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Political Hay

(Page 2 of 3)

Presidential campaigns -- for that matter any political campaign -- can be a contact sport. Once you step into the ring everything about you is up for debate. Philosophy, character, temperament, record, judgment, personality and much, much more. It would be nice to think everyone plays on the loftier side of those rules but that doesn't happen, and actually has never happened. One has only to read about the things said and written about John Adams or Thomas Jefferson in the first serious presidential campaign back in 1800 to know that this atmosphere has always been extremely turbulent. Come to think of it, even Washington didn't get through two unopposed elections criticism-free.

President Reagan used to have what he called his "six o'clock rule," by which he meant that his opponents on Capitol Hill like then-Democratic Speaker Tip O'Neill could attack him all day, but after six o'clock they could sit down for a drink and be friends. He meant it too, which is one of the reasons Reagan was so well liked in Washington even by those who could not abide his politics. It was then, and remains now, a good rule even if those of you running for the Democratic nomination will not be sitting down for drinks with your conservative critics across America anytime soon (or, for that matter, presumably ever!).

To get back to the point of disagreeing over platforms and issues. There is, of course, not only nothing wrong with this, to the contrary vigorous, openly expressed disagreement is a telltale sign of freedom. Democratic societies succeed precisely because free speech acts as a built-in mechanism that lets the steam of human disagreements blow off in a productive fashion. Far too many people quiver anxiously at the first rumblings of simple political disagreement, associating it with everything from bad manners to hatred.

WHICH BRINGS TO MIND the disturbed would-be-bomber who last week walk into a Hillary Clinton headquarters in New Hampshire and took hostages. As it turned out, the man was a locally known troubled soul with a history of mental illness. But let's suppose for a moment that he was something else. Let's say he did indeed have a political grudge. Worse, let's imagine the unimaginable, that he not only nursed a political grudge against the Senator but did in fact have himself wired to explosives and proceeded to pull the switch. Then what?

What would have happened in less than a nano-second is that the blame game would have begun. The search for some prominent conservative to blame would have started before the flames were extinguished. The call to remove Rush Limbaugh from the air, or Sean Hannity, or Fox News or at the very least bring back the humorously named "Fairness Doctrine" to censor conservative radio talk show hosts would go forth.

A bit of history here. When President Kennedy was assassinated, there was an instant move to connect the event to the impending presidential candidacy of the father of the modern conservative movement, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. In fact, his lack of televised presence and any televised display of emotion in the first hours after the assassination was interpreted as some sort of proof of Goldwater's hatred for JFK. In truth, Goldwater was out of touch from the media of the day, attending his mother-in-law's funeral in Indiana. When he heard the news he was devastated -- because in fact Jack Kennedy and Barry Goldwater considered themselves to be friends. They had even discussed, a heartbroken Goldwater later recalled, traveling together on Air Force One if Goldwater were nominated, treating themselves and the country to a modern version of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, arguing out the specifics of their respective conservative and liberal philosophies. When Goldwater heard that there were implications that his advocacy of conservatism was somehow responsible for JFK's murder, that he was supposedly taking pleasure in the death of his friend, he blew his stack.

Like clockwork, five years later, when it became clear that Senator Robert Kennedy had died of his wounds, one television station that I remember halted its programming and replaced it with hours of silence -- and the word "shame" fixed in the middle of the screen.

But shame to whom? There were implications aplenty that somehow conservatism had killed RFK. In fact he was killed by Sirhan Sirhan, a Jerusalem-born Palestinian angered by RFK's support of Israel in the Six Day War.

What needs to be said here as the Christmas season approaches and the 2008 campaign heats up is that those individuals who act out in such violent fashion towards political figures are solely responsible for their actions. Just because the Hollywood liberal establishment detested Ronald Reagan, they were not to blame because John Hinckley thought shooting Reagan was a great way to impress actress and liberal Jodie Foster. Nor were film director Martin Scorsese and actor Robert De Niro, liberals both, to blame because they had respectively directed and starred in Taxi Driver, a film (also starring Foster) about one man's attempt to be somebody by killing a prominent politician.

