A number of people have asked me since my move how I perceive the difference between politics in the US and the UK. Another article in Sunday’s New York Times neatly summed it up, showing the gap between the approval rating of the president by the members of his own party and the rating by members of the opposing party. This year, that gap is the widest it has ever been in an election year(84% vs. 16%). To my mind, it is polarisation that marks out American politics, at least as presented in the media.

Britain’s parliamentary system is clearly oppositional, with the two key parties sitting opposite one another and childishly sniping and sneering. But it has never seemed to me like people identify themselves based on political parties in quite the way that prevails in most public discussions of US politics.

Over the past 25 years, the article notes, there has been a sharp increase in the number of registered Democrats identifying as ‘liberal’ and a similar increase in Republicans identifying as ‘conservative’. Sadly there is no attempt to match that with surveys of what those words are perceived to mean. I would suspect that the definition of each one has been significantly shifted over the same time period to a point where it is difficult to attach much real meaning to the statistics.

This polarisation leaves many in an unrepresented place. When opinion polls attempt to draw inferences from the numbers of ‘democrat’, ‘republican’ and ‘independent’ voters there seems a tacit assumption that ‘independent’ means ‘somewhere between the two’, when there are sufficient numbers on either ‘extreme’ to draw this into question.

A feasible third party could potentially address that, but such a party would have an uphill struggle to establish itself. Recent polls indicate that there is a largely voiceless middle ground in which many voters find themselves when it comes to hot-button issues such as abortion, suggesting there is plenty of ideological space for a third party that tries to rise above traditional markers of ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’. The question is whether it would ever be possible to convince that ephemeral combination of media and public to listen while a more sophisticated argument is made. Polarisation makes good TV, after all.

An extremely amusing illustration of the polarisation of US politics can be found here.

It could be that several days away from home, cut off from my usual news fix dealers, caused a build up of outrage withdrawal. Or it could be that my skin isn’t as thick and my political outlook not so jaded as it can be tempting to believe. Whatever the cause, this front page story of Sunday’s New York Times set a bunsen burner in my blood vessels.

It seems that the US Federal Drugs Administration has been intervening in cases where individuals are suing drugs companies over poorly advertised side-effects of drug usage. In effect, they’re arguing, contrary to a 1997 Supreme Court ruling, that FDA approval not only sets minimum standards but also maximum standards for drugs.

In the Pennsylvania ruling, issued Tuesday, the appeals court threw out a lawsuit filed by Barbara E. Horn, who said her husband had died because of defects in the design and manufacture of his heart pump. The Bush administration argued that federal law barred such claims because the device had been produced according to federal specifications. In its briefs, the administration conceded that “the views stated here differ from the views that the government advanced in 1997,” in the United States Supreme Court.

I’ve always been deeply skeptical of the litigious culture it is easy to perceive in the United States. Like teachers, diligent doctors and nurses have the right to work free of the fear of regularly defending their reputations in court. But with a privatised healthcare system and regular occurrences of medical malpractice on the part of practitioners, health care corporations and drug manufacturers, citizens need some means of reparation, profit-focussed health care providers need to be reminded that safety comes first.

If the federal government is committed to a provider/consumer model of healthcare, is it really appropriate for them to then retract those consumers’ rights? And is it any surprise that this sort of case should come to light shortly after John Edwards—a medical malpractice trial lawyer—was announced as John Kerry’s running mate?

Anecdotally, while driving from Grand Rapids to Chicago, Chicago to Des Moines and Des Moines back to Grand Rapids we spotted two Bush/Cheney bumper stickers, and somewhere around a dozen Kerry/Edwards stickers. A little cheer while reading such reports.

Slacktivist linked to this excellent Washington Monthly article about John Edwards.

For several years now there has been debate about the value of what Margaret Hodge (former HE minister) named Mickey Mouse degrees. In the midst of successive governments’ pushes for more vocational qualifications and a decline in applications for many traditional science-based courses, universities began to come up with new programmes. Brewing was perhaps the most notorious, but the University of Plymouth’s Surfing degree also attracted its share of sniggers.

Today, the BBC are reporting that:

Hobbies such as surfing are being turned into “Mickey Mouse” degree courses, a teachers’ union conference is to be told.

