While John McCain and Barack Obama disagreed on taxes, health care and foreign policy, there is at least one issue on which they found common ground during the recent presidential campaign: the polarization of Washington and the nation. Both candidates made it one of their central themes. McCain observed that he’s “never seen Washington as polarized as it is today,” while Obama thought that President Bush “polarized us when he should have pulled us together.”  McCain promised, while accepting his party’s nomination, to end the “constant partisan rancor” of Washington, while Obama made sure to clarify that he wasn’t blaming voters by noting that “the country is not as polarized as our politics would suggest.” Rather, we are to conclude, it is cynical politicians who exploit wedge issues to win elections, and launch personal attacks against their opponents, that are to blame. To hear each candidate tell it, all we need is the right leader with a conciliatory tone to unite America and end polarization. History shows this to be a fantasy.

The conventional wisdom is that politicians create polarization by being excessively negative in their campaigning. Every four years we are told that the current election is the most negative in history. Commentators bemoan the debasement of the political process, while reporters highlight voters turned off by the negative tone. Rarely are these assertions placed into historical context. The problem with the conventional wisdom is that our politics are no more contentious today than in the past.

The birth of the attack campaign can be traced back to 1800 and the contest between President John Adams and then Vice-President Thomas Jefferson. Despite the personal friendship of the candidates, the campaign was brutal. Adams was accused of having a “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” Jefferson was “a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.”

This is not to say that Americans haven’t become more polarized, but we should separate the distinct issues of campaign negativity and polarization of voters. Political mudslinging is not new, but there has been an increase in the degree to which voters view others as not just political opponents, but as outright enemies. Negativity is a constant and thus incapable of explaining changes in polarization. To what, then, can we attribute increasing polarization?

While negative campaigning has not changed since 1800, the size and scope of government has. It doesn’t matter which measurement is used; they all tell the same story. Per capita expenditures – the amount of money spent by the government per citizen – exploded during the 20^th century, growing in 2004 to 55 times that of 1910. Total government expenditures at all levels (federal, state and local) grew 417% in just the last half century. Economic growth cannot account for this increase, as it has been significantly outpaced by government spending. With the federal government falling all over itself to hand out shockingly large sums of money to banks, automakers and any other big business that asks nicely, or at all, this trend shows no signs of slowing.

Despite the modest downsizing after the end of the Cold War, by 2000 the federal government employed almost 3 million people, and government employment at the federal, state and local level now combine for 16% of the total national work force. There are ten additional cabinet positions compared to the beginning of the 20^th century. So in addition to spending more, they are also doing more.

We have all these bureaucrats to manage the regulations covering every aspect of our lives. Government tells us what we can eat, where we can smoke, what medicines we can use and what insurance we can purchase. It even tells us who we can marry and where we must send our children to school, along with what they must be taught.

This intrusion of government has sparked the “culture war.” It exists because government, by design, requires one-size-fits-all solutions on issues on which there is no one size that fits all. As an example, when parents cannot choose where to send their kids to school, they must fight within the political system to see that the schools teach what they want. Different parents have different ideas, often mutually exclusive, on what they want their children to learn. Because they must fight over control of the same system, some must inevitably lose.

When issues of importance to the people must be fought over, it’s understandable that the fighting can be intense. A lot is at stake in every election. Repeat this process again and again, on issue after issue, and it is little wonder why Americans are polarized today. Government has pit us against our fellow citizens in a battle for control of our own lives. It’s a battle we can only lose, and which the new administration’s big government programs can only make worse.