Lines have been drawn, trenches dug, bubbles sealed.
If we try to discuss security in the context of Islamic fascism, we are called “racist.” If political leaders talk about reining in the unsustainable cost of health entitlements, they are derided for talking about “death panels” and “rationing.” If there is a debate about adding troops to a war that is going badly, the people in support of the increased military presence attack critics for not supporting the troops and for being “unpatriotic.” If the topic is the rights of gays, supporters are dismissed as lacking religious faith and being “secular.” We fall back on labels, labels, labels—speech codes to distract from the true issues at hand that deserve to be discussed and debated.
In a sense, the PC movement hasn’t done anything other than make itself more diffuse across pockets of American culture. Hypersensitivity and supercharged responses to the slightest of perceived transgressions are now the norm. What Jefferson Morley wrote in the Washington Post in 1995 in assessing the PC movement is an apt description for almost any subclass of Americans who see on the horizon the destruction of their own brand of American-ness by whatever version of heathen they imagine: “Among the less attractive results is the emergence of America’s newest victim class: the P.C. Wounded. Their aggrieved insistence that the injustice done to them is more recent, more unfair, more un-American than that suffered by other groups is just another one of those exercises in comparative victimization that are so common a feature of fruitless political debates.”
This remains the case even if it’s hard to keep track of who is claiming to be the victim in the latest attempt to stifle free speech. A prime example of how the tables can turn is provided by Mark C. Taylor, a professor at Williams College. In 2006, writing in the New York Times, he described how a revival of religious groups on his campus, more than at any time since the 1960s, seemed to signal a reversal of the liberal, politically correct insistence that intellectuals wear suspicion of all religion, especially evangelical Christianity, as a badge of honor. Conservatives have long been critical of hostility toward organized religion at top colleges as part of their defense of values and traditions. But what looked like an end to the politically correct embrace of a campus free of people talking about their faith was a new, dangerous phenomenon that amounted, Taylor wrote, to “the latest version of political correctness.” Under the new rules, Taylor said, “the more religious students become, the less willing they are to engage in critical reflection about faith.”
Taylor recounted how an administrator at the college insisted he apologize to a student after the student complained that Professor Taylor had “attacked his faith because [he] had urged him to consider whether Nietzsche’s analysis of religion undermines belief in absolutes.” Taylor refused to apologize. “My experience was not unique,” he wrote. “Today, professors invite harassment or worse by including ‘unacceptable’ books on their syllabuses or by studying religious ideas and practices in ways deemed improper by religiously correct students. Distinguished scholars at several major universities in the United States have been condemned, even subjected to death threats, for proposing psychological, sociological or anthropological interpretations of religious texts in their classes and published writings. In the most egregious cases, defenders of the faith insist that only true believers are qualified to teach their religious tradition.”
It is generally accepted that the liberal PC movement and the anti-PC backlash in the eighties and nineties, as well as the conservative wedge issues that emerged in the early 2000s, are all now safely in the rearview mirror as elements of what we remember as the culture wars. But what is clear—from Taylor’s case at Williams to my firing at NPR—is that the tactics first used by the Left to impose political correctness and by the Right to emphasize divisive wedge issues are the very same tactics that remain at play in nearly every debate in America. Those tactics are now pushing too many of us to be silent, to play the part of the smiling bartender or risk losing tips. The rules are not nailed to the wall, but everyone seems to know voicing an honest opinion, even expressing a feeling, comes with the danger of being fired, being shunned, having our reputations ruined, and being excommunicated from the church of other true believers—all for simply telling the truth.
CHAPTER 3
PARTISAN POLITICS
AS PRESIDENT BUSH AND I WALKED out of the Oval Office, he suddenly pulled on my arm. He wanted to stop and talk for a moment before entering the Roosevelt Room, which was full of White House staff, producers, and technicians waiting for me to interview him.
“You know I can’t say anything about your book,” he said, referring to Enough, a book I had written about the failure to address the nation’s growing culture of out-of-wedlock births, high school dropouts, and acceptance of illegal drug use—especially among poor black Americans. He had sent me a personal letter a few months earlier telling me that he had read it, praising key points. But the president never mentioned the book in public—the kind of coveted, one-of-a-kind endorsement that is sure to draw attention to any book.
Speaking softly, President Bush said he felt if he gave the book his stamp of approval it might cause people who stood to benefit most from the book—the poor, people fighting poverty, churches, philanthropies, and civil rights groups—to dismiss it because they generally disagreed with his Republican politics. His silence wasn’t about the book but about the charged nature of the issues. It was a topic he realized he had to approach with extreme caution.
About two years later, at a White House lunch with President Obama and other Washington columnists, I had a similar encounter with the nation’s first black president. As the group discussed the recession’s impact on working-class men, the president turned to me, the only black journalist in the room. He said I knew what an economic slump can do to a community—fewer men graduating from high school, fewer men marrying, and more men going to jail—because of my writing about the social breakdown in the black community during previous recessions. Like President Bush, President Obama was familiar with Enough and, more important, with the ideas it dealt with, but he too never pushed hard for a direct discussion of those ideas, I believe for fear of antagonizing his liberal political base.
