"I'll make public opinion out there within five hours. I'll blacken this punk so that he'll - You leave public opinion to me."
--James Taylor (Mr Smith Goes to Washington)
Political rhetoric often takes the form of attacking people rather than debating ideas. This is especially true when the other side's ideas are better than yours. Making it personal creates a distraction, and many people fall for it.
It hasn't always been this way.
After the Constitution was drafted and sent to the states for ratification, the debate focused on ideas. The primary issue was the proper scope of central government and its relationship to freedom. The Federalists preferred the scope expressed by the Constitution. The Anti-Federalists thought that the scope expressed by the Constitution threatened liberty.
The two sides engaged in idealogical debate. The debates were primarily local, taking place in town halls and taverns across the states. Hundreds of essays written by proponents of each side fueled the debate. The Federalist views were more organized. Many were famously bound into The Federalist Papers authored by Madison, Hamilton, and Jay.
The Anti-Federalist views were less centralized but widely circulated nonetheless. (Scholars have since aggregated many of these into Anti-Federalist collections.)
An interesting characteristic of these papers is that they were written anonymously and signed in pseudonym. Writers assumed various pen names, some from classical antiquity such as Publius and Brutus, others from patriotic symbols such as Federal Farmer and Sentinel.
Anonymity helped focus the debate on ideas rather than the person. After an idea was published, follow-on or counter pieces remained on issues rather than detouring into personality.
The result is perhaps the finest discourse on the size and scope of government in relationship to freedom that this country (and the world) has ever seen.
It seems to me that the core issues debated by the Federalists and Anti-Federalists are once again before us. What is the proper size and scope of central government? Is liberty truly an inalienable right, or is individual freedom merely an outdated fad of a past time that is inappropriate for the modern world?
Staying focused on the core ideas, rather than straying into attacks on the person, would be a much more productive endeavor for the future of this country.
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5 comments:
I would like to see the Fed admit it can’t do what it promises to do. That and that alone would do. Bernanke would get up and say, ‘ladies and gentlemen, we have erred. We have blundered into the central planning business when we ought to be in the central bank business. I am going to make things simple. We are going to make the dollar sound. We’re going to let the price mechanism work, and we're going to go home.
~Jim Grant
I agree that it's become about the personality instead of ideas. Of course, the 24 hour news networks feed that - as they pretty much have to invent things to report on to fill the time. Our weird cultural fascination with celebrity definitely fuels the fire.
I had another thought... surprise!
I can't fully divorce myself from a person's character, however. And I fully recognize that is subjective.
For example -- Brad Wenstrup. I won't vote for him because his ideas are not ones I share. But I know his family, went to high school with his sister, know that he donated the bone marrow that saved her life in high school, know that he served in the military, etc. I know he's going to win and I'm much more comfortable with him in the seat than Jean Schmidt, who completely disgraced herself by calling a VietNam veteran a coward. (even though she gave Grace a banana on Saturday). Really, their politics are pretty similar.
On the other hand, you have Romney, who said this past week that he wished Obama had succeeded, even though he said the exact opposite 8 days after Obama's inauguration. Or Ryan saying that Obama didn't act on the bipartisan debt commission, despite the fact that Ryan was on that commission and voted against its recommendations.
Depending on which Romney you believe, his politics up until the last year or so are much more in line with mine. I know this is non-quantifiable, but that stuff matters to me, too, as well as their ideas.
As you somewhat imply, Obama and Romney records more alike than different. As election approaches, their rhetoric, and that of their partisans, is trying to influence people to think otherwise.
If you seriously value consistency of words over time, or consistency between words and action, or consistency of actions over time, then it is difficult to understand why you would vote for either ticket.
Not consistency in actions - people change. I'm talking about my perception of character. I think we all do it. Lying bothers me.
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