We Fail at the Binary: Reflections on Buttigieg’s LitFest Talk

The 19th U.S. Secretary of Transportation, former naval officer, and mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg, came to campus last Friday as a part of the 11th annual LitFest. While Buttigieg’s book, “Trust,” was somewhat directly discussed to keep the event within the literary theme, most of the conversations revolved around the evolving social climate we exist in today. From AI to religion, the talk went into detail about many of the issues the current and future issues the U.S. faces.

One particular section of Buttigieg’s talk that struck me was his comment about how to properly work as a public servant and representative on local, state, and national levels. In reference to his time running for Indiana state treasurer and mayor of South Bend, Buttigieg learned to work with those he fervently disagreed with and to convince such people that he would do well in these positions. Buttigieg specified that he focused on “talking to the other side as if you liked them.” This comment sat with me long after the event ended. It was such a basic blanket statement — which somehow needed to be said — that exemplified just how screwed this country really is. 

The majority of Buttigieg’s statement is positive. There will always be people we disagree with or don’t like — it’s natural. We should give each other grace in our debates and avoid treating one another with hostility and animosity. While I take a slight issue with the framing of “as if you liked them” — since I believe we should just do our best to like everyone to varying degrees — I understand how unrealistic my suggestion is. Some people commit acts we believe to be reprehensible and unforgivable, and we can never see those people in a truly pleasant light. Nevertheless, I’d much rather have most of us pretend to like one another to progress conversations and society at large, than have us never speak to those who don’t overwhelmingly share the same political beliefs. 

I take issue, though, with one part of the statement: “the other side.” The U.S. suffers greatly from political polarization — the growing ideological divide between political groups. This article offers no solution to this growing problem in our politics, but it does point out one particular aspect: embracing a false binary through our two-party system. We lock ourselves into two large, rigid political camps that don’t represent the wide array of beliefs that exist within the country. You lean one way — you’re Republican. You lean the ‘other’ way — Democrat. Some policies and issues truly are binary, and you can’t take a third or fourth perspective, but within those two perspectives are differing reasons to take on that viewpoint. For example, a fiscal conservative and a progressive leftist may both support increasing taxes. The conservative may elect for higher taxes to reduce budget deficits and national debt, while the progressive might like to use the increase towards funding public infrastructure or addressing wealth inequality. Despite these two individuals agreeing on increasing taxes, the Republican party may think the conservative is betraying their party. Reports from Gallup and Pew Research Center suggest the Republican party broadly disapproves of high taxes, while the Democratic party supports increasing taxes, especially for corporations. The conservative, regardless of why they support increasing taxes, will likely end up being labeled a Republican in name only (RINO). We don’t care why you take a certain stance anymore; we just put people into the category that they have to fall into — otherwise nothing makes sense 

By putting ourselves into inflexible Democratic or Republican camps, we lose the most important aspects of our political beliefs and identities: our many, many differences. The small or non party-defining or contradictory, within our respective party, beliefs we hold make up our true political identity. It’s obviously impossible to form parties that can represent a person’s beliefs in their totality, but the two groups presented to us don’t allow for any important nuance in political issues. For example, within the Democrats are groups like the liberals, leftists, progressives, old guard, moderates, and populists. In the Republican party: the conservatives, far-right, MAGA loyalists, constitutionalists, moderates, and their own sort of populists too. Each of these groups exists within these two massive parties, and you can find people who fit in between multiple of these sub-groups across party lines. The Democrat and Republican titles simultaneously represent someone’s entire political identity while revealing nothing about the specifics of their politics whatsoever. 

So what do we do with this increasingly worrisome political binary that fails to represent the variety of political beliefs? Perhaps we could push for reestablishing the moderates and the political spectrum’s center in each party. What ensures that the center can survive in parties that incentivize harder pushes towards the left or the right? Research suggests that having more ideologically extreme candidates run for office encourages greater turnout, as well as that moderate candidates are increasingly unlikely to run for major offices at the state or national level. What if we break down or add onto the two-party system? The Democratic and Republican parties may be too deeply entrenched in our political structure to be completely ousted or dramatically altered, regardless of public opinion. It seems practically impossible to make fundamental changes to better our political system, and it’s quite disheartening.

Our system fails by merely having a political binary. If, and hopefully when, we survive our current political crisis, we need to take the steps to ensure a better party system to represent us. I believe we need to do a better job of framing our politics and reduce the tendency to generalize each other based on party lines. Using Democrat or Republican as labels needs to be, at the very least, treated with more care and nuance to what the person’s positions really are. Many people I know have implicit biases about Buttigieg based solely on his mainstream Democratic party position and role in the previous presidential administration. Going into the event, I also wondered what he might say based on these identities, but kept my mind open to what else he had to offer. I was pleasantly surprised by his humor, poise, and refreshing political opinions, which didn’t entirely match the profile I had of him in my head. Buttigieg’s image broke down a bit, allowing me to get a full picture of who he was in his totality. 

Last Friday’s talk gave me a clearer vision of what the U.S. needs from us regarding political polarization. A general solution involves promoting a kinder political environment — allowing for conversations that prevent both parties from treating each other with hatred — while keeping us open minded to the diverse political thoughts we each have on a personal level. Avoiding broad generalizations too, especially at the political level, ensures that we can have productive political conversations and understand our nuances. While I don’t know any literal or tangible solutions to go about fixing the political binary we exist within, the best we can do is reject broad labels and find the overlap within our differing identities. Buttigieg’s talk was only around an hour and a half long, but I left feeling the most hopeful about and determined to assist our great American experiment than I had in a long, long time.