This post is in part another report from the Facebook front. A Facebook friend of mine has written:
5 Senate Democrats sided w/ Repubs-against Americans-voting down 2 public option amendments that would have ensured competition, saved lives & saved taxpayers $85 Billion. Our response needs to be swift and uncompromising!
One thing that strikes me here is the phrase “against Americans.” One assumes that the senators who opposed the public option did so in part because of the doubts many of their constituents had about the claims that it “would have ensured competition, saved lives [and] saved taxpayers $85 Billion.” The polls certainly show that the public is divided on these questions. So it would seem more accurate to say that those who voted against the public option were voting against some Americans and for others—unless my friend thinks that those Americans who oppose the public option don’t know what’s good for them.
The other thing that strikes me, which is of course related, is the word “uncompromising.” The democratic process, in which opposing views contribute to the outcome of legislative debate like this one, is based on compromise. Our politicians have generally acknowledged this, even as individual voters have always believed with part of their minds that their opponents were contemptible or evil.
Walt Kelly made the point nicely in a talk I heard him give at Faneuil Hall in Boston just before the 1964 election, and shortly after Barry Goldwater had caused a stir by saying that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” etc. Kelly said “The real extremists are you and me.” I think his point was that part of the job of a politician is to keep in mind something that a voter is allowed to forget: that some people disagree with his positions, and have as much a right to their positions as he has to his own.
I believe Obama may be the first president who does not acknowledge this in his rhetoric. John Hinderaker, whom I admire for many reasons but not least for his common sense, has made the point in a post at Powerline today, from which I have taken the title of my present post. He quotes Obama’s latest radio address about health care:
As we move forward in the coming weeks, I understand that members of Congress from both parties will want to engage in a vigorous debate and contribute their own ideas. And I welcome those contributions. I welcome any sincere attempts to improve legislation before it reaches my desk. But what I will not accept are attempts to stall, or drag our feet. I will not accept partisan efforts to block reform at any cost.
Hinderaker comments:
So Obama will not “accept” efforts to prevent the Democrat proposals from passing. What does that mean, exactly? If the Democrats don’t have the votes to pass their bill–whatever it ultimately proves to be–how will Obama refuse to “accept” that result? Will he put out a contract on any Senator or Congressman who votes No?
What Obama doesn’t want to accept is that the Democrats’ scheme for government takeover of health care is deeply controversial. In fact, most Americans oppose it, many bitterly…
I think Obama’s refusal to accept the give and take of partisan politics is the reason so many of us find him and certain of his supporters insufferably arrogant. It provokes an anger that goes beyond one’s reaction to his specific policies. I believe some Democrats saw the same arrogance in the G.W. Bush administration; to some extent that may have been projection. What’s certain is that Bush himself was never guilty of treating opposition as “unacceptable.”
Comments 26
For fun.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/12/AR2006101201580.html
October 3rd, 2009 at 4:05 pm
@fuster – Not only is it fun, but I think it reinforces my point. The article cites lots of instances in which Bush and Clinton used the term “unacceptable,” but in no case was either of them referring to domestic opposition to his policies.
October 3rd, 2009 at 4:12 pm
@Peter Shalen — Peter, good post. So basically, Obama will eschew bipartisanship to get his way but will refer to it as not accepting “partisan efforts to block reform.” Great if you agree with him, and the hell with you if you don’t. That’s the kind of fair and balanced leadership America wants.
October 3rd, 2009 at 4:25 pm
@Peter Shalen – The use of the word “unacceptable” has been increasing for the last score of years, in my experience, and increasingly becoming wearisome to the point that I find its usage completely …
October 3rd, 2009 at 4:34 pm
@fuster – Maybe so, but can you give another example of a case in which a president said that opposition to his legislative proposals was unacceptable?
October 3rd, 2009 at 4:47 pm
@Peter Shalen – No, Peter, I can’t. I might be able to come up with thousands of times where a president meant that he he found opposition to be something that he found distasteful and would strive to crush, but I can’t think of an instance that involved the word.
It used to be a perfectly good word in diplomatic language and I found, in the article that i linked, Bush to be using the word correctly.
October 3rd, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Test.
