The Big Us and the Little Us

Charlie Cook in the current National Journal (via Frontpage magazine, strangely; if anyone is guilty of what Charlie is concerned about in this column, outside of the Nation and Democracy Now, it is David Horowitz and his hateful ilk over at Frongpage).

Enough with the Selective Outrage

"Someone recently asked me what, after all these years around politics -- 25 years of covering politics, 37 years involved in one way or another -- I liked best and what bothered me the most.

To my alarm, I found myself exhibiting far more passion in delineating what I didn't like: the increasingly hateful tone of the discourse, the hypocrisy of selective outrage and the feigning of disgust over behavior of an opponent while turning a blind eye when it occurs in one's own party.

To be sure, one can go back to the earliest days of our country to find hateful behavior in the discussion and execution of American politics. But there is far more today than when I worked on my first campaign as a senior in high school in 1972 or worked on Capitol Hill while attending college starting in 1973.

People rarely stop at simply disagreeing now. For many, if someone has a different position on an issue, it isn't enough to think them wrong -- they must be stupid; they must be corrupt; their motives must be questioned. Just believing someone is wrong isn't sufficient anymore.

Disclosure and embarrassment were once considered enough punishment. Now, we want investigations, "truth commissions" and punishment, what some have come to call the criminalization of the political process. It isn't enough to beat someone. You must try to throw them in jail or, at the very least, cost them a fortune in legal fees. The fact that neither side can afford that level of scrutiny seems lost on many.

The problem with this, beyond simply being narrow-minded, is that it makes it harder for those individuals to work together on some other issue where they might actually agree. The way Capitol Hill and politics is supposed to work is that while we may disagree on X today, we might agree and work together on Y tomorrow.

But the growing relish and intensity of ad hominem attacks makes such a scenario more difficult to achieve, leading Congress to become increasingly dysfunctional, regardless of which party is in charge...

...It's watching these kinds of things that make long-time observers cynical and jaded. There is so much to be faulted and so much hypocrisy from each side that it would strike me as difficult to, over a long period of time, see either side as that of truth, justice and prudence. It comes down more to which side is the lesser of two evils, the sides changing with some degree of regularity."

Charlie seems to argue for more equitable scandal-mongering among both parties within their own ranks.

I'm pretty clear that the scandal-mongering is the problem.

What is so difficult about learning to be decent to one another?

Nothing, is the answer. We just don't want to do it. For fear that the world will become an ugly, scary place if we do.

Too late, I say.

When I was a little boy, there was this really wonderful book I read after Sunday School called the Big Me and the Little Me. It was all about the choices we make when we face tough situations in life. To be the Big Me or the Little Me. React like a spoiled and destructive child. Or take a deep breath and be the Big Me in the face of the difficulties of life.

Only to find out that, when push comes to shove, on the big questions, many people too often choose the Little Me. No matter how old they get.

It's long past time for us to get bigger than this.