the world than any little disagreement about Iraq.

If we harken back to the authors earlier in the week who wrote about the benefits--economic and psychological--of smaller more homogenous nation-states, it's not at all difficult to imagine Red and Blue America dividing at some point.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 10, 2004 4:01 PM