Some politicians are routinely described as "divisive" or "polarizing." Meaning they appeal to hard-core right-wingers or left-wingers and make no effort to build a centrist coalition. However, the term is now routinely applied to centrists as well by members of the press.
The reason is simple. Political strategists know that the average American is a centrist who's averse to extremists. Then what to do it your guy is one of those extremists? You paint your opponent as being an extremist too, whether he is or isn't. The easiest way to do this is sheer repetition, fueled by plenty of money to finance your smear campaign. Success won't be measured by attracting voters to your side, but more by discouraging voters from the other. You win just as much by getting the other side not to vote as you do from getting your side to go out and vote. The win is exactly the same--your guy in office, doing what you want.
Today, President Bush and Senator Clinton are both described as divisive figures. The problem is that Bush is and Clinton isn't. I don't say this because I support Clinton's candidacy. I don't , due to her enthusiasm for illegal aliens and disinterest in how corporate interests encourage illegal immigration in order to bust unions and drive down wages for unskilled workers. Nevertheless she has proven to be a centrist during her tenure as a New York State senator, and has won the support of many New York Republicans. Moreover, if you follow the diatribes against her in the left wing blogosphere you'll see that the left-wingers Republicans portray her as being their champion in fact regard her as a DiNO--Democrat in Name Only. And her husband was and is a conservative Democrat and a leader of the relatively conservative wing of the Democratic party. This matches her arguments and policy proposals in the various Democratic contender forums, and is reflected in her relative popularity with centrists who aren't as concerned with illegal immigration as I am.
Painting her as "divisive" is patent nonsense. Yet many in the mainstream media describe her as such when they're talking about the campaign for the presidency. This isn't because they're a bunch of Republicans--the majority are Democrats. Nor is it because their corporate bosses--mostly Republicans--have told them to smear her. They do it because they work in divisions of large corporations with no sense of journalistic mission, but only of constantly increasing profit. Even being steadily profitable isn't enough for Wall Street. In that environment, news=entertainment. Journalistic staffs are shrinking massively. It's not that the remaining journalists are lazy--they're just too frazzled to do much more than reflect the buzz du jour, whether it's factual or the result of well-financed propaganda campaigns--as is the case with making Senator Clinton out to be divisive.
As for President Bush--he has treated the 49% of the country that didn't vote for him as totally irrelevant to the governing of this country from the day he took office. His stated positions and executive behavior and Supreme Court appointments exclusively reflect the outlook of the 20% of the country that is farthest to the right. No president has been as far to one side as him in the last century. Even his supporters must concede this. And if they're honest they'll also concede that he lied to the American people in his first presidential race when he claimed time after time that he would govern from the center.
As far as in-your-face divisiveness goes, Bush wins this contest hands down. I can't name a more divisive president than him since the Reconstruction era over a century ago.
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