Civility and Political Discourse

Check out Colbert I. King in today's WaPo.

As you know, I agree that a lack of civility and calm rationality in our public discussions is one of the major problems facing us today. I am pessimistic about it changing any time soon, however. As I've made clear in the past, I'm in a bad rhetorical spot on this one--though I think not a bad logical one.

As you know, I tend to agree more with liberals than I do with conservatives. I also think that the current lack of civility is primarily the fault of conservatives. So, it's hard for me to say what I think about this issue and be taken seriously. It comes out sounding like "yes, we need more civility and understanding--and it's their fault we don't have it!"

But it seems to me that the tone in American politics became truly vicious during the '92 election when the ascendant radical right decided to try to crush Bill Clinton. This seemed to more-or-less coincide with the rise of right-wing rant radio. Today there is no comparison between the conservative punditocracy and what passes for its liberal analog--none of the prominent more-or-less centrists who get tapped to represent the left can come anywhere close to spewing forth the kind of vituperation that is routinely emitted from the mouths of e.g. Coulter, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Liddy, or Hannity. That is to the credit of the centrist liberals in question like E. J. Dionne and Peter Beinart, but that's not the point here. The point is that the two ends of the spectrum are not equally responsible for the current sorry state of "civil" discourse in this country.

Which is not to say that I think liberals are blameless. As I've said many times, I think that liberals were complicitous in the rise of the radical right by being insufficiently critical of the radical-left PC movement on college campuses in the '80's and early '90's. For a case study in mindless, hateful PC radicalism sending someone over the right-wing edge, read the first few chapters of David Brock's Blinded by the Right.

Add to all of this that we currently have a president that seems intent on dividing the nation and the world, and there is simply no reason for optimism that we'll make any progress on this problem. After engaging in relentless character assassination against his opponents in the 2000 and 2004 elections--and, more importantly, after having in essence stolen the former election--this president continues to push an extreme conservative agenda that could not be more divisive if it were calculated to. One might try to dismiss this as sore losing on the part of American liberals; but that case is harder to make given that a majority of almost all other relevant nations in the world also detest Mr. Bush and his administration, and not without good reason. Bush's boosters have, of course, tried to spin his vices as virtues, arguing that it is his courageous, straight-talking, good-natured American idealism--together with his all-American simplicity and swagger--that have alienated the world. None but the most desperately pro-Bush could, however, believe this peurile explanation. I, like many others in this country, would flock to the polls to support a genuinely courageous, straight-talking, good-natured American idealist. It's the phoney kind I loathe.

So will things get more civil around here? I dunno--will conservatives quit writing books titled e.g. How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must) and Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism? Will conservatives stop their propaganda campaign to make 'liberal' into a dirty word? Will the president make at least some effort to govern from the center? Will he stop lying to us in order to manufacture support for his policies? Will the vilification of Democratic presidential candidates stop?

If so, then American politics will become more civil. Unfortunately, there's not much liberals can do about any of this.

It's mostly up to the conservatives.