This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Our ability to use our American political system as it was intended, to come and reason together, is being poisoned by an increasing polarization. Government institutions, political parties, whole regions of the country, are being pushed further and further into one political extreme or the other, widening the gap that true leaders must bridge in order to rule a democratic nation.
Or maybe not.
According to research compiled by two university professors, the picture of our nation that we see in the media, "mainstream" and otherwise, is not an accurate reflection. The evidence assembled by Brigham Young University's Jeremy Pope and the University of Pennsylvania's Matthew Levendusky strongly suggests that the great middle of the American body politic is just that — in the middle.
Those political maps that portray a hard divide between red and blue regions, based simply on whether a state or congressional district broke Democrat or Republican in the last election, do not allow for the fact that, when pollsters drill down below the surface, they find a much more purple hue to our politics. Polling on specific questions — war and peace, Social Security and taxes, same-sex marriage and abortion — shows that the people in the red states and the people in the blue states are not so far apart that skilled and respectful leaders could not find consensus.
A big part of the problem is the way we select our leaders. Nominating processes too often reward ideological extremism and the demonizing of different points of view.
The problem is particularly acute in Utah. A state brimming with common sense and humanitarian values winds up being led by relative extremists. They remake the state's image into a goofy place that names a state firearm but won't fully fund its schools, that fears liquor but welcomes the destruction of its natural beauty. The resulting distortion not only discourages political participation, but also frightens off entrepreneurs that any state's economy would welcome.
The answer is as clear in theory as it is difficult in practice. The reasonable middle of Utah's electorate must demand change. They must enter the off-putting caucus and convention process in order to remake it into a more welcoming, more moderating open primary system. They must make it known that the real Utah is predominantly moderate Republican. Which means it is not that different from places that are, really, moderate Democratic.
The middle of the road, Dwight Eisenhower said, is the usable surface. The extremes, left and right, are the gutters.
It's time to get out of the gutter.