to a poll conducted by Gallup from February 3 to 7, 2016, only 14 percent of those surveyed approve the behavior of Congress, while 81 percent reject it. After eight months of the Trump administration, the figures are similar. In a Gallup Poll conducted from August 2 to 6, 2017, 16 percent approved of the way Congress is performing its job while 79 percent disapproved.87 Many feel that Congress has become a boxing ring in which the main priority of parties is to oppose each other rather than to search for consensus and create legislation. Political parties in congress privilege obstructionism, and the filibuster is increasingly used to delay or cancel debates and votes on legislation.
In 1964, Nelson Rockefeller was the last liberal contender for the nomination of the Republican Party. Since then, polarization has grown significantly in the United States. In January 2017, Gallup revealed that in 2016, 15 percent of Democrats declared themselves conservative, 40 percent moderates, and 44 percent liberals. The Republican Party showed a more conservative tendency, only 7 percent identified as liberals, 30 percent as moderates, and 63 percent as conservatives.88 As Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Pool, and Howard Rosenthal have asserted, “conservative and liberal have become almost perfect synonymous for Republican and Democrat.”89 These numbers do not capture the complexity of US polarization. In a country with increasing ethnic diversity, polarization is manifested not only in ideological terms but also regards to social issues such as abortion, gay marriage, transgender rights; racial issues; health care; economic inequality; and the size and role of government. The South, a bastion of the Democratic Party since the New Deal Era when Franklin Delano Roosevelt rescued the region with programs such as the Tennessee Valley Administration, is today a stronghold of the Republican Party.
Party polarization is not equally evident in the two political parties. The tendency to move away from the center is more evident in the Republican Party. The conservative base of the Party has become more conservative over the years, increasingly moving the party to the right of the ideological spectrum. Today, Bob Dole seems progressive when compared to Ted Cruz or ultra-conservatives in the “Tea Party.” Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, or Michael Novak were intellectuals who thought deeply about social, political, and international issues. These views have nothing in common with the superficial commentary of people like Ann Coulter or Bill O’Reilly.
Today, the Republican Party has welcomed the radical right. In the late 1970s, Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab argued that radical right movements were fringe organizations that did not threaten American democracy. More than forty years later, the story is different: some radical right groups are no longer fringe movements. They are active political organizations that flirt with the Republican Party, menacing the health of American democracy. This is surely part of what Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson have in mind when they argue that party polarization is “unequal between Democrats and Republicans, unequal in its effects on the governing aims of liberals and conservatives, and unequal in its effects on American society.”90
In addition to polarization, two particular aspects of the United States’ political system have attracted the attention of people in other countries. First is the length of American electoral cycle when compared to that of other countries such as Britain, where the longest election lasted thirty-seven days. The second is the complexity of the Electoral College system with its primaries and caucuses, and especially the role it plays in the selection of the president. The fact that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 by almost 2.9 million but lost in the Electoral College generated major confusion in many countries. Many see the Electoral College as an anomaly or an antidemocratic incongruity that lies at the heart of the oldest modern democracy of the world. Professor Webb sustains that American’s Electoral College is a “system that continues to bamboozle many Britons despite the best efforts of the media to explain it.” The Brazilian press continues to debate the American electoral system. Citing the views of scholars in the United States, Brazilian media outlets have maintained that the Electoral College breaks down an important rule of any democratic system, “the notion of one person, one vote.” The indirect system,” one article argued, citing Douglas McAdam, a Stanford sociologist, “weakens the principle of political equality.”91 Stephanie Le Bars writing for Le Monde argues that the Electoral College “appears to many as a betrayal of the democratic principles of direct elections: ‘a man, a voice.’” She wonders why one of the “most solid democracies in the world is electing its president by indirect vote.” She explains the historical reasons the Founding Fathers had for establishing this institution and cites Texas A&M Professor George C. Edwards III who asserts that “this system is intolerable in a democracy. It violates political equality because not all voices are equal.” Le Bars highlights several arguments against the Electoral College, including President Trump’s, but concludes that it is “likely that the system will dominate the next election.”92
In a country in which much of the media does not inform but rather sells sensationalism; in a world in which facts are not fact but fake news; in a world in which income inequality is egregious and growing; in a land in which rich people are influential and the poor are often ignored; in a republic in which money floods elections, making electoral competition uneven; in a nation in which political parties have little control over the electoral process, giving the candidates the freedom to lead and create outrageous campaigns; in an environment in which activists with extremists ideological principles can play an important role in or outside parties; in a polarized political system in which politicians have little incentive to negotiate; in a state in which institutions have difficulty creating real, durable links between civil society and the state; in a country in which the majority cannot rule and the president exercise his power via executive orders; in a nation in which political diversity has substantially expanded, changing the shape of the United States’ social fabric, provoking conflicts between the growing minorities and the majority; and a faltering political system that permit the election of an antagonizing figure who flirts with the far right, American democracy is at risk at home and abroad.
WHAT DID THE WORLD SEE IN 2016? DOES IT MATTER?
In the 2016 presidential election, as in previous American elections, commentators around the world expressed their preference for one or another candidate. Non-Americans tracked the political contest either because the outcome might affect their own country, because it was an opportunity to contrast their country with the United States, or simply because of the drama involved in the election. The first thing evident to anybody reading the available data is how much global support there was for Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. Jungkun Seo and his colleagues analyze the opinions about the two candidates using a global poll conducted by WIN/Gallup from August 2016 to September 2016 in 45 countries. They show that almost all of them preferred Clinton to Trump, with the exception of Russia. The highest support for Clinton came from Finland (86%) followed by Portugal, South Korea, Sweden, Colombia, and Mexico. “Clinton was overwhelmingly popular on every continent” (Seo et al., in this volume). The highest support for Trump appeared in China (44%) and Russia (33%). Of course, everywhere there were individual politicians or journalist who viewed Trump’s aspirations to the White House with great sympathy, but overall, Hillary Clinton had the world’s support.
Perhaps the most pertinent question is does it really matter what other countries think about the United States and its past presidential elections? Does it make any difference? I believe it matters a lot. As a Mexican politician said many years ago, “perceptions about other countries are important because they create the space where working together becomes possible.”93
The United States legitimates or validates political