How could that be? Let me share a brief story with you.
When Barack Obama, as a presidential candidate, in a rare venture into this territory, spoke to a black church about the high percentage of black men failing to be fathers to their children, he found himself immediately targeted as an Uncle Tom by the former presidential candidate Reverend Jesse Jackson. Acting as the enforcer of politically correct speech for liberal politicians, Jackson damned him for “talking down to black people.” Seething under his breath as he prepared to do a TV interview, Jackson was caught on microphone telling another guest that Obama’s violation of politically correct speech made him want to castrate the younger man—“cut his nuts off.”
With that kind of threat, that kind of retaliating response from one’s own party, it is easy to understand why, at every point on the political compass, from the political right wing to the political left wing, from President Bush to President Obama, politicians agree to keep silent on major debates in today’s political atmosphere. Both men were aware of the severe price to be paid—scorn, vilification, and being shunned by one’s own party, if not converted to a political eunuch—by any leader who plunges into a charged national debate on a particularly sensitive topic.
But I would argue that this period of American history, with its politically correct silences—its widely felt fear of saying the wrong thing—is at strong odds with a tradition of great debate that has historically defined national politics. The history of the United States has been consistently highlighted by a series of essential political debates. From the founding of the country through the Civil War, the Great Depression, two world wars, several cultural revolutions, and the war on terror, robust political discourse in this country has fundamentally shaped and reshaped our
lives.
Perhaps the most singular characteristic of the United States’ brand of political discourse is its free-flowing, full-throated, even raucous nature. It is far from a polite exchange of ideas. Read through American history and the narrative is defined by debate that is loud, often harsh, straightforward, and frequently personal. The critical debates of the past have been spurred on by politicians who put their arguments, even the effectiveness of their speaking styles, without speechwriters or consultants, up for public judgment. Political careers grew from the power of winning debate. With the leading political lights in the game shining their insights and their words on these debates, other public figures, academics, and business and civic leaders found themselves drawn to the national conversation. Further urgency came from newspapers fanning the flames to increase sales.
Despite the changing nature of the media, the basic recipe for the best of American political debate has not changed all that much since the nation’s founding. What has changed is our fear of political correctness. It has replaced the best that we have to offer—robust, honest debate—with hushed tones. Those silences are punctuated by a scatter shot of politically fragmented sound bites, usually from extreme and angry voices. The result is that the media makes more news out of fewer crumbs of competing points of view because the genuine substance of modern political debate is so meager, so hard to find. After the massacres at Columbine, Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, and Tucson, and daily reports on drive-by shootings, how can there not be a major debate over access to automatic weapons? The answer is that it is too risky—it is too politically incorrect—given the power of the NRA and gun lobby and the extreme fear on the Right that the Left’s ultimate goal is to ban all guns. The result, in combination with the rise of the twenty-four-hour news cycle, is a media feeding frenzy whenever any major political figure touches on the issue, because the media has so little to chew on. News programs are often reduced to speculation, provocative statements, and opinion masquerading as news because that’s all they have to work with. There are exceptions, like Representative Carolyn McCarthy of New York (whose husband was killed and son wounded in the Long Island Rail Road shooting of 1993), who has introduced legislation aimed at reducing the ammunition capacity of gun clips. But it’s sad that people like her, who are willing to forcefully advance a position, are the exception and not the rule.
Instead, the modern political dialectic has largely been reduced to winks and whispers. The Federalist Papers and the Lincoln/Douglas debates have been replaced by slogans and talking points and negative ads and, even worse, by warring Facebook posts and YouTube “gotcha” moments. Major politicians, guarded by cautious, highly paid advisers, avoid the risk of honest debate and, even more, the risk of agreeing when an ideological opponent makes a good point.
It is no surprise that this current paradigm for political discourse results in extreme partisanship. There is a lot of money invested in keeping the ideological divide wide and deep.
Direct-mail fund-raising aimed at people with single-issue concerns such as abortion or gun control came of age during the 1980s and 1990s, and it has continued to make a lot of people rich to this day. Newsletters, blogs, radio programs, conventions, and paid speeches shower big money on true believers and on the people holding political power. As Representative Gabrielle Giffords said before she was shot in the head by a crazed gunman, there is a lot of financial and political reward for being extreme and almost none for a politician willing to compromise. All the attention and money goes to elected officials who engage, she said, in “outlandish and mean behavior.… You get no reward for being the normal, reasonable person.” With the money going away from people willing to defy political correctness and talk to one another, listen to one another, there are now huge financial obstacles to anyone attempting to bring opposing camps together for rational discussions on key issues.
