Yesterday, somebody said in a thread that they didn’t believe that the Republicans in 1994 would be willing to gamble with the U.S. economy as (in their opinion) modern Republicans have, and many have expressed the same feeling: that prior to now the issue would have been resolved relatively quickly and with less fuss (I can’t find the quote because searching seems to be malfunctioning.)
I often hear people say how American politics is more divisive now than ever before, and that compromise, bipartisanship, and civility in politics has decreased. This was somewhat before my time, so I don’t really know. Thinking about it as objectively as you can, do you feel this to be true?
On May 22, 1856, Preston Brooks, Congressman from South Carolina walked into the United States Senate and viciously beat Senator Charles Sumner from Massachusetts. Brooks beat Sumner over an anti-slavery speech Sumner had delivered during which Sumner made an insulting comment about Senator Andrew Butler from South Carolina (a relative of Brooks.)
On July 11, 1804 the sitting Vice President of the United States shot and killed the previous Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, in a duel.
So in the grand scheme of things, no politicians are not less civil.
Shortly after the Preston Brooks beating, one of Brooks accomplices in the beating, Senator Lawrence Keitt (a true inhuman monster, who brandished a pistol at other Senators during Brooks’ beating of Sumner to stop them from interfering) started a massive brawl in the chamber of the U.S. House that involved up to 50 congressmen engaged in all out fighting.
The title of this thread reminded me of a recent eulogy for Betty Ford. In it, Cokie Roberts (daughter of Hale Boggs) recalled an interview with President Ford several years before his death in 2006:
When we turned the cameras off, the President turned to me and sighed, ‘You know, Cokie, I just don’t understand what’s happened in Washington. When your father was Majority Leader and I was Minority Leader, we would get in a cab together on the Hill and we would go downtown to some place like the Press Club and we’d say ‘Ok, what are we going to argue about?’ Now, it was a real debate. We had different views about means to an end. We genuinely disagreed with each other, we were certainly partisans. But after we went at it, we’d get back in the cab together and be best friends.”
The full text (and a video) of the eulogy can be found here.
All right, that definitely wouldn’t happen now, but allow me to change the question a little bit. Are politicians now less civil, bipartisan, etc. than politicians in between 1950 and 2000?
You should read some of the stuff that was said about Jefferson by his political opponents…woofa. :eek: I don’t think that politicians are any less civil or less bipartisan than they were in the 50’s either (of course the 60’s were chalk full of political flame and rhetoric, and much mutual hatred and venom over the desegregation and civil rights stuff)…it’s just the the issues have changed. Heck, even the sides have changed, and what it means to be ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’, as well as the issues to fight over.
The Repubs are far less civilized than we have been used to over the last couple decades. They yell, interrupt and talk over the other panelists. They are embarrassingly rude. It seems they have been trained to act like that because it is so prominent in their talk. Rush , Beck and few others did it long ago. It seems the Repubs have decided that is an effective way to act.
I think one factor is that before the 1990s media was less “interactivel” without the Internet-no matter how partisan newspapers or TV networks were they were unlikely to say “F*** [[Insert politician name]]” but in the anonymity of the Internet nuts and trolls can and do say whatever they want.
I’d argue that perhaps, with an increasing onset of luxury and higher living standards (generally speaking), problems of the country and of the world have gradually become less immediate for politicians (and for some people in general). Thus politicians might be more prepared to see an issue as something on which you can dicker, rather than come together on. Less immediacy means less importance.
Which party is calling the other one “terrorists” and accusing them of “holding a gun to the head” of the country? What party says they are trying to “save life on this planet as we know it” with the clear implication that the other party is trying to kill it? Please. I know you are so far to the left that it is ridiculous, but do try to have SOME realism in your posts. If Republicans have been less civilized as of late, it is just because Democrats have become so mind-bendingly insane.
BWAAA yourself. Pay attention when the tea baggers and rightys are on. Then get back to me. We are not talking about political rhetoric, that is always slanted. We are talking about rudeness. But most rightys have tossed that concept out long ago.
Were you aware that the baggers would not compromise at all on the debt ceiling. Hell, when a speaker at a bagger rally told the audience that the US credit rating had been dropped, they cheered loudly. Fuck the baggers.
Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan often had drinks together after hours in Bipartisan Washington Utopia. That little chestnut gets trotted out whenever the civility question arises. True?
We don’t know how they act towards each other when cameras aren’t rolling. They might be hanging out with each other and civil in normal settings. In the press, they aren’t trying to change minds on the other side of the aisle, or even engage in debate. They are trying to rev up their constituents and gain favor\money. Its like ‘Real Time with Bill Maher’ (which I cannot watch anymore).
Maybe the problem is us. Is that what we, as a group, actually want to see?
What we mostly remember is a long period after World War 2 when the U.S. was pretty happy and the politicians were arguing how to divide an expanding pie. Yeah, there were a lot of bumps along the way: McCarthyism, civil rights, Vietnam, abortion, etc. But none of them was ever reduced to the level of whether the gummint was stealing your money.
Because of that, you could have someone like Bob Dole (about as partisan a Republican as you could name) also be a strong advocate for the developmentally disabled, and a dying Hubert Humphrey call Richard Nixon personally to ask Nixon to attend his funeral.
Hell, as late as the mid-1990s you could have Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton come to a deal on the federal budget.
The reason the Tea Bag politicians have been so stubborn are:
They ran on rhetoric and idealogue that got them elected. To back off of that now would result in disfavor with their base and most likely non re-election in 2012.
and 2) There are a number of Tea baggers that don’t care about re-election and they are sticking to the cause come hell or high water.
These are highly principled people. I’m not saying their principles are right, I’m just trying to explain their motivation.