DeWine & Civility: Enacting the Change We Want to See in the World

The editorial below about DeWine and civility from Cincinnati Enquirer political columnist Jason Williams was reprinted in the Akron Beacon Journal today. It is a very good piece and the praise for Governor DeWine is deserved.

Building on Williams, I believe there are two additional lessons we can learn from DeWine here.

First, while Williams points out the courage shown by DeWine in defending Dr. Acton against protesters his point is too narrow. The courage here extends beyond one brave comment. The Governor’s decision to rely on Dr. Acton from the start of the crisis is where that courage begins because civility is also about attempting to speak truthfully.

It took courage for DeWine to listen to the science and speak truthfully knowing this might mean stoking the anger of our profoundly uncivil president whose incivility is deeply rooted in speaking without regard for the truth.

While I encourage Williams to broaden his lens here, it is also important to avoid conflating civility with any one-sides' claim to unique access to the Truth. The point here is an honest and transparent effort to attempt to speak truthfully. Without that, one can make no claim to civility. It is a foundational criteria key to understanding DeWine's civility here.

Second, Williams is smart to note that a leader at the end of his career might be more willing to enact this type of courage. (Though nearly all the Republicans retiring from Congress or near retirement age in Congress demonstrate that this alone is clearly insufficient for courage to emerge.)

And here I am not really disagreeing with Williams or even building on him, because my point is entirely speculative. It is true that good leaders act as Williams notes here.

But it is also worth considering that even a younger DeWine could have made the right political bet by being courageous here—he would have been very well positioned, given DeWine's astronomical performance numbers today, for a strong run at higher office.

The argument that courage and trying to speak truthfully are political suicide appears to be weak or inaccurate here and that is also an important lesson from observing DeWine.

Below is the Williams’ editorial in full. Well worth reading for many reasons, not the least of which is that he highlights the fact that civility is distinctly not about merely being more polite. His description emphasizes (to paraphrase MLK on power and love) that...

“Civility without contestation is sentimental and anemic, and contestation without civility is reckless and abusive.”

In appreciation of Gov. DeWine’s thick skin

As most Ohioans are now free to leave their homes and get back to work, it’s a good time to pause and appreciate something about Gov. Mike DeWine that maybe a lot of people haven’t noticed.

Actually, they probably have noticed, but not much has been said about his consistently calm and steady demeanor throughout this wild ordeal. Consider this column an appreciation of DeWine’s thick skin.

Everyone has rightfully paid more attention to DeWine’s decision-making over the past two months. The Republican has been lauded worldwide for many of those proactive decisions, initially on shutting down the state and then reopening it.

But DeWine has also taken a lot of heat – from an impatient public and lawmakers in his own party who think he’s been too cautious about the shutdown and from Democrats who didn’t like his about-face on face-mask requirements.

Regardless, DeWine has consistently handled the criticism with grace. Every time, all the time. He’s never lashed out in a press conference or on Twitter, and even the few times he’s noticeably been agitated, he’s remained professional.

That’s to be celebrated, especially under the intense pressure of daily press conferences and having to make major decisions that have great short-term and long-term impact on nearly 12 million people.

Civility is such a rare characteristic for so many in DeWine’s chosen profession these days. I shouldn’t even have to write this column.

DeWine’s demeanor should be the rule, but instead he’s a shining example of the exception.

If you question whether it’s genuine, take a look at what DeWine did a few weeks ago.

He called on the loud and vicious critics of state medical director Dr. Amy Acton to direct their anger solely at him. Seriously, who does that?

Most politicians are usually happy to deflect criticism onto an unelected administrator, bureaucrat or, heck, anyone other themselves. It’s a selfish nature that has poisoned politics.

But not DeWine, who said the “buck stops with me” and called on Acton critics to “come after me.” I greatly respect him for that.

I’ve both praised and criticized DeWine before. Neither he nor his team have called or tweeted at me, whether I’ve complimented the governor or called him out on a decision.

That says a lot about him.

In March, DeWine told Enquirer reporter Sharon Coolidge and me on our podcast that he doesn’t get caught up when the media and public is praising or criticizing him.

He said his wife, Fran, has helped him to develop such a level-headed approach to the feedback over his four decades in politics.

Some may say it’s easy for a politician nearing the end of his career to view criticism in such a way. If he’s not worried about his next job, they might say, then no need to worry about something negative being said or written that could be used in a future campaign attack ad.

But I see it as a characteristic of a confident and strong leader. Good leaders don’t get rattled and lose their temper in times of crisis.

Many politicians can’t even handle a critical adjective being written or said about them, let alone an entire tweet, column or story holding them accountable for something they’ve said or done.

