A bitter brew, toxic politics

Sen. Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine) in 1950 excoriated McCarthyism, declaring “I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny – Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear.”  Her words apply today.   President Obama has criticized hyperbolic, demagogic Republican rhetoric, bemoaning an unhealthy political culture in which “outrageous” attacks are commonplace.

Demagoguery, fear-mongering, cynicism, and pandering make politics a zero-sum game, leading to gridlock.   Both parties are guilty.  Each demonizes the other, pandering to its own base.  America needs leaders who place country above party and view compromise not as a betrayal of principal but as the lubricant of democracy.

{mosads}Republicans have shown a flare for demagoguery and ad hominem attacks in this presidential campaign.  Donald Trump accused Mexico of exporting murderers and rapists to the U.S., while warning of nefarious conspiracies at home and abroad.  He predicted there would not be “another Black president for generations.”  Mike Huckabee warned that the nuclear deal with Iran would lead to a second holocaust.  Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called Obama the “leading sponsor of state terrorism.”

Cruz and Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), firebrands both, contributed to the 2013 government shutdown.  While Trump is a modern-day nativist, Know Nothing, Cruz’s rhetoric harks back to Barry Goldwater, who in 1964 declared, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”  Ben Carson, a rhetorical pyromaniac, compared today’s America to Naziism and Obamacare to slavery.

Former Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) asserts, arguably correctly, that Republicans are so rightwing Ronald Reagan could not be elected today.  Ike would have no chance either.

Obama and the Democrats are equally guilty.  Obama won the 2008 presidential election, promising “hope and change” and a post-partisan era.  Instead, Obama has exacerbated polarization and partisanship.

When Democrats controlled Congress, he rammed through Obamacare.  With Republicans controlling the House of Representatives after 2010, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared House bills dead on arrival.  When Republicans took the Senate in 2014, Obama circumvented Congress using executive orders and regulatory agencies.  He even arguably bullies the Supreme Court.

In Obama’s 2012 reelection bid, he derided Republicans: “You’ve got their [jobs] plan, which is — Let’s have dirtier air, dirtier water, and [fewer] people with health insurance.”   Obama consigliere Dan Pfeiffer compared Republicans to “suicide bombers, kidnappers, and arsonists.”  The president called the 2015 Republican budget a “Trojan horse” for “social Darwinism.” 

Pundit Stuart Rothenberg stated that “Republicans never wanted to give Obama a chance.  But he never wanted to compromise.”

Hillary Clinton arguably takes cynicism and pandering to new heights.  She doubled down on divisive, identity politics.  She is resorting to the hackneyed tactic of accusing the GOP of a “war on women.”  She says Republicans are guilty of a “sweeping effort to disempower and disenfranchise people of color, poor … and young people.”  A faux populist demagogue, she is effectively calling Republicans bigots and surrogates of a new economic oligarchy.

Clinton is a cynical chameleon. She renounced her husband’s pragmatic centrism, her moderate, hawkish Senate record, and some of her hardline and free trade positions as Secretary of State.  Clinton is now more McGovernite than Clintonite. Ironically, she is Nixonian in her handling of email and Clinton foundation scandals, with Nixon’s “bunker mentality” and tactics of “modified limited hangout” and “stonewalling.”

If Obama regards Republicans as extremists, one wonders how he views Bernie Sanders, a latter-day William Jennings Bryan, Eugene V. Debbs, or Huey Long.  Unlike FDR, Sanders does not want to preserve capitalism, but replace it with socialism.

The U.S. cannot afford hyper-partisanship or gridlock.  It needs politicians who inspire and are uniters, not dividers.  Lincoln appealed to the “better angels of our nature.”  FDR declared, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”  Ronald Reagan said, “To grasp and hold a vision, that is the very essence of successful leadership.”

A president, to govern effectively, must master the art of compromise.  Great presidents have crafted bipartisan legislative majorities and compromised, except on high principle.  LBJ, architect of landmark social welfare and civil rights legislation, mastered transactional politics.  Reagan denigrated the notion that compromise is a “dirty word,” saying that in negotiating “you seldom got everything you asked for.” 

The Founding Fathers envisioned divided government, instituting Constitutional checks and balances.  They also envisioned the peoples’ representatives rising above politics and engaging in compromise to ensure the nation’s welfare and progress.

Davis is a retired intelligence analyst, who worked with the Army Special Operations Command, Defense Intelligence Agency, Office of National Drug Control Policy and CIA.