There may be a silent majority of moderates in America, but they are moving from silent to muzzled in a hurry for lack of money. It is the rare voice that is given a radio program or wins election to office who voices moderate views in America. If the 1990s witnessed the beginning of a schism in the electorate, then the 2000s saw it grow into full maturity. As we look at this game, the question is how anyone’s voice can be heard above these well-funded megaphones available to anyone who conforms to the new rules of political engagement and discourse, where partisanship is rewarded while rationality and moderation are penalized and ignored.
In the last decade, I would argue that the national political conversation has been paralyzed by factions of political correctness. There has been little real movement on resolving critical national issues or even defining those issues. The best-known players in this nonconversation are a new class of political figures. Impish, venting archpartisans have created a subculture of celebrity provocateurs who make outlandish statements to grab attention, entertain, and mock but rarely advance the nation’s critical debates. As we’ll see in subsequent chapters of this book, from national security to entitlements to immigration to social issues, the strategy time and again is to heighten the conflict and widen the divides in this country. Today’s most revealing political discussions tend to happen in a vacuum; people talk only to “the base” and preach to an already like-minded audience. That is why it became major news when, as a presidential candidate, Barack Obama talked—behind closed doors—of economically frustrated, small-town Americans who are holding fast to their guns and God. There are reasons why this is a bold comment and one worthy of discussion. Why didn’t we have an honest and thorough debate about it? Well, because it’s a fine thing for a Democrat to say in San Francisco behind closed doors, but it’s too risky outside of those confines for fear of a talk-radio pummeling or a blue-collar revolt. So rather than be bold, our politicians shrink from challenging themselves or the electorate.
As a result, we have rival camps that resort to spying on each other. That is why groups like Media Matters track and report with alarm what right-wing talk radio hosts are saying to their right-wing audiences. We’ve forgotten how to say what we think in front of a broader, more diverse audience, to hold an honest dialogue and debate key issues in a frank and solution-focused manner. While previous political debates in U.S. history were hardly models of civil and well-mannered discussion, more often than not they produced real results—they solved problems for better or worse.
Compare that to the last session of the U.S. Senate, historically America’s greatest debating society, an arena reserved for leading political minds from every state who, ideally, personify the qualities implicit in the honorary title of “statesman.” The 111th Congress saw the most filibusters in American history. Once a rarely used exception to Senate rules, the threat of the filibuster has become the way to stop any debate from taking place. There is little if any value to twenty-first-century debate because parliamentary maneuvering—the filibuster—has become the primary tool for closing debate and blocking legislation. Members of Congress are elected to identify, debate, and resolve problems, aren’t they? To serve their constituents within the framework established by the Constitution? The filibuster was created to allow a principled politician to act on conscience and stand tall in opposition to a runaway majority. Today’s cavalier use of the congressional filibuster is the exact opposite. It requires a total lack of conscience, a celebration of impeding the Senate’s, and thus Congress’s, ability to function.
How can government work for the people when “compromise” is now a pejorative? When no politician is willing to have his or her name associated with any hint of compromise with the other side, for fear of being labeled weak or a traitor to his or her party? For another example, look at the ridiculous and counterproductive Senate practice of placing unnecessary holds on political appointees.
Our entire system of government is based on compromise—giving something to get something. In the current political theater, the politicians who adopt the most rigid ideological stances are the ones wh
o garner the most fervent, devoted followings and occasional eye-popping headlines. It’s a path to power, whether it’s Cornyn, DeMint, or Inhofe on the Right or Sanders, Leahy, or Levin on the Left. The politicians who consistently compromise and work with the other party are punished. They do not get on TV as often and their fund-raising dries up quickly. They are dismissed as traitors to the cause—RINOs and DINOs (Republicans and Democrats in name only)—by partisan commentators. They may be challenged or even defeated in a primary election. The media, financial, and political incentives are stacked in favor of intransigence and against compromise.
The same dysfunction crippling the Senate holds sway in the House of Representatives. On nearly every major piece of legislation offered in the first two years of the Obama administration, the House voted strictly along party lines, with Republicans in unanimous opposition to the president and the Democratic majority, even when the legislation was originally proposed by Republicans. It was within their rights as the minority party to do this. However, just because you have the right to do something does not mean it is the right thing to do. It leads to paralysis in the government. When I talk with Republican leaders about their strategy of obstructing not only their political opponent but also real debate, they say their primary job is to defeat the rival party and regain power—not to govern or fix the problems of the country. They dismiss the value of debate as a vestige of a past era. They are proud to be the party of no … and even “hell no!”
Some rank-and-file Republicans contend that every legislative proposal by President Obama was so misguided that their principles dictated nothing less than complete and total opposition. But if that is the case, why not make your points in a fierce, full-throttle debate? Why not try to win support from honest members of the opposition party through the rigor of arguing your ideas? What happened to winning support from the American people? Unfortunately, part of the problem in the House is that gerrymandering has limited the spectra of constituencies for many individual members. Increasingly, they are rewarded for picking their own choir and preaching to it.
Juan Williams Page 6