How did we get to South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson yelling, “You lie!” at President Barack Obama in 2009, and newly elected Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib shouting, “We’re going to impeach this motherf—er” in 2019? Is this the new climate of politics?
For years, officials from both sides of the aisle had reputations for “duking it out” in the political arena with tenacity and vigor. However, at the end of the day, they set aside their differences and could still be friends. Most notably, people have looked toward the relationships of President Ronald Reagan and Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, and President Bill Clinton and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich as people who may not have liked each other very much but still accomplished compromise.
Does our model of government prohibit our officials from working together and treating each other with civility? Clearly, it does not. It wasn’t uncommon for elected officials on both sides of the aisle to bring their families together for a barbecue, or have their children play together or be attending the same schools. Now, we have a “Tuesday to Thursday” club where many of our officials come from their home states to Washington, D.C., for three days. They are told by their majority and minority whips how to vote, and never really extend a hand across the aisle to get to know their colleagues.
It seems that the more distant they are from one another, the less likely they are to be emotionally scarred by what someone might say about them. In fact, one of our current U.S. senators from New Hampshire once told my class that in the old days, you had to be friends, since quite often you sat next to them and probably shared the same roll of Tums.
So where are we today? When Elizabeth Warren announced her candidacy for president in January of this year, Donald Trump took to Twitter to mock her right away and finished with, “See you on the campaign TRAIL, Liz.” This was an obvious reference to the Trail of Tears, one of the darker times in our country’s history. This was his first salvo at her. Who knows where it may go from there should she win the Democratic nomination?
Currently, words like “deplorables” and “snowflakes” describe the people who don’t seem to see our points of view. Phrases such as “drain the swamp,” “build the wall” and “lock her up” have replaced “hope and change.” In 1954, Joseph Welch remarked to Sen. Joe McCarthy after McCarthy accused one of Welch’s lawyers of having communist ties, “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir?”
Where will it end? When more officials body slam reporters to the ground? When presidential candidates verbally abuse moderators by saying, “there was blood coming out of her wherever?”
Civil discourse is at an all-time low.
Cassandra Peraltra, in an article for the Berkeley Political Review, referenced a Boston Globe study that applied the 2016 primary candidate speeches to the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Test. This test analyzes reading levels by looking at sentence structures and word choices. The study found the people with lower grade-level speeches outperformed the other candidates. Have we “dumbed-down” our rhetoric toward people in order to be well-received? Is reality TV that shocks and dismays the new politics?
Sadly, I think it is. Depending on whose estimates you use, Donald Trump got between $3 billion to $5 billion in free advertising in media outlets because people clung to the next “shock statement” that he either tweeted about or said on air.
James Madison wrote in Federalist Paper No. 51 that our government is a reflection of who we are. He also said, “A dependence on the people is the primary control of government.” This dependence includes one of the guiding principles of American democracy: civil political discourse. What do we do if we can’t have civil discourse, though?
After 25 years of teaching civics, attending numerous conferences, seminars and workshops on the same topic, and traveling on the lecture circuit, I firmly believe people want to be involved. They want to engage with one another in discourse. We must channel our energies and ideas on government into respectful dialogue. We don’t have to always agree with each other, but it’s important to know and respect other people’s opinions.
In a letter to William Charles Jarvis on Sept. 28, 1820, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.”
We need to keep informing, so that we can have productive dialogue. I often think, where is today’s Thomas Jefferson, George Washington or James Madison? These people idealized civic discourse and virtue.
I believe one of them is probably sitting in my classroom.
(Dave Alcox is a civics teacher at Milford High School.)