Checks and Balance: A house divided

Checks and Balance from The Economist

The Economist

Politics, News & Politics, News, Us Politics

4.6 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 September 2022

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Red and blue states have always been different. Each state’s ability to experiment, iterate and differentiate has been a source of strength. But as federal politics has become more partisan, so have the states. On everything from abortion to climate, American policy is now dividing into two distinct blocs. How is this new, fractious federalism changing the union?

We hear from the governors of America’s most conservative state, Tate Reeves of Mississippi, and its most progressive, Gavin Newsom of California, whose visions of America’s future are almost polar opposites. We go back to the unlikely origin of the idea that states should be the “laboratories of democracy”. And Chris Warshaw, a political scientist at George Washington University, explores how far apart states can drift and at what cost. John Prideaux hosts with Alexandra Suich Bass and Idrees Kahloon.

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Transcript

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0:36.0	In 1985, someone somewhere deep in the Texas Department of Transportation had a flash of inspiration.
0:43.0	A new slogan to deal with the litter problem plaguing their highways.
0:48.0	Don't mess with Texas.
0:51.5	Over the decades, every lone star states celebrity, from guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan to actor Matthew McConaughey, has been recruited to the cause,
1:00.0	and the motto has become a universal expression of Texas pride.
1:05.0	It's not a phrase you come across often in California.
1:09.0	But last week, it appeared on twin billboards, one looming over an intersection in the San Francisco Bay Area and another in L.A.'s Hollywood Hills.
1:18.0	A hooded figure appears down from each, the eyes hidden behind sinister red mirrored glasses.
1:25.0	And in a grim twist, the advert invokes recent mass shootings and replaces don't mess with Texas, with a new phrase, don't move to Texas.
1:35.0	No one has yet taken credit for the ad, but the campaign has been seen as a continuation of the culture war between the two states,
1:43.0	led by governors Gavin Newsom and Greg Abbott.
1:46.0	In recent months, Newsom has placed ads in Texas newspapers condemning abortion bans and lax gun laws,
1:53.0	while Abbott has crowed over Californian companies such as Tesla relocating to Texas.
1:59.0	But it's not just Texas and California.
2:02.0	Red and blue states have always been different, but today they are drifting so far apart on policy that it's sometimes hard to see how they can remain part of the same country.
2:13.0	I'm John Prado and this is Checks and Balance from the Economist.
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