Party affiliation doesn’t matter. Nor does it matter if they’re in the White House, on Capitol Hill, in the Statehouse or at City Hall, so few politicians truly understand that being accountable to the people is what they signed up for when they launched their campaigns.

It’s baffling sometimes how politicians seem to forget that they were elected by the people and are being paid by the people. Their hubris sometimes impedes their ability to grasp why anyone would question their decisions.

But not DeWine. He gets it.

Cincinnati Enquirer political columnist Jason Williams can be reached at jwilliams@ enquirer.com.

Father and Son
Expanding the scope of this conflict meant bringing in new and larger audiences through social media and by doing so altering the balance of power and impacting the outcome.

"The father and son who are accused of killing an unarmed black man in Georgia earlier this year have been arrested after video of the incident sparked widespread outrage.

Gregory McMichael, 64, and Travis McMichael, 34, were arrested for the death of Ahmaud Arbery, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced. Both men were taken into custody and face charges of aggravated assault and murder.

This is a developing story, please check back for updates.

Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was shot to death in Brunswick, a coastal city about midway between Savannah and Jacksonville, Florida, on Feb. 23 as he was running through the Satilla Shores neighborhood. His family insists he was out jogging, while the McMichaels claimed they thought he was a burglar."

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/father-son-arrested-charged-murder-death-ahmaud-arbery-n1202501

Track Record Matters

We have suffered through hundreds of lies, big and small, every day. Doubling down on lies about trivial things like the size of his crowds. Doubling down on lies that are easily fact-checked. Regular lies that are contrary to science or demonstrated to be false by widely available video, often of the president himself or his own advisors.

It is easy to scapegoat the 'deep state' and 'fake news' until you need them. Today we need those state scientists' expertise to figure out how to keep Americans safe and the news media to help educate Americans so we can all work together to mitigate a global pandemic.

But the president continues to lie, even about the pandemic. Even the pandemic is now another 'hoax' and Fox News helps him spread his misinformation. This means no one, including private sector elites whose judgements are registered in the stock market, can believe the president. No one can trust him as a leader willing or able to help us figure this out.

The shelves are empty for a reason. It is now impossible for anyone to delude themselves into thinking this clown car of a White House is anything more than turbo-swamp. Republican Senators have known this for years and they failed to act when the House gave them an opportunity.

The additional lives lost and damage done, unfolding in real time, can be traced back to this double-whammy of incompetence in the White House and cowardice among Republican Senators. They are not responsible, of course, for the pandemic itself. But our inept, clumsy, and still not close to on-track response is entirely of their making.

Unless they triple down, finding an even lower level in the swamp, to scuttle the 2020 election, we will begin to right the ship in November.

Then it will become important for Democrats in power to not seek payback, to reject calls to prosecute their political enemies, and to focus on two things: enact competent governance that solves problems for American families and start the gradual work of rebuilding the rule of law and functioning democratic institutions and processes.

Help Us Weigh the Trade-Offs

Reflecting back on a media frenzy that was followed by death threats against a high school student and his family, a lawyer columnist argues it was media opposition to the pro-life beliefs of the young white male student that caused the error.

While that same lawyer columnist points out the intense pressure to get a story out quickly (and could have said more about market pressure on mass media today), the conclusion focuses on an accusation of ideological bias.

Ideology and tribal thinking are no doubt factors. But I was struck by a difference between how lawyer columnists (versus, say, lawyer social scientists) construct arguments. When LCs examine historical context (in this case, the numerous instances where very similar mistakes in media stories have inflicted harm on liberals) it is to use it to win the one case they are litigating. When LSSs do the same, it is to use the larger historical context to shed light on how to most accurately make sense of the case currently being scrutinized.

In this case, the difference appears to matter. This LC concludes ideology explains the outcome. I suspect an LSS would conclude that ideology is a factor explaining less of the outcome than the pressures of 24/7 news cycles and more about the structure of the mass media today.

 In a second story today, another columnist argues that those connecting the downed passenger plane to the assassination of an Iranian general get it wrong. In this case, the problem is different version of failing to help us weigh complex trade-offs. Here the analyst argues that those pointing to this connection are wrong because it would make no sense for the Iranians to intentionally shoot down a plan with 82 of Iranians on board in order to seek vengeance against the US.

That makes sense. And it is irrelevant. The connection here to be debated is the degree to which the assassination created a context where Iranian missile defense forces were significantly more likely to make the mistake they made. And, further, if it created this context unnecessarily. The analyst admits that the assassination ‘unquestionably exacerbated tensions.’ But she concludes questions about a connection can be put aside on the basis of the fact that Iran would never intentionally shoot down this plane.

