Historian’s latest book explores America’s road to political dysfunction

Binghamton University History Professor Donald G. Nieman’s new book, The Path to Paralysis, grew out of co-teaching a modern U.S. history course with his wife, Professor Leigh Ann Wheeler, questions and insights from their students, and discussions with his teenage son about the country’s political polarization.

“If young people grow up thinking this is the way politics is, what is our future going to be like?” Nieman said. “I think this is a major and disturbing development in American politics. If this becomes the norm, I’m not sure constitutional democracy can survive. It’s that serious.”

The Path to Paralysis: How American Politics Became Nasty, Dysfunctional, and a Threat to the Republic, released in mid-October by Anthem Press, examines the changes in political culture that have moved the United States from The Great Society to the U.S. Capitol Insurrection in less than 60 years. Polarization and toxicity are now common in a country that is 50/50 red/blue, and “compromise” is considered a dirty word.

Nieman, who served as Binghamton University provost from 2012–22, was already concerned about the growing polarization of politics following Donald Trump’s presidential election in 2016. A few years later, Nieman received the Gen Z perspective when discussing the subject with his son Brady, who was in high school at the time.

For example, Brady was equally appalled at the police violence against Black people and calls to “defund the police.”

“He was concerned about the polarization that he saw among people in his generation,” Nieman recalled. “He was appalled by the ’cancelling’ and the nastiness on both sides of the political spectrum. It made me think about the impact of this on young people.”

At the same time, Nieman and Wheeler were co-teaching HIST 104, a modern American history class for first-year students. Nieman was able to receive input from 18- and 19-year-olds as the course moved into the 1970s and beyond.

“For these students, post-Watergate is almost 50 years of American history,” he said. “It’s a set of developments that they’re curious about because it helps them understand where we are today and how we got there.”

The talks laid the foundation for the book, which Nieman wrote in the year after stepping down as provost. The research and writing, though, produced a surprise finding for the historian.

“When I started the book, I thought: We’ve been polarized since the late 1960s,” he admitted. “The process of writing the book changed my mind. It’s only since 2008 that we have plunged into true polarization.”

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The Path to Paralysis is a 400-plus-page tale about the road to political dysfunction. It’s a story of America over the past 60 years that Nieman writes in a style that will appeal to Republicans, Democrats, independents, political buffs, history fans and those seeking hope that we might yet escape today’s name-calling and falsehoods.

Instead of individual chapters addressing specific changes over the years, such as political geography, new modes of communication and divisions over race, gender and religion, Nieman devotes 12 chapters to four- or eight-year blocks in American history. The Path to Paralysis starts in 1964 and moves through the years with each president at the forefront of attention.

“I wanted to tell the story of American political development from the mid-1960s to the present, rather than treating it schematically,” he said. “It shows the power of contingency. It’s easy to talk about broad forces and factors coming together. But people make decisions. The juxtaposition of events and how people make decisions matters. It’s easier to do that in a chronological narrative.”

The book begins in 1964 with a pro-Lyndon Baines Johnson political ad that Nieman and Wheeler aired in their HIST 104 class. “Poverty” was a one-minute, black-and-white ad that showed the faces of poor children and urged Americans to rally behind LBJ and his War on Poverty.

“The ad’s implicit faith in government’s ability to solve complex problems sounds naïve,” Nieman wrote in the book. But for Nieman, the ad “crystallized where our country has travelled in the last 60 years.”

“You might think: Well, that was the apex of liberalism,’” he said. “But then you realize that the U.S. wasn’t liberal in 1964: A Gallup poll showed that 20% identified as liberal, 35% as conservative and 44% as middle of the road. What Johnson’s program and message reflected was optimism. Take-home income was going up. People were seeing their lives — year after year — become better. And Americans saw themselves leading the world against aggressive Communism that wanted to take away rights and liberties. We were leading the good fight.”

By the early 1970s, the times were changing. Inflation, unemployment, an energy crisis, cultural shifts and political inaction led some Americans to feel alienated, angry and wary. Battles in a culture war that continues today were underway, and politicians eagerly exploited them.

“It becomes easy for politicians who can’t fix the economy to exploit the moral concerns that people have on the left or the right of issues,” Nieman said.

