When the Republican Congressman angrily shouted out during Obama's recent Congressional address that the President was lying about ineligibility of illegal immigrants for the proposed health care reform package, it set off a political firestorm.
I have mixed feelings about the contrived controversy. First of all, I think Republicans and conservatives are held, unfairly, to a higher standard of behavior, for instance, family-values Republicans like Louisiana Senator Vitter caught in marital infidelity become particularly vulnerable to Dems' charges of hypocrisy. [I personally think the sexual scandals involving the Democrats are far more troublesome. For example, former President Clinton, supposedly a feminist and a lawyer well-versed in sexual harassment policies, had gotten sexually involved with multiple female subordinates. Former NY Governor Spitzer used to be the state Attorney General, busting organized crime, call girl rings, etc., which makes his fall from grace more odious. Republican Congressman Mark Foley got in trouble in 2006 with his embarrassing pursuit of a young male Congressional page, but the late Democratic Congressman Gerry Studds made passes at at least 3 male pages and had sex with one of them.]
I do think that when it comes to political spin, the Republicans by and large appear to be clueless (unlike media-savvy Democrats like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama), e.g., Sarah Palin's pithy allegations regarding "death panels" and Joe Wilson's accusatory "You lie!" [Wilson was responding to the fact that Democrats in the House have essentially paid lip service by on one hand agreeing there should be no health insurance for illegal immigrants, but voting down enforcement provisions for that effect, suggesting that this political doublespeak is characteristic of Obama politics.] It allows the Democratic partisans to caricature the mainstream opposition to Obama's overreach on health care insurance as extremist. Conservatives cannot allow this critical discussion about long-overdue reform (e.g., the intrusive federal footprint getting in the way of doctors practicing medicine, the lack of equal protection for tax-advantaged contribution towards health insurance, a dysfunctional, Byzantine system of costly state-based regulations and mandates, small companies not enjoying the same advantages, e.g., self-insurance, as large companies, and the need for medical malpractice tort reform to counter lawsuit abuses, which are a disproportionately high contributor to health care costs) to get sidetracked by inflammatory rhetoric, dubious claims or unprofessional behavior.
This is the kind of publicity Obama is expert at politically exploiting--by accepting Joe Wilson's apology, he appears to be taking the higher road. Joe Wilson thinks it's enough that Obama accepted his apology and doesn't feel his colleagues deserve any additional consideration, although his behavior also reflects on his colleagues. Let me make myself clear: Joe Wilson owed the President, his colleagues, and American viewers of the address an unconditional, sincere apology. There is a time and place to express one's disagreement in a civil manner; hundreds of legislators disagree with Obama's Trojan horse "health care reform" proposal, but they allowed the President to make his case without interruption (which I don't think he did, disregarding Congressman Wilson's outburst).
I'm sure all of this must be amusing to foreign observers of American politics; they never did quite understand the American angst over Watergate, and the legislative sessions in other countries (e.g., Israel, Bolivia, Taiwan, and Mexico come to mind) have, over the past few years, erupted in fistfights. In fact, Julian Zelizer posted on CNN yesterday, noting that other American legislators in the past have also engaged in more dramatic dishonorable behavior (including caning and spitting incidents)
But, second, I also realize that Obama and his Democratic legislative colleagues for years personally attacked George W.Bush, whom always treated his partisan critics with professional courtesy; I recall, for instance, his cordial recognition of Speaker Pelosi as the first female leader in that position. (On the other hand, who can forget that the Democratic members of Congress booed President Bush when Bush pushed for social security reform? Was that any more professional than Wilson's outburst?) In fact, Obama slammed the Bush administration during his own inaugural address, with Bush in attendance, and he and his own administration have dubiously scapegoated the Bush administration for any and all issues he's currently facing, instead of taking responsibility for the hand he has dealt. Obama may have not directly pointed to Bush during the inauguration and said, "You lied to us!", but he largely based his Presidential campaign on the idea that the liberation of Iraq was a mistake and has spoken of a zero-sum game of Iraq funding and domestic welfare state expenditures. The question of civility in this case is more of style than substance or intent.
Partisan House Vote to Reprimand Wilson
In a final note, the news tonight is that the House has voted to admonish Joe Wilson 240-179, based on partisan lines. This was self-defeating; the House Democrats made a mockery of Obama's generous acceptance of Wilson's personal apology, not to mention the public's desire for partisan bickering to stop; I would feel differently about the matter if Wilson had been unrepentant or if the House Democrats had been more consistent in reprimanding their own members' unconscionable behavior. It would be a refreshing change to see the Democratic-controlled Congress do something more constructive about serious problems our country is facing, like resolving chronically unfunded Medicare and social security, shrinking unprecedented budget deficits, streamlining a bloated federal bureaucracy, and getting the government regulators out of the hair of business managers and doctors trying to do their jobs.