The analyst admits that the assassination is related to the downing of the airliner. She adds that criticism from two Republican Senators about the rationale for the assassination are merely a ‘distraction.’ If the key point here is that Iran would not shoot down a plane because it had their own passengers on it, than the rationale for the assassination is unrelated to her argument about nonsensical Iranian intentions.

In both cases, these commentaries fail to help us weigh the difficult trade-offs involved in better understanding the world we live in. Neither is an egregious error and both make arguments worth considering. Yet, both reflect how deeply saturated our political conversations are with tribal reasoning, and how other types of inappropriate reasoning emerge in service of tribalism. We see here a litigious approach to utilizing historical data and a straw man approach to evaluating the ways erratic and potentially irrational presidential behavior may create conditions within which tragic mistakes are far more likely.

Running on Empty

A lot of my energy over the years has been expended trying to understand politics. Today, I sometimes want to give up, even though that is exactly what the powerful want average citizens to do and I know doing it will contribute to making things worse in some small way, I still often feel suffocated and overwhelmed and exhausted.

Today, I read in the ABJ that Senator Portman is leaning to not guilty and I wrote him a letter, pasted below. I expect to get a form letter in response and do not imagine this having any impact. But I do hope that he, and others in the Senate like him, will step up. So, I asked him to think about it. I post it here because that is what my blog has become...my own private archive, a place where I store ideas I find or my own thoughts, for some future time when I might want to retrieve them.

Senator Portman—

As we approach the holiday season, I am writing to express my concern about your recently articulated position on impeachment, based on your conclusion that the behavior does not rise to an offense so grave as to justify overturning an election.

You are my Senator and I implore you to reconsider.

Using one’s position as president to bribe foreign powers for personal gain is an extremely serious offense. Using one’s position as president to systematically deny Congress, your co-equal branch, access to the information requested to conduct its business is an extreme example of obstruction of justice.

In both instances, this president has not even tried to hide his contempt for the constitution, the rule of law, or the sanctity of democratic elections free from foreign interference. Even without widening our lens, these two counts alone expose a president willing to both put our national security at risk and to undermine respect for the rule of law for personal gain.

Let me remind you that neither of these, national security or respect for the law, are automatic or natural. Each has been carefully built over time, by leaders in both parties, and none of us knows what lies ahead for the great American experiment should these pillars be weakened or destroyed by this president and his enablers.

I am deeply sadden to conclude that your decision to defend the president can only be seen as the Senate version of Jim Jordan hysteria and complicity in a coordinated effort to confuse and distract the American public.

Your logic is that overturning the 2016 election requires a serious violation and you do not see one here. This logic is flawed for three reasons. First, the indefensible premise of your argument is that there is no serious violation here.

Second, impeachment will not make Hillary Clinton president, but it will (as designed) take a step toward saving the republic from a president who has demonstrated repeatedly a willingness to abuse his power for personal gain.

Third, this reasoning has been out there a while now, so we can all observe clearly that you are simply hiding behind someone else’s finely crafted talking point designed to obfuscate rather than lead.

It is possible that I am misreading you. Perhaps you believe the deep state conspiracy nonsense. Or maybe, despite appearing to be a thoughtful leader, you are actually driven more by partisan animus than a desire to do what is right for our country. If so, than I am wasting my time communicating with you today.

But I hold on to the hope that I am not misreading Senators like you and many others. My hope is that you will feature prominently in the next edition of Profiles in Courage. My hope is that Senators like you on both sides of the aisle will find a way to come together, to lead, to serve the country at this most trying time. My hope is that even a letter from a constituent who generally supports the other party will be read and considered, that it will impact your thinking, and nudge you toward putting country first.

Finally, I want you to know that I am also dissatisfied with the approach to this conflict among some in my own party. I understand that my voice is more likely to be heard within my own tribe, even as my dearest hope is that all of us can find a pathway toward being a lot less tribal. In this particular instance, however, you and your fellow Republican Senators are the only relevant audience.

Other than the most extreme partisan, no one wants our leaders to be spending their time on impeachment, unless the behavior compels us to make that choice. On the centrality of that question, you and I are in agreement. And it is entirely possible that history will prove me wrong in my conclusion that the behavior here clearly compels us to this choose this painful, but patriotic, pathway.

I feel fairly confident history will conclude that this president abused his power for personal gain, weakening our democratic institutions and national security. Even as I recognize that any of us could be wrong about this, it is unimaginable to me that a different conclusion would be based on the talking point you advance. I urge you to reconsider. For the good of the entire nation, from framers to future generations.

Respectfully, Bill

Thankful...