If during an 1831 State of the Union address somebody had yelled “You lie!” at Andrew Jackson, Jackson woulda gone all caveman on the guy.
…And as late as 2011 you could have John Boehner and Barack Obama come to a deal on the federal budget.
You can call Brooks an “individual bad actor” if you like, but the House did not vote to expel him. He resigned, and then ran for re-election to his own seat - and won. He died of natural causes the following year, a hero in South Carolina.
Burr was never charged with a crime stemming from Hamilton’s death, and finished his term as Vice President.
How do we know there aren’t Democrat and Republican politicians doing the same this day? It may not be the case but I can guarantee you most of those politicians in Congress get along well on a personal level. You have to realize Congress is made up of rich people and the President is a rich person, they are arguing about things that will never affect them personally, so in the grand scheme of things they are far less invested than most believe they are. These are the types of people that can feel legislation was just passed that will ruin the country but they can still have a drink with the other side because it won’t ruin the country so bad that they stop being rich people.
I’m not a leftist or anything, I am just pointing out that politicians are part of a “bubble” of wealthy elites, and because of that the things you guys get heated up over here on the SDMB aren’t going to matter on the same personal level to politicians, they are very different animals.
If anything they are TOO civil. It has gotten to the point that “being a meany-head” in Washington is enough to cause resignations. What we need is lot less passive aggressive sniping and a whole lot more lancing and draining the wound. It isn’t going to happen until we get a group who is willing to have it out properly.
Consider how things go in this forum. Despite a great deal of back and forth, eventually someone calls “cite” and it’s put up or shut up time. That may not change the minds of the true believers regardless of side or stripe but it should provide ammo for the opposition. If someone can’t provide a cite, or is just making stuff up, I’d call a press conference that night and ream them inside out for the lying, cheating bastards they are.
HardlySanguine: maybe reactionary?
That’s because it is an effective way to act; voters don’t seem to react against it in any meaningful way.
Only by Obama dropping his pants, spreading his cheeks, bending over the table and screaming “Take me, Oompa Lumpa.”
Disregarding duels, pre-Civil War thashings etc, I would say I definitely remember politicians being much more civil 30, 40 or 50 years ago than now. And I don’t believe I am being nostalgic.
The parties are more polarized than any time in the last 70 years. I think that’s one of the factors that has caused a return of the kind of incivility more common in earlier eras. Another aspect is the nationalization of political support networks. Someone like Allen West or Alan Grayson can make a lot of moula by making inflammatory remarks with the help of nationwide cable news and the internet, in a way that wasn’t as easy two decades ago.
Yeah, but you then had Clinton not let Gingrich exit via the front door of the plane, and Gingrich respond by being a little bitch about the budget (and then the resultant shutdown). There was Cheney telling Leahy to fuck himself on the Senate floor as well.
Those are recent actions, and I am sure that there are many more. There are probably still many who are quite cordial, if not friends. But when things are tight, people can get nasty.
Tehre is a difference between a deal and capitulation.
Yet so many will argue there is almost no difference between the parties.
I am old and in the past, there were examples of over the top crazy talking pols. They were the exception. We paid attention to them and thought they were a little goofy.
Now extremely nasty rhetoric is the norm. Obama tries to talk like an adult and he is labelled as weak.
There was nothing uncivil about Burr killing Hamilton. Both attended a dinner shortly before the fatal meeting and a foreign dignitary there had no idea the two were involved in an affair of honor. That’s not to say that the politics of the day were restrained. Jefferson had been paying a pundit who accused John Adams of everything in the book, even calling him a hermaphrodite.
Rough and tumble is the norm in American politics. It turns out that Andrew Jackson’s marriage was slightly irregular. His opponents mercillesly hounded him about it even while his wife lay dying. The term “miscegenation” was invented to paint Lincoln and the Republicans as “Negro-lovers”. The period of relative comity following the Great Depression was the exception and not the rule.
Pointing out a really bad example from the past, does not discount that today rude speech is the norm. Obama does not have the character to participate in the low level rhetoric. Kerry had the same problem. Fox and the right have adopted the nastiness as a boon to viewership and helpful in elections. It makes them money and apparently captures the votes of people who are easily swayed by slogans and loud noises.
Is anyone denying that politics these days are rough? The consensus seems to be that following the Depression politics became more polite but more recently they have returned to normal. The explanation that makes the most sense to me is that as Republican economic policy becomes more and more extreme so does their rhetoric. People won’t vote for plutocracy so they demonize Democrats. Before the Depression conservatives did the same to liberals and their ideas but were forced to moderate their economics in the face of disaster in order to remain politically viable.
This country was founded in part by religious dissidents founding cities on the hill . . . And then they split and schismed over points of doctrine and policy and sent each other into exile . . . It’s an American thing: If you believe in something, you have to be a zealot about it, and you have to be a dick to everybody who doesn’t think like you.