About Schmitt.

• Author: Brownstein, Ronald
• Position: LETTERS - Mark Schmitt

Maybe it's unrealistic to expect reviewers to read your whole book ("Divide and Concur," by Mark Schmitt, November), but it really shouldn't be too much to expect them to get past page thirteen.

Schmitt's central complaint is that my book "locates the explanation for all of America's problems in the fact that both major political parties equally fail" to pursue reasonable compromise. Really? Here's what's on page thirteen: "[T]he Republican Party has contributed more than the Democrats to the rising cycle of polarization in American politics."

Later, I note that "Democrats probably would find it easier than Republicans to offer a policy agenda aimed at national reconciliation." Yes, I argue that Democrats pursued a more polarizing course in their response to Bush than they did under Clinton (though I say "that may have been a rational, even inevitable, response" to the environment Bush created). But I also state that because Democrats represent a more ideologically diverse coalition, they "possess a greater incentive than Republicans to reach out beyond their ideological vanguard and usually face somewhat less resistance when they do."

What I don't accept is Schmitt's simplistic equation that all Democrats are flexible, responsible, and reasonable and Republicans the opposite. Since I don't, he misleadingly argues I see no differences in the two parties' contribution to hyper-partisanship.

Schmitt mischaracterizes me when he says I celebrate "the age of bargaining"--the period of greater bipartisan cooperation after World War II. There were positive aspects of that system. But it also had fundamental flaws that I detailed: a tendency toward "incremental, not revolutionary, reform"; a silencing of impassioned voices; and the fact that it "safeguarded a regime of brutal state-sponsored segregation." I don't think I could have been more unequivocal when I wrote that "the age of bargaining is not a political system that anyone would seek to resurrect today."

Similarly, Schmitt suggests that I downplay the role of Bush and the Republican Congress in accelerating polarization since 2000. Again: really? The chapter titles hint at the book's conclusions: "The President of Half of America" and "The 51 Per Cent Solution." I also wrote, "Only confrontation could satisfy many on the right, because consensus could never achieve change of the magnitude they desired. In Bush they found a leader who shared that conviction and who demonstrated, over and...