If You Only Read One Thing About Politics This Year, Read This

If we start with the reasonable assumption that both candidates are decent public servants, because I think that is generally true and true in this case, the difference is not less clear.  While all those that the Dems like to pillory (W, now Mitt) deserve better, I feel that most viscerally when I see the alien, muslim, socialist lies (and there is at least one new one daily on the web) about president Obama, and he deserves better. We deserve a better, less distorted, system of political communication. 

 

While both are decent men, these individuals are each part of a larger coalition and one of the coalitions includes Todd Akin (on the science and technology committee) and other science-deniers, and worse (just think of the concrete legislation in Viriginia that started the whole War on Women conversation and just about anything Alan West or Kyle from Arizona says). And of course this coalition includes the worst of the Tea Party folks (many of these are just frustrated and smart, but too many of the leaders are opportunists and not smart...Backman, Palin). 

 

So I suggest we examine the article and Daily Show episode below, because these provide strong and authoritative and bipartisan evidence to support the conclusion that there nothing close to an equivalency in terms of the two sides misleading and distorting our communication. 

 

Both of the analysts below of hugely respected thinkers. One is a liberal, but not a crazy liberal, a moderate, thoughtful, careful, grounded liberal that those on the left consider milk toasty. The other is very conservative but also thoughtful and not crazy. Read the short editorial they wrote together for the Post and then their interview on the Daily Show.  They get it absolutely right and both are high powered scholars who are taking a big risk by making a statement like this, so they must feel very strongly about their conclusions as well. What do you think? 

The Tactics Being Deployed by the Current Republican Leadership is the Problem
Two of our smartest Political Scientists...and both try to avoid being partisan, and one is a conservative analyst from the American Enterprise Institute...recently concluded that the Republican Party leadership is "ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.... No doubt, Demcrats were not exactly warm and fuzzy toward George W. Bush during his presidency. But recall that they worked hand in glove with the Republican president on the No Child Left Behind Act, provided crucial votes in the Senate for his tax cuts, joined with Republicans for all the steps taken after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and supplied the key votes for the Bush administration’s financial bailout at the height of the economic crisis in 2008. The difference is striking."

If you only read one piece of political analysis this year, read this one (meaning the link if you click on 'concluded' above).

Daily Show Interviews Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann

Two of our most respected political analysts, one from the conservative American Enterprise Institute, do what they rarely do...argue that we cannot blame both parties for the mess we are in today. Since this type of analysis is an very real break with scholarly traditions, it is worth thinking about it carefully.