Respond to the argument that was advanced...
...not the one you wish was advanced...that's just basic respect

David Brooks, the sometimes smart usually worth reading NYT columnist, argued that the President’s second inaugural address “surely has to rank among the best” and “makes an argument for a pragmatic and patriotic progressivism.”

Clive Crook, writing for the Bloomberg View, argues that in the second inaugural address the president “made the struggle for social justice and equality the whole of his message.”

As such, according to Crook, the speech was “more divisive that it needed to be” and overlooks “another tradition” in American political thought that would focus on “the principle of individual liberty and limited government, of personal responsibility, the private sphere and reward for merit.”

First, both of these commentaries are well worth reading.  Brooks rightfully highlights the importance of the president tracing our American story from the principle that ‘all of us are created equal’ in the Declaration of Independence to “railroad legislation, the Progressive Era, the New Deal, the highway legislation, the Great Society, Seneca Falls, Selma and Stonewall.”

Crook describes the president’s vision as a ‘noble’ reminder of our hard fought struggles to expand civil rights and protect individual liberties, to reduce poverty, discrimination, and violence and quotes the president as saying that

“We do not believe that in this country freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few,” he said. “The commitments we make to each other through Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, these things do not sap our initiative, they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.”

But the overarching image from Brook’s portrayal  is of the president is moving, in this speech, from his “post-partisan” self to reveal the true inner liberal self we all knew was there all along.  Crooks claims, similarly, that the president has abandoned, in this speech, efforts to speak to both sides of a divided nation.  And Crooks concludes

“There wasn’t much respect, either. How could there be? If you cast all your policy ideas as moral imperatives, what does that say about people who disagree with you? Obama made it plain he thinks Republicans are not just wrong but morally impaired.”

I wonder.

It seems to me that the president chose to frame his comments around one core shared value (unless ‘all men are created equal’ is now only a progressive or liberal value) in order to reach out to those whose perspective on politics is profoundly moral.  This strikes me as the highest form of respect.  If you see the world through a moral lens, the president suggested, then consider this. 

Was he using a moral lens to try to persuade the persuadables that we ought to recognize the connection between our shared values and Social Security, environmental stewardship, and equal rights?  Yes.  But making an argument using the language preferred by your opponents is a form of reaching out.  It is decidedly post-partisan. 

And neither Brooks nor Crooks see this because they appear to assume the president’s use of a moral lens can only be disingenuous (like Fox News analysts during the election, believing their own hype about the president’s hostility toward religion).

Rather than engage with the story the president did tell they dismiss it because he did not tell another story, like the one they want to tell.  That is disrespectful. 

Engaging with the language, stories, lenses your opponents prefer is harder, more risky, and more likely to provide a foundation for achieving agreement.  Ignoring your opponent’s story because he did not tell you story is juvenile, disrespectful, and more likely to perpetuate the two ships passing in the night gridlock paralyzing our politics.

Respond to the argument that was made.  Do you think we can come together around our shared belief that all of us our created equal?