Uncivil behavior is nothing new in politics

By Jon Ralston

Sunday, Aug. 30, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Clark County Commissioner Tom Collins deletes no expletives and tells anyone who doesn’t like his pet shooting park to get out of the state.

Mayor Oscar Goodman employs his best ad hominem fulminations and repeatedly sputters that a Chicago reporter is a “moron.”

And regular (or not) folks across the country scream invectives at their federal representatives and paint Hitler mustaches on the president’s visage.

And so the lamentation rings out: Where has the civility in politics gone?

Answer: It was never really there. And that is the wrong question to ask about what is occurring in the local, state and national debates. The right question: When will the superficiality in politics be gone?

We know the health care debate has been hopelessly trivialized by these town-hall antics and the language used on both sides — the ludicrous specter of “death panels” is matched only by the faux guarantee that no one could lose his doctor. We also know that Collins is an irreverent, profane cowboy and that Goodman is a volcanic, nasty thug. None of this is really newsworthy or helpful.

It also is not historically significant. This is a country in which the 1884 presidential race featured a ditty about the Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland, who was accused of fathering an illegitimate child: “Ma, Ma, where’s Pa, gone to the White House. Ha ha.” That’s much nastier than anything Karl Rove or James Carville could concoct.

Twenty-eight years earlier South Carolina Rep. Preston Brooks viciously clubbed Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner on the Senate floor, forcing him to recuperate for three years. Despite the heat over health care, no member of the Club of 100 has yet taken a cane to another.

Civility is not the issue. Sometimes uncivil behavior is necessary and, if not violent, mostly must be tolerated. I understand why the Nevada delegation has sought more controlled environments than town halls, for fear of them degenerating into yellfests and near-riots.

It’s much more difficult to defend your position on health care reform when you are being assaulted by nincompoops. But it’s even tougher to actually articulate a position for fear you might anger people you think you need for self-perpetuation. Safer to be superficial.

The media are partly to blame. It’s much easier to interview the publicity-hungry or deranged town-hall attendees than to try to engage public officials in a thoughtful dialogue about health care reform.

But as much as we can find fault with the Fourth Estate and the vocal minorities, the real blame lies with the elected officials, not because they are uncivil but because they are committed to survival above all else.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, bereft of a self-editing mechanism, makes all manner of incendiary off-the-cuff remarks that other, programmed pols would never utter. But instead of being praised for saying what he really believes, Reid often is excoriated.

Yes, words do matter, and leaders such as Reid or Goodman or Collins have a greater responsibility to understand that it takes only a mouse click for those words to be everywhere. Perhaps Reid should have thought before he said the Iraq war “is lost.” But why do the critics who frothed about that intemperate remark go mute when Rush Limbaugh invokes Nazi imagery to lambaste health care reform?

The double standard prospers because there are no real standards for political discourse. Or for that matter, leadership.

Take Gov. Jim Gibbons. (Insert Henny Youngman line.)

He actually believes that saying “no new taxes” and proffering vacuous slogans — “The people of Nevada deserve a government that works for them, not against them” — constitutes leadership. His performance is the epitome of superficiality over substance, but too many others are lesser offenders, mostly because they are afraid. Indeed, the Democratic opposition doesn’t say the latest interim tax study is designed as a prelude to a large increase come 2011, one they believe is needed, because they are terrified the public can’t handle the truth.

Similarly, I would have more respect for any of these Democrats eschewing face-to-face confrontations if they would simply take strong positions on the important aspects of health care reform — a public plan, how to pay for covering the uninsured, cost-cutting measures.

Republicans trying to undermine health care reform with scare tactics are no less frustrating than Democrats refusing to stand behind their beliefs because of polling data. It makes you want to boot them across state lines or call them morons. But fighting sound and fury with sound and fury accomplishes little. Or maybe it doesn’t.

Are Americans really that ignorant? Do they really have that limited an attention span? Do they really prefer heat to light?

The politicians hope so.

Jon Ralston hosts the news discussion program “Face to Face With Jon Ralston” on Las Vegas ONE and publishes the daily e-mail newsletter “RalstonFlash.com.” His column for the Las Vegas Sun appears Sunday, Wednesday and Friday.