A mark of political civility: One of the most inspiring things about the eulogies to Senator Edward Kennedy were the tributes coming from Republican Senators Orin Hatch, John McCain, and Mitch McConnell, Presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, former First Lady Nancy Reagan, and Kennedy's Democratic opponent in 1980, President Jimmy Carter. One measure of a man is what your most respected adversaries say about you.
"What Sen. Kennedy profoundly understood was that we are a nation of incrementalists who like our progress in bite-size pieces," said Kenneth M. Duberstein, a former chief of staff in the Reagan White House. "He made the art of compromise not a four-letter word and yet, for many [outside Congress] it is."
Rising above political caricature to try to truly listen and understand where a person is coming from politically is more difficult than it used to be. But I was impressed by the statements of various political adversaries, including Joe Biden, after the death of Jesse Helms in 2008. As I wrote then, Helms' memorial service revealed a man of considerable complexity, not a cardboard cutout of a racist.
The more political civility people of different ideologies can show each other, the better. As Ted Kennedy Jr. said in his eulogy to his father:
Kim, a poster over at Ed Cone's blog, pretty well captures the back and forth "debate" between liberals and conservatives in online discussion groups:
"gotcha...no, I got you...gotcha...no, I got you...gotcha...no, I got you...YAWN...BIG SIGH."
Online debates can be informative, challenging and stimulating, but rarely do they lead to a meeting of the minds. In person, there is usually peer pressure if not internalized pressure to meet others half way, to acknowledge they are right about some things, to show your manners, your generosity, your willingness to listen.
Online discussions have opposite pressures -- to score another point for your side with a brilliant insight or sharp quip, to one-up, to have the last word. These discussions end not when people agree, or even when they agree to disagree, but when they simply run out of steam (energy) or participants get bored by the repetitive circular arguments.
I saw a cartoon in which wife asks husband why he is staying up so late. "I have to finish this debate," he says. "Someone on the Internet is WRONG." To persuade all the people on the Internet of the errors of their ways is quite an undertaking!
The kind of name-calling, shouting and mob action we've seen in recent days (as illustrated in the video clip from Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show above) is the result of "progressives" and "conservatives" not engaging in enough dialogue and understanding each other's point of view. "Conservatives" are panicked because they know the Democrats have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a large majority in the House, and can ram through major legislation without their input. Sure, some of them are acting hysterically, making ridiculous and bogus charges about the pending health insurance reform legislation. And some overly passionate supporters of the legislation have reacted hysterically as well.
Sometimes I wonder if Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Fox News, MSNBC and certain bloggers who routinely demonize the opposition would like to see America dissolve into civil war because it would be great for ratings and hits.
The fact is that many of the concerns about health care reform expressed on blogs and at town meetings held by members of Congress -- particularly about the depth of the proposed changes, the broad lack of understanding (even among progressives), and the true cost of the legislation -- are legitimate. "Act in haste and repent in leisure" is an axiom we all need to ponder at this stage.
I'd like to see at least several more weeks of consideration of health insurance reform legislation by Congress, at least until I feel I have a working grasp of it, understand it, and can explain the major provisions myself.
I know the fear among supporters of the legislation is that the longer we delay passage, the easier it will be for lobbyists and "astroturf" groups to rally special interests to scuttle it. And that health care reform has been discussed and discussed for 60 years. But I think the greater danger at this point is if the people who need to understand the 1,000-page legislation haven't fully absorbed it and can't confidently explain the general principles, much less the details, or the unintended consequences.
Continued dialogue is important, an essential part of democracy. If nothing else, it helps sharpen one's own thinking. That's why I'm venturing out to other blogs to discuss health insurance reform legislation.
Staying insulated in a partisan echo chamber does not help one develop or sharpen critical thinking skills. Justice Learned Hand once said that "the spirit of democracy begins with the notion that I might be wrong."
I'm sure I'm wrong about some things. I've lived long enough to know that I have been wrong about some things. My mind has changed about some things. I'm sure you're wrong about some things. I'm sure your mind has changed about some things. No one, no political ideology has a corner on absolute truth.
Near Greensboro, NC, News-Record reporter Joe Killian was kicked
and knocked to the ground by a hostile McCain supporter at a Sarah Palin
event. Read his account on his blog. Just as disturbing are some of the reactions from McCain-Palin supporters. "It made my day to read about Joe getting kicked in the leg at a Sarah Palin rally," said one. ""I wasn't there to determine whether it was deserved," said another, an attorney who should know better. (Source.)
