Allan Bevere has preempted by writing about something I was intending to discuss and doing it better. He does this by discussing current protests and reactions to them in his post Town Hall Meetings Protests and Tone-Deaf Politicians. I have been repeatedly amazed by the extent to which both sides of many debates are completely oblivious to the ways in which they use one another’s arguments each time the roles are reversed.
I would add a couple of points of my own. First, though I understand what has driven Allan to support term limits, I have little faith in them. I see little benefit resulting where they are in force. I believe that the only possible solution is a better educated voter, intelligently involved in the process. As long as a substantial and deciding portion of the voting public makes decisions based on hype and spin, we will continue to make bad decisions.
Second, and I think a corollary to this, is that politicians and voters in general really love an ad hominem approach to the political debate. We believe what people say if they’re on our side. We smear groups with the actions of some. The tea party protesters are smeared because some participants cross a line, as they did in Jacksonville, but ACORN is smeared because some people that they hire cut corners and engage in fraud.
I’m fairly certain that someone on either side will tell me that I am not comparing similar things here, but I have yet to see a fair and careful evaluation in either case. It might turn out that one group is truly as evil as someone thought, but the evidence has yet to be produced. In addition, my argument is not based on which, if either, turns out to truly be in the wrong. The issue is that so many people have made the decision based not on evidence, of which most of us have very little, but on a perception of whose side each group (or random aggregation, as the case may be) is on.
My suggestion here is that a debate that so constantly turns to an ad hominem approach can hardly be expected to produce rational results. That’s the trouble with our alternatives. I would gladly vote the Democrats out of office, but then the Republicans would take over. I would gladly vote the Republicans out of office, but then the Democrats would (and have) taken over.
The great equivalence, in my view, is that neither party is willing to have their sacred cow programs examined for effectiveness. They just have a different list of programs they hold sacred. Thus I am an independent, even though here in Florida that excludes me from primaries.
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