Circling the Wagons
By DAVID BROOKS

Over the next few months, I hope to write a fair bit about the dominant feature of our political life: polarization. [P6: Could someone stop him please?] I hope to figure out how deeply split the nation is, and what exactly it is we are fighting about — questions that leave me, at present, confused.

Today's topic is what it means to be a partisan, because partisanship is the building block of polarization.

In a perfectly rational world, citizens would figure out which parties best represent their interests and their values, and they would provisionally attach themselves to those parties. If their situations changed or their interests changed, then their party affiliations would change.

But that is not how things work in real life. As Donald Green, Bradley Palmquist and Eric Schickler argue in their book, "Partisan Hearts and Minds," most people either inherit their party affiliations from their parents, or they form an attachment to one party or another early in adulthood. Few people switch parties once they hit middle age. Even major historic events like the world wars and the Watergate scandal do not cause large numbers of people to switch.

Kettle.

Negro.