Morality politics good. It costs less.

Washington Post contributor Robert Samuelson has written a column that’s caused me to re-think what’s most important in politics today. He notes both sides in our deeply-divided country practice "the politics of self-esteem." Samuelson believes the two sides strive to make people feel good by affirming their belief in their moral superiority.

We used to think politics mediates conflicting interests and ideas, that winners receive economic benefits and losers don't. After all, in 2010 the federal government will distribute about $2.4 trillion in benefits, with taxes and regulations helping and hurting various groups. But because Democrats want to spend more and raise taxes only on higher earners while Republicans want to reduce taxes but keep spending, we end up with vast budget deficits.

Faced with this dilemma, one discussed earlier in this blog, Samuelson finds politicians prefer framing issues in moral terms. Global warming is about "saving the planet." Both sides of the abortion and gay marriage debates believe they hold the high ground.

Obama pitches his health care plan in moral terms: health care is a "right;” its opponents less moral. Why not use this tactic? On a simple calculus of benefits, Obama’s proposal would have failed. Perhaps 32 million Americans will receive insurance coverage -- about 10% of the population. But for most Americans, the bill imposes costs, including higher taxes, fees, and/or longer waits for service.

Supporters instead back expanded health care as "the right thing"; it makes them feel good about themselves. They get "psychic benefits." Economic benefits make people richer, but cost money. Psychic benefits make them feel morally upright and superior at no monetary cost to politicians! The magic solution.

Today's tendency to turn every contentious issue into a moral confrontation is far more divisive, however, than the old fight over economic spoils. You can boost people's self-esteem by praising them as smart, public-spirited and virtuous. But it’s even easier to portray the "other side" as scum: The more scummy "they" are, the more superior "we" are.

Furthermore, unlike economic benefits, psychic benefits can be dispensed without going through Congress. Mere talk does the trick, though only for a time. Then one has to escalate. The opposition cannot simply be mistaken. It must be evil, selfish, racist, unpatriotic, immoral or just stupid. Stridency from one feeds the other, and political polarization deepens.

Political scientists Morris Fiorina and Samuel Abrams argue in their book Disconnect: the Breakdown of Representation in American Politics that polarization is stronger among elites. About 40% to 50% of Americans classify themselves as "moderates,” while political activists tend to be "very liberal" or "very conservative." Yet it is the political class of activists that determine "how the debate is conducted."

To Samuelson, it’s no wonder politics seems too bare-knuckled for most voters, and no surprise Congress responds to their activist "base" by enacting major programs like health care that lack wide support. Samuelson suspects that as long as our politics caters to people's desire to think well of themselves, it will sacrifice the pragmatic goals that serve us best.

And please don’t look for any near-term turn away from “the politics of self-esteem.” Obama built his 2008 run for the presidency on moral politics. According to Joan Walsh, a self-described “advocacy journalist” writing about New Yorker editor David Remnick's just-published biography The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama

Remnick . . . describes a kind of racial force-field that surrounded Obama, with which black supporters and their white allies pushed back at any slight that seemed racial, with the full moral force of the civil rights cause.