In Sacramento County, CA, the Republican Party posted on its OFFICIAL party Web site material linking Sen. Obama to Osama bin Laden and encouraging people to "waterboard
Barack Obama." After even state GOP leaders were offended, the party has removed the material.
Sam Spagnola, Greensboro lawyer and blogger, lies that Obama "urged his supporters to engage in violent confrontations." This statement is comparable to his assertion that Hillary Clinton seriously called for Obama's assassination. Sam's educated, a lawyer, and should know better than to stoop to this crappola. In the heat of political battle, some hyper-partisan hotheads are losing all credibility. (Update: Sam claims he was just being sarcastic, and didn't mean the statements seriously, but his sarcasm is lost on me.)
Meanwhile, the charming and humorous Christopher Buckley, son of Bill (who I always liked and found intellectually stimulating), has resigned from the board of the National Review after endorsing Barack Obama. For that, he was blanketed with hate mail. "I have been effectively fatwahed by the conservative movement,” he says. "The only thing the Right can’t quite decide is whether I should be boiled in oil or just put up against the wall and shot. Lethal injection would be too painless." (Source)
He writes that his colleague at the NR, Kathleen Parker, "had written in NRO that she felt Sarah Palin was an embarrassment. (Hardly an alarmist view.) This brought 12,000 livid emails, among them a real charmer suggesting that Kathleen’s mother ought to have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a dumpster."
Buckley's essay, in which he declares, "I didn't leave the Republican Party. It left me," is well worth reading.
This is not to say that intolerance only emerges from one side. As CM points out on Ed Cone's blog, "intolerance is an equal opportunity emotion," pointing to a video of uncivil treatment McCain supporters received in New York City. At that small McCain rally in NYC, "a hostile local grabbed a woman's sign, broke it and hit her in the face," according to Politico.com. Republican Fred Gregory posted a link to that story in response to a video Ed posted of uncivil treatment Obama fans received from McCain supporters.
And certainly John McCain was correct when he stated in the third and final debate that if you attract a crowd of 20,000 people, there are likely to be a few bad-behaving fringe elements.
But civility and mutual respect -- even the fun -- of intellectual stimulation from political debate -- seems to be in short supply this year. We would all do well to remember the wise words of Supreme Court Justice Learned Hand: "The spirit of democracy begins with the notion that I might be wrong."
The great conservative William F. Buckley has died. I generally found him entertaining, literary, civil, and intellectually challenging. Perhaps his most spectacular television debates were with the liberal (if not radical) anti-war (closeted) homosexual, novelist Gore Vidal, on ABC News during the fractious 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, and during the fall campaign that year. YouTube.com has video clips from those historic debates on the issues of the Vietnam War, violence on the streets of Chicago, the qualities necessary to be president of the United States, and social spending.
1968 Buckley-Vidal commentaries on the qualities necessary to be President of the United States.
Hillary Clinton's charge that Barack Obama committed major plagiarism is bogus. She knows, as everyone in politics knows, that most political ideas are derivative. "I have a dream," was not original with Martin Luther King, but with a Philadelphia minister. "Ask not what your country can do for you..." was not original with John Kennedy. "Compassionate conservatism" wasn't original with George W. Bush. Even Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was "plagiarized" from Pericles' "Funeral Oration."
"In Politics, Inspiration or Plagiarism Is A Fine Line," writes Sam Roberts in The New York Times, pointing out that in his 1993 inaugural address, Bill Clinton borrowed references to springtime from two sources without crediting them at the time.
"No Child Left Behind" was a slogan of the Children's Defense Fund before it became the name of an education act promoted by the Bush administration. "It takes a village to raise a child" was an African proverb before it became the inspiration for Hillary Clinton's book.
"Fired Up, Ready to Go" originated with a member of the NAACP in South Carolina (Obama has credited her in numerous speeches). "Yes We Can" was a chant of the United Farm Workers. The genesis of "Audacity of Hope" I think comes from Obama's minister, who probably got it from somewhere else.
(UPDATE) Indeed, one can find a striking similarity between the words of Hillary Clinton this year and Bill Clinton in 1992. A reader of Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo pointed this out:
Clinton, 92: “The hits that I took in this election are nothing compared to the hits the people of this state and this country have been taking for a long time.”
Hillary Clinton, Texas debate: “You know, the hits I’ve taken in life are nothing compared to what goes on every single day in the lives of people across our country.”
Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan has a good line: Obama "borrowed an argument that was in itself obvious--words matter--and used
words in the public sphere. In any case Mrs. Clinton has lifted so many
phrases and approaches from Mr. Obama, and other candidates, that her
accusation was like the neighborhood kleptomaniac running through the
street crying, 'Thief! Thief!' "
The fact that Obama's words were borrowed doesn't make the ideas or the emotions behind them any less effective. Most pols don't even write their own speeches -- Barack Obama does more than most. Gov. Deval Patrick, from whom Obama lifted a few phrases, defends Obama on "Good Morning America." James Fallows, former speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, pretty well disposes of the "plagiarism" charge against Obama.
He does a good job of distinguishing Obama's minor lapse -- not attributing an idea to his friend Patrick -- from Senator Joe Biden's major lapse in 1988 -- cribbing large chunks of a stump speech, and indeed a biography. Biden "was telling someone else's personal story -- as it happened, (British labor leader) Neil Kinnock's -- as if it were his own," claiming he was the son of a coal miner.
A larger question, which Ms. Noonan suggests, is how eloquent Obama may yet become. He is eloquent only in comparison to the lack of eloquence of Hillary Clinton, John McCain and George W. Bush. To read the text of his speeches, so far, is not to be particularly inspired. It is mostly "high-class boilerplate," that doesn't yet equal the early speeches of John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King.
Obama "Finds Political Strength in the Power of Words," writes Alec MacGillis in The Washington Post, offering a cogent analysis of Obama's speaking style, with comments from professors of rhetoric, including a graphic, "Anatomy of a Stump Speech," that illustrates how Obama's stump speech has evolved over time.
It's certainly refreshing that Obama doesn't do what Al Gore did in 2000 -- just give the same speech over and over. I remember hearing him at the University of Maryland, and he gave almost precisely the same speech he gave at the Democratic National Convention. This lack of flexibility, even rigidity, contributed to the impression that Gore was a wooden and stale speaker.
But can Obama maintain his reputation for eloquence, or is he bound to disappoint? The Post article concludes that he won't be able to maintain the eloquence. Sooner or later, as the public gets to know him better, he will no longer seem fresh, and will become over-exposed. "You can only be a novelty for so long," George Will observed on ABC's This Week.
Obama's statements, by the way, sound a lot like this politician in 1992. As Sean Braisted points out on his blog, it's unlikely that Hillary will accuse Obama of plagiarizing from Bill Clinton.
New York Magazine's blog points out the similarity between a signature Obama phrase and that of Robin Williams in the movie, Man of the Year.
But oh, wait, Man in the Year came out in 2006, and Obama first made the statement at his Democratic Convention speech in 2004. So Obama said it first. Like I said, political ideas are derivative.
Despite the "the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us," Andrew Sullivan writes in The Atlanticthat there are "generally minor policy choices on the table."
On Iraq, the next president will "inherit more than 100,000 occupying troops in January 2009." Every major candidate "would be attempting to redeploy them as prudently as possible and to build stronger alliances both in the region and in the world. Every major candidate, moreover, will pledge to use targeted military force against al-Qaeda if necessary; every one is committed to ensuring that Iran will not have a nuclear bomb; every one is committed to an open-ended deployment in Afghanistan and an unbending alliance with Israel."
On health care, Sullivan writes, "the ferocious rhetoric belies the mundane reality.
Utilizing the "political compass" we discussed earlier on this blog, writemyline reflects on the political philosophies of various composers of classical music. "I would have thought that Stravinsky (whose Rite of Spring started a
riot) would have been extreme left. Wagner, too. (Every time I hear
“Ride of the Valkyries” I think of Coppola’s “Apochalypse Now”–the only
movie that almost made me throw up.)," she writes. More.
Take this survey and it'll tell you which candidate most agrees with you on the issues. Many of us, it turns out, are apparently leaning toward the wrong candidates.
I take a more centrist stance toward candidates than my views suggest I might, because I am a pragmatist, though rather than "views" a better word is probably "inclinations." I find that study of an issue or hearing an articulate presentation can shift me on many issues from left to perceived middle-of-the-road and vice versa, and on a few issues from the perceived middle-of-the-road to right and vice versa. The truth is I have a better idea of what I am NOT -- a free market, fundamentalist, conservative Republican -- than what I AM. I suspect that is true of most people. Some folks know instinctively that they are not socialist, atheist, liberal Democrats. And yet, when we who believe that we are diametrically opposed to one another politically discuss issues with an open mind, we can usually find common ground.
Most of us know full well what arguments that we reject and do not find at all persuasive, but it's far more difficult to confidently pronounce what we believe with no fear of facing the skeptical question one hasn't thought of. In short, it's far more difficult to "defend a thesis" than to attack a thesis, far easier to pronounce what we don't believe than what we do believe.
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