However, the book dispels the notion that the mounting political divisiveness that began in the late 1960s resulted in polarization. Richard Nixon signed pioneering environmental legislation, Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neil forged compromises to stabilize Social Security and overhaul the income tax system, George H.W. Bush and Al Gore came together to pass the Clean Air Act of 1990, George W. Bush and Ted Kennedy collaborated on education reform, and Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich forged a plan for comprehensive reform of Social Security and Medicare that was a casualty of the Clinton impeachment fight.

“Gingrich brought the tactics of attacks and stretching the truth to a refined level,” Nieman said of the former Speaker of the House from Georgia. “A lot of today’s techniques were masterminded by Gingrich. He used them effectively. But after Clinton won re-election, Gingrich was deeply engaged in a major compromise plan to reform Social Security and Medicare. I’m convinced that if Clinton had better control of his libido and wasn’t enmeshed in an impeachment crisis, a deal would’ve been done. … Politics in the Clinton years were nasty and vicious. But Clinton and Gingrich worked together on the issues.”

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A variety of factors, though, would soon create a storm of political polarization (“the tipping point,” as Nieman calls it) during the Barack Obama years: Fixations on race, gender, sexuality and family reached new heights. Republican success in southern states (70% of GOP senators and House members are from the South) made the party more conservative. Gerrymandering meant that most House members had safe seats and little reason to move to the center.

And then there are changes in the media, which Nieman called “seismic.”

“I don’t think we could have the polarization of today if we had the media environment of the 1960s,” he said. “People fought like cats and dogs and— politics were heated — but people generally agreed on the facts. They got their news from three networks and mainstream newspapers.

“Over time, talk radio, cable news, the internet and social media [emerged] and people got their news from sources that confirmed their bias,” he added. “There’s been a democratization of journalism: Anyone with a website or blog is a ‘journalist.’ They don’t have to check facts, they can recycle every conspiracy theory they want with audiences locked into them. It’s the perfect world for people who don’t want to compromise and only want to fight.”

Disruptive economic change was also critical, Nieman said. The transition from a manufacturing economy to a service and information economy, coupled with trickle-down economic policies, created growing economic inequality. That left many middle- and working-class Americans alienated, bitter and convinced that political leaders only served the rich. It was a catalyst for the populism pioneered by Pat Buchanan, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party.

Trump was a product of — and skillfully exploited — that populism, Nieman said. Trump had long flirted with a run for the presidency, but he emerged as a major populist voice when he claimed Obama was not born in the U.S. Nieman recalled a Trump speech in 2011 to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in which the future president got muted reaction to views on issues such as abortion, guns and the national debt.

“When he questioned whether Obama was born in the U.S., the crowd exploded [in support],” Nieman said. “From that point, I think, Trump understood the power of that issue and kindred issues to ignite a base that could launch his political career.”

Issues of identity, culture and values continue to enflame politics in the Trump era, Nieman said.

“Trump was able to exploit these things in the way that a successful showman can.”

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Can America escape political polarization, especially in a presidential campaign that has seen the candidates call each other “communist” and “fascist?” Nieman believes the first steps must take place in the voting booth: People need to “throw up their hands and say enough of this.”

“Most Americans say they hate politics because it is so nasty and polarized,” he said. “The surveys are as clear as glass. But people need to vote that way [and say]: I’m not going to vote for someone who lies and threatens to imprison enemies. It’s a difficult task in a polarized system because so many people have chosen sides. But it gives me hope that in 2018, 2020 and 2022, there were a significant number of voters who made that pivot.”

Nieman also hopes that The Path to Paralysis helps readers understand that political disagreement is inevitable, but disagreements should be able to produce discussions.

“This is a big, diverse country that is constantly changing,” he said. “We’re going to have disagreements that will be sharp. We’ll have negative campaigning and advertising to incite fears. It works; politicians will resort to it. But we can’t continue to live in our bubbles, deny facts, buy into conspiracies — on the left and the right. We should want leaders to fight with one another, but then come together and say: We have problems that we need to deal with. Voters need to demand that politicians compromise. Come up with solutions that may not be perfect, but don’t kick the can down the road. Give a little to get a little.

“Polarization has not been with us since time immemorial,” he adds. “It’s relatively recent, and we should be able to overcome it and create a more constructive politics.”