No Matter Who Wins, Half of America Will Be Unhappy

One of the most striking patterns in campaign 2000 was the close correlation between church attendance and the vote. The more often a voter went to religious services the more likely he or she was to vote for George W. Bush. Voters who went to church rarely or never gave most of their support to Al Gore.

On a conference call with reporters last week, Democratic pollster Stanley B. Greenberg, an advisor to Sen. John F. Kerry, was asked if that relationship was still evident. “If anything, it is even stronger than it was in the last election,” he said.

That’s the common answer when strategists on both sides are asked about almost any of the distinctive divides in the electorate that marked the 2000 race. Bush is still running extremely well in rural areas, just as he did in 2000. Democrats are still performing strongly among well-educated, affluent, socially moderate suburbanites. Men like Bush, women like Kerry. Right now the electorate doesn’t look very different from four years ago.

The best evidence is the ever-shrinking battlefield of contested states. Earlier this year, in the infinite promise of summer, Democrats dreamed of expanding the battlefield to states like Virginia, Louisiana and Arkansas. No one has sighted Kerry lately in any of those places.

Indeed, the two sides have already concluded that about 40 states are virtually certain to stay in the same column as last time. Just 10 states -- four of them won by Bush last time and six by Gore -- accounted for 44 of the 50 markets receiving the most television ads, according to a recent study by a University of Wisconsin advertising project.

All of this points to the same conclusion: Barring a late surge, this election is likely to once again produce a closely divided country, perhaps split almost exactly in half.

That is the great unacknowledged fact of this campaign. Both Bush and Kerry have unfurled ambitious agendas. But whoever wins will need to navigate that agenda through a narrowly split Congress. And because the country is so evenly split in its allegiance, he will have to do so without the stratospheric approval ratings that might make legislators in the other party reluctant to oppose him.

Over the last four years, Bush has demonstrated he can achieve legislative goals in such an environment -- but mostly on near party-line votes that polarize Capitol Hill and the country. He’s never acknowledged the consequences of that strategy. As a candidate, the president frequently laments the intense partisanship in Washington. But he’s presented it as a kind of natural phenomenon unrelated to his actions.

“Washington is a tough town,” he said in last week’s final debate. “And the way I view it is there’s a lot of entrenched special interests there ... and they convince different senators to tout their way or different congressmen to ... talk about their issues. And they dig in.”

Yet Bush’s decisions have deepened the divide. On almost every major issue, from taxes to energy, he’s pursued policies that excite Republicans and alienate Democrats. The highlights of a second term -- creating individual accounts under Social Security and further tax reduction -- promise more of the same.

Bush may genuinely hope to reduce the personal acrimony in Washington. But the evidence of his first term suggests he is unlikely to achieve significant bipartisan cooperation without moderating his policy objectives. And given the choice between compromises that attract more Democrats or pursuing his original vision along party lines, Bush has consistently chosen the latter. Nothing may generate quite as much conflict as the war in Iraq, but a second Bush term probably would be nearly as bruising as the first.

Would a Kerry presidency be different? Kerry pledges to reduce the partisan conflict in Washington but Bush, remember, promised the same thing in 2000, even praising the Democratic Leadership Council that incubated many of President Clinton’s signature ideas.

Kerry has sent a similar signal by praising Republican Sens. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and John McCain of Arizona so often that it would surprise no one if he offered any of them a Cabinet position. And Kerry has pledged to roll back his new spending proposals if he couldn’t meet his deficit reduction targets, an idea that could provide an opening for budget negotiations with moderate Republicans.

But even if Kerry took such steps, conflict is inevitable because the key to his domestic agenda is repealing the elements of Bush’s tax cuts that benefit families earning $200,000 a year or more. That’s certain to provoke full-scale war with Republicans likely to still control the House of Representatives and possibly both chambers after November.

Kerry’s best chance of winning that fight as president would be to win a decisive mandate from voters next month. But today such a clear win seems unlikely for either Bush or Kerry. The next president is more likely to arrive with almost half the country deeply disappointed in his victory.

That is the way our era of polarized partisanship perpetuates itself. As long as the election results stay close, the losing party has every incentive to fight the winner every day, hoping that the accumulation of nicks and bruises will peel away enough voters to tilt the result the other way next time. Bipartisan signing ceremonies for big presidential victories -- like Social Security reform for Bush or expanded access to healthcare for Kerry -- don’t fit into that scenario.

If the result is close next month, both parties are preparing for legal combat that could sprawl through November and perhaps beyond. That prospect is daunting enough. But without enormous creativity and commitment from the next president, the more ominous forecast is for partisan warfare that sprawls over the next four years.

Ronald Brownstein’s column appears every Monday. See current and past columns on The Times’ website at www.latimes.com/brownstein.