When everyone is in danger from a disease, it seems irrational for a political party to politicize the threat. But this happened during COVID-19.  One reason is that while Americans seem extremely polarized; this is  more appearance than reality. While Americans do disagree strongly on some issues, there is considerable consensus about many issues. Because of this, political parties need to manufacture a conflict in which they can score points. Since a threat generates strong emotions, it can be ideal for politization as a party can tap into the emotions and manipulate them to its advantage. Taking a threat seriously can also be contrary to the interests of some and they will try to prevent this by politicizing the threat. If they succeed, they can recruit voters and get them to support policies that endanger these voters. Thus, a political party can have two excellent reasons to politicize a universal threat: to score political points and serve the interests of those who benefit from allowing the threat to remain unaddressed.

Politicization can be effective at engaging emotions and disengaging reasoning. There are many fallacies (such as group think) and cognitive biases (such as in group bias) that feed and are fed by ideology. If you are liberal, then you probably just thought of the Republican politicization of climate change. If you are a conservative, you might have been thinking about the sins of the Democrats. If so, then you can see how conflict can easily be created along party lines.

The COVID-19 virus presents a threat to everyone, but it was politicized. Initially the Trump administration downplayed the virus and accused the Democrats of using it to attack Trump and the idea that is a hoax aimed at hurting Trump persists. There were short-term advantages to politicizing the virus, such as keeping the markets calm through ignorance, to allow business to continue as usual and to hope that the virus would not arrive until after the 2020 election. Political points were also scored against the Democrats by accusing them of making up a virus threat to hurt Trump.

From the Republican perspective, the Democrats were the villains, doing terrible things to harm Trump and impede his efforts. On their view, it was the Democrats who were manufacturing the conflict; first by creating a virus hoax and then by interfering with Trump’s efforts to address the virus.  How one sees this matter will, obviously, tend to shake out along ideological lines, thus politicizing the issue of politicization.

While, as noted above, political points can be scored by politicizing an objective threat, this does have negative consequences. The most obvious is that time and resources are spent fighting manufactured political battles rather than uniting against a threat to everyone. Another consequence is that manufacturing a conflict requires that misinformation, thus misleading people and this can have enduring consequences. In the case of the virus, while Fox News and the White House did shift their position to match reality, the groundwork they laid still serves as a foundation for the enduring view that the virus is either a hoax or not very serious.

Some Republicans will want to blame the Democrats; a common narrative is that their impeachment efforts are partially to blame for the virus crisis. As would be expected, one’s ideological lens determines how one sees this matter: Trump and Fox News as the villains who politicized the virus or the Democrats as the villains who distracted Trump from the virus.

There are three solutions to the needless harm caused by this sort of politicization. The first is that politicians need to exercise judgment and restraint before engaging in politization of a crisis. The problem is that it is seen as a useful political tool. As such, getting politicians to use good judgment and exercise restraint is challenging. The second solution is that voters can support candidates who are more likely to exercise judgment and restraint. Third, voters also decide how they respond. If they resisted efforts to politicize a crisis that should be non-partisan, then the efforts of politicians would be far less likely to succeed.

One concern is the charge of politization can be used, ironically, to politicize an issue and silence legitimate criticism. For example, the facts show that Trump’s initial handling of the crisis was terrible and that he made untrue claims about the virus and the situation. As such, legitimate criticisms of these failures could be non-political. But if critics are Democrats or liberals, they could be accused of politicizing. To address this problem, critics should focus on the facts and steer clear of what might appear overtly political. This will be challenging, since the other party is unlikely to accept legitimate and fair criticism and will claim it is unfair politicization. As such, the manufactured polarization in the United States that has served the parties has done massive damage to America. As should be expected. Unless we address this, new crises will  repeat the harmful politicalization of the  COVID-19 crisis.