Scratching My Head

I just read a piece by Jay Cost over at The Weekly Standard that left me puzzled.  Its title is "What We Learned from Obama's Rolling Stone Interview" and therein Cost wonders how such a steadfastly post-partisan fellow like Barack Obama became the hyper-partisan Democrat revealed in the interview.  (BTW, while I take Cost's point, in Obama's case I think hyper-ideologue is more apt than hyper-partisan.  As every poll demonstrates, his agenda has not served his party well at all.)

In his opening paragraph, Cost remarks: "Certainly, even those most skeptical of President Obama in January 2009 would have been a little surprised to read an interview that drips with contempt for so many of the president's fellow citizens."

Huh?  Has Cost forgotten Obama's "bitter-clinger" comments during the campaign, his 20-year association with the racist Reverend Jeremiah Wright, his marriage to the "not proud 'til now" Michelle, etc.?  How can anyone justly say they are surprised?  Well, I was among "those most skeptical" in January 2009 and there is nothing about the interview that surprises me.

I do, however, find myself scratching my head over another aspect of Cost's piece.  Before he proceeds to demonstrate Obama's hyper-partisanship, he's quick to make the point that the parties are actually much the same.

The Republican and Democratic stories are substantively different, but formally quite similar.  For instance:

(a) Each believes the other side has perfidious motivations. 

(b) Each believes that, to the extent that the opposition is acting on principle, they are  radical or foolish principles. 

(c) Each believes that the other typically conducts the dirtier campaign.

(d) Each reserves to its own side all the credit for policy successes, and pushes to the opposition all the blame for policy failures.

(e) Each has a Manichean view of American politics and history, with its own side representing the forces of light and the opposition representing the forces of darkness. 

This bugs me.  One problem with the list is that it communicates not just that the parties are similar, but that between them, there really is no difference.  And another is that it says nothing about whether, in their judgments of the other, one side is correct or not.  While both may think the other has perfidious motivations, one may indeed have them.  Distinctions such as this make all the difference in the world when one is deciding how to vote.

But what really bugs me is this: I cannot for the life of me understand this disposition, this reflex it seems,  displayed here by Cost, and elsewhere by far too many others hailing from the American political Right.  I'm referring to the willingness, the eagerness even, to establish and maintain an appearance of even-handedness, and to do so by pronouncing these "a pox on both your houses" judgments.  Judgments that are not only intellectually hazy and lazy, but, more importantly, do real harm to our side.

This past summer Sports Illustrated ran a retrospective on Hall-of-Famer Stan Musial. In the piece, fellow Hall-of-Famer Bob Gibson was asked about his teammate.  His reply: "Stan Musial is the nicest man I ever met in baseball and, to be honest, I can't relate to that. I never knew that nice and baseball went together."  Sure, Gibson was kidding a bit.  By all accounts, Gibson conducted himself honorably not only off, but on the field as well.  But he understood always that the object of the game is to win.  On the mound, Gibson's competitive spirit, as is well chronicled, was second to none.  He knew that a baseball game, like any game, is not a performance, it's a contest.

Gibson, a power pitcher, was famous for sometimes throwing two "knockdown" pitches in a row.  If a hitter was digging in, if he was too aggressive at the plate, Gibson would throw a fastball directly at the hitter in order to move him away from the plate and make him a little less aggressive the next time, after he got up, dusted himself off, and stepped back into the batter's box.  But Gibson, unlike almost any other pitcher, would then do it again, making clear to the hitter that the previous pitch was no mistake, that the ball hadn't merely slipped out of his hand.  Bob Gibson intended to win.

Politics is not a game; the stakes are far more serious.  But it is a contest.  And the object of a contest is to win.  I wish more on our side understood that.

Ya think Bob Gibson might be interested in running for political office?