The Travis Bickles of the world (De Niro's character), the Oswalds and Sirhans and Hinckleys are and were responsible for their own actions. So too was the guy who walked into Hillary Clinton's headquarters. Attempts to link serious political dialogue, the very normal and mainstream disagreements over policy, character, temperament, judgment, experience and personality with the individual actions of deeply disturbed perpetrators of violence are not only offensively insulting, they are the classic smear. They also damage both the credibility of the American political process and, ironically, those who make the allegations.

The real goal of these liberals is a defense of what has evolved into the liberal status quo and the personal destruction of its critics. They want conservatives silenced. This would explain the almost irrational hatred (almost?) by liberals of conservative boomers like George W. Bush, Newt Gingrich or Rush Limbaugh. It would similarly explain what I suspect is the experience of a lot of conservatives -- the inability to keep a discussion with a liberal calmly focused on logic or solid policy analysis. Instead I find liberals having little short of angry meltdowns, a discussion of almost anything -- Iraq, economics, the judiciary, abortion, talk radio etc. etc. etc. -- generating furious personal assaults that usually end with the liberal in question abruptly walking away or refusing to discuss the issue, period. This is hardly what liberalism once was. One cannot imagine a Hubert Humphrey, for example, the happy warrior of America's New Deal-Great Society liberalism who campaigned on the "politics of joy," behaving in such a fashion. It is behavior akin to identifying one's generation or political philosophy with a religion -- and when generational peers like a Bush, Gingrich, Limbaugh -- or you -- disagree, that disagreement is taken not for what it is but rather some sort of ultimate personal and quite heretical betrayal of the one true faith.

I MENTION ALL THIS BECAUSE it goes not just to the point of the freedom to disagree. It is breathtakingly crazy to interpret criticism of a candidate's politics -- the traditional focus on philosophy, character, temperament, record, judgment -- as "hatred." It is decidedly nuts to assume that because one disagrees sharply with a candidate that this implies wishing them some sort of personal ill. Are there people who do this? Yes. Alas, they seem to thrive these days on the hard left. Have people of this nature always been around? Yes. Does the anonymity of the Internet magnify this kind of thing? Absolutely. But it is the height of folly to believe that responsible citizens, commentators and political opponents harbor anything other than, to borrow the Christmas phrase, "goodwill to men" (in the all encompassing sense of the phrase!)

"Why, you're so nice!" is something I have said to me by astonished liberals when I make a first-time acquaintance. Somehow I suspect I'm not the only conservative to whom some variation of this is said. What were they expecting? A stereotype of course. Some sort of cross between Scrooge and, I guess, Vlad the Impaler.

As we approach the major holiday across the world that celebrates and worships the birth of Christ and everything that symbolizes, I think something like this needs to be said: Merry Christmas to all of America's liberals and to every citizen across the land who doesn't share my view of the world. And Happy Hanukah and, yes, Kwanza too if you go there. If you despise Christmas and you're way too secular for all of this, then just more power to you (although not of the elected, executive or judicial kind!). Merry Christmas (etc.) to all of the ones I write about and the ones that just appear under the generic label. To Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, to Alan Colmes and Katie Couric, and Bill Keller and the New York Times crew and...well...all those liberals in my own extended family and yours too. You get the picture.

We're set for an exciting year. This will be an important election. Lots of things will be said, the temperature in Harry Truman's famous kitchen will occasionally be very, very hot. But we are considerably fortunate to live in a country where this fundamental freedom is allowed us all. It is nothing short of a blessing. I intend to exercise that freedom and I expect my friends on the left to do the same.

topics:
Hillary Clinton, Television, Economics, Business, Religion, Abortion, Hollywood, Law, Iraq, Israel, NATO, Conservatism