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Susan Estrich: Finding Our Way Back to Civil Discourse
I got a very nice e-mail from B.A. in Anchorage. Actually, it wasn’t very nice. She (I think it’s a she, but I don’t know for sure) thinks I’m completely clueless and worse. But that’s OK. She doesn’t think I should be killed or strung up because I disagree with her. Reading the e-mail wasn’t so scary that I had to forward it to the campus police and wonder why I bother. As far as I could tell, B.A. was actually trying to have a civil conversation with me about why she thought I was wrong.
God bless her.
It’s been not even a year since this country elected President Barack Obama, a man who ran not to be the black president but the president. As he stood there that night in Chicago, and again a few months later in Washington on the steps of the Capitol, he pledged not to divide the country but to heal the divisions.
What happened?
How is it that nine months into his presidency, the name calling is so out of hand that it’s a relief to get an e-mail you don’t have to delete because it’s full of hateful obscenities? And I’m just a little fish in this fight. I talk to people who are bigger players — elected officials and political leaders, talking heads with their own shows and more newspapers running them than I’ll ever have — and we whisper about how scary it is “out there.” But it’s not “out there.” It’s right here, on your computer, on your radio, on your TV, everywhere you look.
Of course, as B.A. reminded me, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi et al., didn’t exactly treat the presidency with respect when George W. Bush held the job. Neither did many liberal commentators, which is one reason they have their own shows and Web sites and beach houses.
I can say, with all honesty, that I never preached hate, but so what and who cares? Lots of others did, maybe not heckling from the back of Congress in a joint session (sorry, B.A., but I do think that’s different), but certainly in other places.
The problem is that there’s no end to this game of tit-for-tat. You destroy Obama because we destroyed Bush. We destroyed Bush because of what you did to Bill Clinton. Hard economic times only make it easier. It’s not difficult to fire up people when they are frightened and insecure, which so many of us are, with reason. Who doesn’t feel like yelling and screaming when you see your pension disappear or you can’t make your house payments and you don’t even know how to explain to your kids that you don’t have the money to buy them what they want or need?
Two wrongs don’t make a right. “He started it” is not an excuse. Isn’t this what we all teach our children? Why doesn’t it also apply to us? Eight years of wrongs do not justify eight more, and then eight more after that.
Health-care reform is important. But civility and decency are even more important. Our democracy cannot survive without them. Sticks and stones are not the only things that hurt. Names hurt, too. We will end up not just hating our presidents, but hating each other.
So I wrote back to B.A., and she wrote back to me. “May God help us all find our way back to civil discourse,” she said in closing. Amen.
Last weekend marked the beginning of the Jewish New Year. To all of those who are celebrating, Shanah Tovah — a happy and healthy New Year, and one in which we find our way back together.
— Best-selling author Susan Estrich is the Robert Kingsley Professor of Law and Political Science at the USC Law Center and was campaign manager for 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis. Click here to contact her.
Comments
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» on 09.21.09 @ 06:50 PM
Let’s talk civilly. Psssttt… (Obama is a big government socialist dictator with a chip on his shoulder wanna be who is robbing the country blind and attempting to take over every aspect of our private lives)... was that civil enough?
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» on 09.21.09 @ 06:51 PM
shh (obama lies) shhhhh
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» on 09.22.09 @ 08:20 AM
Lord, have mercy. I hope Noozhawk didn’t pay for this drivel. I’d be willing to bet that J-schools hand out a standard “Can’t we all just get along” piece for liberals to reprint every time one of their own gets into power. A Lexus-Nexus search would probably turn up a flurry of these pieces in 1977 and 1993. I’m not sure which is worse, the short term amnesia of Professor Estrich or her long-term ignorance of political history in this country.
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» on 09.22.09 @ 09:20 AM
juding by the 3 responses before me, the author is right on with her comments. Even the comments are negative and unhelpful to anyone’s viewpoint/cause.
We are a pathetic nation full of whiners, complainers, and strictly one way or no way opinionated people!
I too miss the days of respect for authority, and questioning that authority with decency.
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» on 09.22.09 @ 10:07 AM
Seems odd.
