Partisanship, not politics, is the problem
The dispute over the FBI’s search of former President Donald Trump’s property at Mar-a-Lago highlights a flaw in our public discourse that I think has real and negative consequences: the widespread use of the term “political” when we really mean “partisan.” America desperately needs less partisanship in our government and policy decisions, but it will be almost impossible to make them less political.
In criticizing the FBI, the Justice Department and, in particular, Attorney General Merrick Garland over the search, Republican officials have often invoked the terms “political,” “politicized” and “politicization.” Journalists in the mainstream media are writing that the search makes Garland part of the political process, which is framed as negative. The attorney general might have played into this dynamic himself, because he has long cast himself as apolitical, even saying in 2016, as he was considered for a U.S. Supreme Court seat, that he does not have a “political bone” in his body.
Those are distortions of what political means. Merriam-Webster’s first definition of political is “of or relating to government, a government, or the conduct of government.” Some colleges have a political science major, others have a major called government, but students are taught similar material in both. You could argue politics is really about power, so say Bill Gates has a big political role even though he does not serve in government.
Thus, anything that an attorney general, a Supreme Court justice or a similarly powerful government official does in the conduct of his or her duties is political. Garland is literally a political appointee of President Joe Biden. And Garland’s department is conducting an investigation that involves whether Trump and/or his supporters, people deeply involved in politics, violated the law in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
But while Garland can’t avoid being political, he can and should try to avoid being partisan, what Merriam-Webster defines as “feeling, showing, or deriving from strong and sometimes blind adherence to a particular party, faction, cause, or person.” Ideally, this search was not entirely conceived by Biden appointees. (And that is almost certainly the case because most of the investigative work done by the FBI and the Justice Department is conducted by career employees.) Ideally, the FBI and the Justice Department would have conducted this same search in the same manner if they were investigating former President Barack Obama instead of Trump. Ideally, in all prosecutorial decisions, Garland’s department is not going harder against Republicans or softer on Democrats.
But this collapsing of the distinction between electoral, ideological, personal and particularly partisan vs. political is widespread and damaging. As the Republican Party has gotten more radical since Trump became its leader, the mainstream media, businesses, universities and other institutions have continually mistaken being nonpartisan with being nonpolitical. These institutions aren’t aligned with either of the two major parties and want to maintain that independence. I agree with that perspective; we need a civil society outside of the two parties.
But desperate to avoid seeming partisan, these institutions have often either abandoned or shrunk from their proper political roles. Republican Party officials are taking advantage of this misunderstanding. At the local, state and federal levels, they cast academic researchers, public health officials, teachers, journalists and basically any other nonpartisan expert who disagrees with GOP policy priorities as being political, with the implication that the person is being improperly partisan, pro-Democratic and anti-Republican. The strategy is to collapse all of American life into people and institutions on Team Blue vs. those on Team Red.
And Republicans have in many ways succeeded. Among conservative activists, the media, academia, the federal bureaucracy, the field of public health and numerous other nonpartisan institutions are considered essentially arms of the Democratic Party, opposed to all Republicans and any conservative ideas. Delegitimizing these institutions makes it easier for Republicans to ignore them and potentially even gut them, as GOP officials are pushing to do in terms of public schools and the federal bureaucracy in particular.
Now, an FBI run by Trump appointee Christopher Wray and a Justice Department run by the centrist Garland are being cast as partisan organizations out to get Republicans.
I’m usually hesitant to suggest simply using a different word will make a big impact. But in the case of partisan vs. political, centering this distinction is hugely important. Being political, meaning getting involved in government, is generally good. We want more institutions and people in our society involved in public affairs. And if your job is special counsel, attorney general or president, your job is inherently political. Being partisan isn’t always bad, but it’s certainly not universally good. Ideally, the president and other politicians aren’t always being partisan, and FBI agents, prosecutors and attorney generals never are.
We should really try to take some of the partisanship out of American politics. But we can’t make politics not political.