Their concern is understandable, but the statements sound increasingly reactionary in light of the developing jobs market, changes in university funding and pressures on universities. Plymouth’s programme is actually a BSc in ‘Surf Science and Technology’, with fairly standard entrance requirements for a degree at its level (200 A/AS level points). It combines modules in: mathematics, ocean science, material technology, environmental studies and event and business management. An eclectic mix, but also a compelling one that should give graduates a grounding in a range of compatible, transferable skills.

The issue is, of course, the name. Obviously ‘surfing’ will have a particular draw to hobbyists and doesn’t bear the academic clout of ‘physics’, ‘chemistry’ and their ilk. But academic clout is a malleable construct. In an increasingly competitive higher education system, one that’s being opened up to market forces in ways unimagined a generation ago, it can’t be surprising that the shape and nomenclature of degree programmes will change along with their funding mechanisms and other external pressures.

It is good and proper that the content and standards of degree programmes should be kept under scrutiny, but unless government funding policies change significantly it’s not fair to be too critical of the ways degrees are named.

Today’s Morning Edition on NPR featured an interview that in its few minutes reminded me exactly what I’m finding frustrating about US news media. The interview was with Donald H Rumsfeld, former arms trade negotiator, latterly US Defense Secretary.

Now, I find any interview with that man frustrating, but today my key problem was with the interviewer: senior NPR news man Juan Williams. When questioned about the prospect of the return of the draft, Rumsfeld qualified his claim that he would “absolutely” rule it out (were it a personal decision) with the statement: I’m not the Government of the United States, I’m just one person.

He is of course quite right that he’s just one person, and it’s good of him to remind us, but when it comes to policy of this sort he has more say than many. So, I awaited the simple rejoinder, a reminder perhaps that the Defense Secretary carries rather a lot of clout. None came. The questioning moved on.

In the current climate, the return of the draft is a scary but not paramount issue to be quizzing Rumsfeld on. And were he to be questioned on it, he could point to comments on the Selective Service website or perhaps note that:

Chairman John Warner responded, “The answer is no,” when asked on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press” program if the United States would need conscripts to meet its military needs.

But when an interviewee slips such a comment through in the very first round of questioning, it doesn’t encourage me to retain concentration. If only Radio and Television Ireland would interview Rumsfeld…

While seated in the USCIS waiting area on Wednesday, in a rare moment of prising myself away from their most informative television narrowcasts, I saw a poster proclaiming their motto:

Respect. Integrity. Ingenuity.

The irony of those words is palpable. While I’d rather not speak to the second term chosen it would seem that the USCIS need a little tuition on the meaning of the first and last.

A Respectful immigration system would, at the very least, keep those immersed in it up to date with accurate information about how their application was going. It would not slow down, speed up, or add paperwork at government whim, but would instead provide clear, useful advice and offer a date on which the review of the case would be completed. Obviously it cannot offer complete security for those making plans (applications may be turned down), but it would do what it could to help those people taking the time and going to the effort of jumping through its hoops.

An Ingenuous immigration system would not require the same information to be submitted multiple times. It would not take several months to decide whether to allow someone into a country, but require the same time period to decide whether, once they had entered they would be allowed to work, or even allowed to stay. That’s simply inefficient. It isn’t very respectful either. I might be tempted to say it’s lacking in integrity.

The thing that has struck me over and over as we’ve made our way through this process is how poorly organised it is.

Of course we’ve all joked about red tape and government inefficiency, but sometimes these reality checks that show it’s more than just a joke still catch me. I hope that I will always be surprised by such poor service. If there’s much more like this, I doubt it.

Fifteen years ago, Francis Fukuyama declared the end of history, the death of ideology, the victory of market economics, and various similar things. His media appearances since have done little to dispell his image as market-economics-fundamentalist.

Now it seems he may be changing his tune. This piece in Sunday’s Observer has him suggesting that perhaps strong government controls are necessary in some places. Hear hear.

But in the midst of it all, what really amused me was this piece, situated in the midst of a paragraph talking about countries that he believes to have gotten the market/government balance wrong:

This is the reality of such failed states as Liberia, Somalia, or Afghanistan. Some, such as the Central Asian dictatorships that have emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union, manage to be strong in all the the wrong areas: they are good at jailing journalists or political opponents, but can’t process visas or business licences in less than six months.

I’m sure I’ve come across other countries, countries that he admires more, that can’t process such things within that time frame. Perhaps such pieces should be read alongside others like this one.