October 3rd, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Well, he probably doesn’t mean unacceptable-unacceptable, just unacceptable, like Iranian nukes. And he has the same problem: When he says “unacceptable,” most everyone, from Tehran to Texarkana, says “Orly?” – then goes ahead doing whatever they were already doing.
October 3rd, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Orly?
http://ltsaloon.org/wp-content/uploads/Cartoon-Orly-Taitz-AI.gif
October 3rd, 2009 at 6:11 pm
@CK MacLeod – “Orly?”?
October 3rd, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Peter,
Excellent post.
Your friend could have helped matters if he had written what he really meant.
5 Senate Democrats sided w/ Repubs-against (good) (worthwhile) (patriotic) (real) Americans
fuster,
I wonder why The Washington Post hasn’t commented on President Obama finding oppsition to his policies “unacceptable” given the tenor of that article decrying President Bush finding certain problems “unacceptable.”
October 3rd, 2009 at 6:45 pm
I think Obama is using “unacceptable” as teachers use it: That’s against the rules, and I will grade you off if you do that. It’s use of language like this, along with the general teacherly demeanor, that won him accolades for his wonderful temperament.
What his statement really means is that he has not learned, and does not intend to learn, from the opposition to his original plan.
October 3rd, 2009 at 6:49 pm
@Sully – That was publishing in Bush’s second term. By Obama’s second term, they well might run the follow-up.
Maybe this little dig at Obama from the NYT will ease things for ya.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/03/opinion/03sat4.html?ref=opinion
October 3rd, 2009 at 6:51 pm
@Peter Shalen – say it aloud with a defensively snide lilt – in other words like that segment of young people who voted 90% for Obama. Sometimes texted as “ORLY” – I believe. I depend on secondhand testimony for most observation of contemporary life.
October 3rd, 2009 at 6:59 pm
@CK MacLeod – Is your lack of getting out and mingling because good help is hard to find?
http://theminiaturespage.com/news/pics/2007/aug/845328b.jpg
October 3rd, 2009 at 7:03 pm
@CK MacLeod – It was more fun when people said “Oh really, O’Reilly?”
October 3rd, 2009 at 7:18 pm
By the way, I hadn’t even bothered trying to google “Orly,” since I had assumed I’d have to wade through about a million references to the airport in Paris before getting to the relevant site. Shows how much I know.
October 3rd, 2009 at 7:23 pm
I’m told that in ancient Rome the standard form was “Oh really, Aurelius?”
October 3rd, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Orly is, of course, a suburb of Paris that hosts one of Paris’ main airports. (That’d be Paris, France, as opposed to Paris, Texas. Which, for all I know, may have an Orly airport.)
That’s what I think when I hear “Orly.” Lived in Europe too long, I guess.
Nice points from Peter on the nitwitification of political language. As far as I’m concerned, NY Giant fans are siding with the Giants against Americans, whenever they play the Cowboys. And the Redskins are just “unacceptable.” Our response to the Eagles, meanwhile, needs to be swift and uncompromising!
October 3rd, 2009 at 7:29 pm
LOL — Peter, had not seen your 7:23 post when I filed my last. I still don’t get “ORLY” as used by CKM here. My ignorance showing, to be sure.
October 3rd, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Since the Michael Irvin days, we think of them more as South America’s team.
October 3rd, 2009 at 7:50 pm
@J.E. Dyer – As I’ve just learned from Wikipedia,
Sorry you asked?
October 3rd, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Genuine thanks, Peter. A Snowy Owl? I’m sure someone can explain that one too. Can it surprise us, in this age of self-consciously elliptical communication, that words mean only about as much as the sweaty sentiment behind them? — and then only if you agree with it.
No wonder people are so easily “snowed,” as it were, by so much of the advocacy endlessly parading its cartoon political points before us.
October 3rd, 2009 at 8:21 pm
That’s something I’ve been struggling to express for a long time. I’ll file it with my favorite quotes.
October 3rd, 2009 at 9:12 pm
I’m ambivalent about that, PS, since I struggled briefly with the thought in that sentence and wasn’t fully satisfied with its expression.
But it’s out there, so please: hold it against me later. I deserve it.
October 3rd, 2009 at 9:30 pm
@J.E. Dyer – OK, I won’t quote you. But what you wrote does come closer than any formulation of my own to expressing something that’s been in my mind for a long time.
October 4th, 2009 at 12:32 pm