August 19, 2009

Political Winners
The last few weeks, listening to the American health care shouting match which passes for debate has reinforced my conclusions regarding current U.S. politics. Out here in Vanuatu my news sources are all from the shortwave radio. I get quite a good sampling of the New Zealand and Australian national stations, a little access to the BBC, and a range of what is aired on the American Armed Forces Network. America is sufficiently important to the Pacific nations, and health care is sufficiently important to America, that the progress of this battle is a common topic on all of these sources. Armed Forces radio is geared to provide a range of all significant points of view on all things political, so I get to hear some NPR programming, some CNN and ABC news, and a couple each of right wing and left wing talk shows.
The difference between the Limbaugh clones and the more left wing shows aired to counter them is marked. Ed Schultz and Alan Colmes accept calls from all persuasions, but they make the caller stay with a single subject, they require source identification for any "facts" cited, and they follow a rational process of interpretation. The right wingers seem to rely heavily on loaded language, emphasize their own emotional response to the subject, and pepper the discussion with unsubstantiated and demonstrably false allegations.
The personality who has triggered this observation of mine is Mike Huckabee, an early candidate for the Republican presidential campaign, previously a Christian minister, now a radio host. I had the impression from campaign press releases that he was a moderate and rational individual. So, he caught my attention last week when he referred to the Democratic health care reform proposals as "socialist". He followed that with a rant about Obama pushing for a bill submission before the Senate recess. He stated that this was a partisan rush, that the reforms had only been under discussion for 2 months, and forming positions would require time. My mind went back to the 2004 campaign, when I saw 92 pages of discussion of the health care crisis, with recommendations, on the John Kerry web site. Those documents were the work of people who had been studying the issue for a decade at that point. According to my "fuzzy math" analysis, that makes AT LEAST 15 years that the issues have been under investigation and discussion, in hundreds of forums. Did Mike somehow forget the first 14 years and 10 months? Did he believe the Republican allegations that Kerry had not released any substantive policy positions, too busy to have a look himself? Or is it possible he was being disingenuous?
On his program yesterday he followed up, with a rant about a Maureen Dowd op ed. Dowd had been remonstrating about the "older, white Republican base" showing up at political town hall meetings, to wave signs, shout, and disrupt any discourse. Huckabee says these are concerned citizens, the most likely voters, there to teach their elected representatives what their constituents believe. What I want to know is, what do they base their belief on, if they won't allow the representatives to answer questions about what's in the proposals? I would bet a lot of money that not one in a hundred of the rabble rousers has seen a copy of the proceedings. But they arrive full of righteous indignation about what they won't allow to be foisted off on them. The legislators are there to tell them, AND all curious attendees, what is or isn't in the proposal. The rousters Dowd mentions won't allow the other voters to hear what's on the table. WHY DO YOU SUPPOSE THAT MIGHT BE? And is Huckabee actually too stupid to formulate this question, or might there be some collusion there?
This political style reminds me of an event that hit the sports news some years ago. Tonya Harding was at the top of the figure skating world, but was expected to meet her match in a challenger scheduled for the next big competitive event. Before the event, two thugs waylaid the challenger, and broke her kneecaps with hammers. Eventually it was established that Harding had contracted the job. Turns out that she wasn't interested in finding out who was the best. She wanted to maintain the status quo, and decided that if the contest could be eliminated, then she clearly would retain the title.
Politically, we are now faced with a party which harbors very few players who want to compete with their ideas in a rational debate, to determine what would be best for the most people, and for the country. They want to win. They want to maintain the status quo on this issue, to stabilize their support base. They want to eliminate any contest they don't believe they can win. This is like winning the basketball tournament by shooting the opposing team. Is that what we hired these people to do?