For some reason we seem to reward the rude and punish the civil.
Noisy, negative, smarmy people get TV shows and magazine articles.
Thoughtful, logical people are ignored or shouted down as racists unless they conform.
This country was not born of quiet people.
It came about from loudmouths with flint-locks who were willing to tell the misguided authorities where to get off.
When the tea tax was enforced without gaining the support of the people, out forefathers opened a barrel of whoop-tail.
History is studied so the bad parts need not repeat.
The tea tax was nowhere near as expensive as the current proposed burdens, even as a portion of GDP.
The public is voting loud and clear at the popularity polls already.
Histoty shows that we should not choose to ignore them.
Not all of them are ‘deceived or misguided’.
Most are better informed than the loudest ones that make it on to TV.
They (we) just know that government programs rarely fail to spend money that belongs future generations (they already spent ours).
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» on 09.22.09 @ 11:06 AM
Perhaps those gripped by paranoid fear of Obama’s presidency - all 9 months of it -
are terrified that Susan Estrich may try to “take away their guns”.
The LA Times ran a recent feature about terrified, disgruntled, mis-informed rural
Tennesseeans that features quotes that sound like they came from a Philip K. Dick
fantasy-sci fi novel about incipient madness.
Given that we’re (very slowly) trying to work our way out of the Bush almost-Depression, and our way out of the two Bush foreign wars, and discuss whether
America should become the world’s last modern, free-market economy to have universal, reliable health insurance for all its citizens, I can’t help wondering what the mind-set is of those people who find Estrich so scary or offensive?
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» on 09.22.09 @ 12:32 PM
I agree with Susan. We have to start somewhere. So let’s show the folks that screamed hatred and names at Bush and company (some folks are still doing that) that civility can coexist with disagreement, that their behavior does not justify repayment in kind, and there is a classier and more civilized way to behave. Got that, Joe Wilson?
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» on 09.22.09 @ 04:54 PM
Maybe change should come from the top. Maybe Obama could stop calling those who disagree with him liars and fear-mongers as he did in his speech before the joint session of Congress. Maybe he could go on national TV and tell his supporters to stop calling those who disagree with him racist. He is a Christian, isn’t he? Maybe he and Ms. Estrich could take the boards out of their own eyes.
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» on 09.22.09 @ 10:36 PM
It’s just kind of odd timing after the meltdown Democrats had over GW. Now that they are in power, suddenly it’s all about politeness, respect and civility and we are supposed to sit on our hands while they set the undevelop the country back to the third world dictatorship?? What a joke.
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» on 09.22.09 @ 10:39 PM
And let’s be polite as Jimmy Carter calls us racists and we are “mobsters” because we disagree (loudly) with the president’s destructive policies. This country was born of incivility at a high price in blood, sweat and tears and I will be damned if I sit on my knees while they destroy it. Don’t Tread on ME!
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» on 09.23.09 @ 09:13 AM
It is possible to disagree without being disagreeable.
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» on 09.24.09 @ 11:23 PM
Estrich makes a good point about civil dialogue, and while I totally agree with her and John Locke I will add that it is possible to be both civil and passionate when we debate the ideas that foster the policies of our government. One of the ways we do that is to become informed and stick with the facts instead of veering off into unfounded conspiracies, or trying to imitate the professional “opinio-tainment” industry media pundits like Beck, Limbaugh, et al.
Andy M, if you listened closely to Obama’s speech he didn’t call anyone who disagreed with him a liar. He went out of his way to welcome honest disagreement and constructive contributions from the Republicans. He said the death panel rumor was a lie, and he was absolutely right to call it such. That lie didn’t come from people interested in honest debate, it came from people trying to incite fear and confusion, which should not be tolerated by anyone, nor considered mere “disagreement” for even a moment. On the other hand, Joe Wilson’s charge of lying was in fact wrong; Obama wasn’t lying when he said illegal immigrants were excluded from services in the health care bill.
There are plenty of ways to engage in civil, passionate, fact-based debate, but throwing around unfounded rumors and insults is immature and a waste of everyone’s time.
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