What can we do to address this sorry state of affairs? McArdle counsels greater forbearance, and willingness to make concessions to the other side – much in the same way as mutual compromise is essential to a successful marriage:

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The more determined you are to win every battle, the more likely you are to lose what’s important: the person you love so much that you have chosen to spend the rest of your life with them. And so every time you have a real disagreement… you have to think carefully before you decide to have that fight. Is this really the hill that you’re willing to let your marriage die on?… Some hills are worth dying on. But a lot of them are of no strategic value in gaining your ultimate objective: a long and happy partnership…

It is certainly true that successful marriage requires compromise and forbearance. The same can be said of a successful political system. But McArdle overlooks the reality that compromise is easier between people who don’t disagree on so many fundamental issues to begin with. One of the most important predictors of a successful marriage is having similar goals and values. It’s a lot easier to make concessions when you know you won’t have to make them too often, or on too many important issues.

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An atheist with a bohemian lifestyle and a strait-laced religious fundamentalist can potentially have a successful marriage. But it’s a lot less likely to end happily than one where each finds a partner closer to their respective values.

Unfortunately, the “marriage” between red and blue America is in fact one between groups with widely divergent preferences on many issues. The more issues the “couple” has to decide together, the greater the potential for conflict.

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Fortunately, a political union need not be as close a relationship as a marriage usually is. Red and blue America may not be able to spend some time completely apart. But they don’t have to do so many things together.

Today, the federal government has control over an extraordinarily wide range of issues, everything from health care to drug prohibition, to light bulbs and toilet flows. By decentralizing more power to the state and local level, or to the private sector, we can reduce the number of issues on which a one-size-fits-all decision has to be made. There will be less need to make painful compromises and concessions if each side can get their own way in their own state, locality, or private planned community.

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A political family that doesn’t have to do so much together can be a happier family with fewer dangerous zero-sum conflicts. It may not be quite like a successful marriage. But perhaps a less intimate form of political relationship is precisely what we need. People who are too different to be good spouses might nonetheless make good friends or relatives – as long as they don’t have to do too many things together. Uncle Red and Cousin Blue might be a lot more likable if you didn’t have to worry about them controlling too many aspects of your life.

Minimizing political conflict is not the only issue we need to weigh in considering the optimal degree of political centralization. And there are some policies – global warming and national defense are obvious examples – that cannot be significantly decentralized.

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