Ugly health debate reflects an ugly culture
By: Chris Stirewalt
Political Editor
October 5, 2009
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| Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C. is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2009, as President Barack Obama delivered a speech on healthcare to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) (AP) |
People are doing a tremendous amount of hand-wringing about the tenor of the national debate. But at least Americans are finally being rude about something that matters.
Most of the bad, boorish behavior that Americans increasingly inflict on each other is for selfish reasons or no reason at all.
Anyone who has ever been to a professional football game or gone shopping on the day after Thanksgiving surely can’t be surprised that things have gotten a little ugly as we discuss health care and, by extension, our fundamental relationship with our government.
Survivors of an increasingly coarse American society where adults routinely get into fistfights over the athletic exploits of multimillionaire strangers should hardly expect a prep-school debating competition.
The man with the vile slogan on his T-shirt or the woman nattering on her cell phone who smashes her sport utility vehicle door into your car inflict their small injuries to civilization only because they’re self-absorbed and ill-mannered.
Say what you will about the guy who bit off the finger of the town hall protester, he was passionate about public policy.
America is suddenly a land alive with political debate and policy interest. A recent Pew survey found that 36 percent of adults said they were following the health care debate very closely. Not the breast augmentation of a reality-show mega-mom or the latest celebrity crime, but boring old health care.
By comparison, during the debate over the Iraq surge in early 2007, the life-or-death issue couldn’t get past 30 percent.
The reason for the fascination is that voters understand the consequences of government taking dominion over health care. Having Washington in control of how we care for our bodies is frightening to many Americans who normally do their best to ignore Congress.
When we consider how the federal government has botched the regulation of our liberties and our pursuits of happiness, it seems daft to hand over our lives to the untender mercies of federal bureaucrats.
We mostly have President Obama to thank for this level of fascination.
The 2008 election was the most closely watched in history because of the stakes and the participants. But by trying to use his mandate as a license to re-engineer society, Obama has certainly kept our interest.
And no doubt, the tenor of the dialogue has been coarse and discourteous, even among our leaders.
When a freshman member of the House of Representatives has his staff print up signs for a floor speech accusing the other party of wanting sick people to die and then compares the current health care system to the Holocaust, you know the lines of civil discourse have been crossed.
But Rep. Alan Grayson is probably just as unpleasant in his personal life as he is in Congress. In fact, his boorish behavior on the floor of the House is probably an improvement over the way he conducted himself as a lawyer and a telecom executive.
Grayson lives in a pink mansion outside Orlando and drives a Cadillac with a “Bush lied, people died” bumper sticker. Do you suppose his neighbors were surprised that he turned out to be an unmannerly attention hound in Congress? Do the people whom Grayson sued over the years think his antics and irresponsible exaggerations are out of character?
Much of the umbrage being taken at Grayson’s bad behavior or the outburst of Rep. Joe “You lie!” Wilson is for effect. Democrats and Republicans have both tried to score points by painting their opponents as cretins.
But some of the shock is sincere.
Nancy Pelosi fought through tears to say that the anger over her party’s health care plan reminded her of a homophobic rage that she imagines swept through San Francisco prior to the 1978 assassination of Harvey Milk by a deranged fellow politician.
Pelosi’s worries are obviously a bit phony because she wouldn’t punish Grayson the same way she punished Wilson, but she did seem genuinely afraid about a combustible civic atmosphere.
Pelosi should take a trip back to her hometown of Baltimore and check out the atmosphere. There were 234 homicides last year and the local football team’s star player took a plea bargain on a murder charge.
I’d say the health care debate is an improvement over most of what passes for society these days.
