Ugly politics: How low can we go?

Updated 20m ago
By Bob Beckel and Cal Thomas

Cal Thomas is a conservative columnist. Bob Beckel is a liberal Democratic strategist. But as longtime friends, they can often find common ground on issues that lawmakers in Washington cannot. View the video version of this column at usatoday.com/news/opinion/or at USA TODAY's YouTube channel at youtube.com/usatoday.
Today: When politics gets ugly ... or uglier.

Bob: Watching politics in America today, I have a good sense of what it felt like to witness the lions devouring gladiators in Rome's Coliseum. No one is safe in the U.S. political Coliseum, and it seems that today, everyone is thirsty for blood.

Cal: The people seem to want new blood, and I'd say for good reason. In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll a week ago, 65% of people said they didn't think "most members of Congress" deserved re-election. Do you hear that, Speaker Pelosi and company?

Bob: As toxic as our political swamp is, at least we're not (yet) caning our opponents. In 1856, South Carolina Rep. Preston Brooks nearly beat to deathMassachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner, a strong abolitionist, with his cane on the floor of the U.S. Senate. You may have covered that incident, Cal. The uncivil actions on the floor of the House and on the Capitol grounds during the recent health care reform debate may not have been as physically brutal, but they were every bit as ugly.

Cal: Ageist! Actually, I was a young consultant to Abe Lincoln, urging him to run for president in a newly created Republican Party. I even taught him how to master the teleprompter, a skill apparently in high demand these days. But let's talk about short-term memory. I am amused when your friends on the left criticize us righties for using protest tactics you guys created. Remember Vietnam? You want to talk ugly? Or where was the left's outrage over the film that depicted the assassination of George W. Bush?

Bob: When Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights hero, gets called the N-word, and Bart Stupak is called a "baby killer," the state of discourse has hit an all-time low. Sure there have been unpleasant incidents over the years in Congress, but this poisoned atmosphere has been running unabated since the 2008 election.

Cal: There are many versions of what actually happened when Nancy Pelosi, Lewis and company marched up to Capitol Hill. What is not in dispute is that anti-Semitic insults have been hurled at House Republican Minority Whip Eric Cantor, who is Jewish. It's funny, though, that when Republicans stand on principle and oppose the president's socialist agenda, they are obstructionists, but when Democrats do the same thing, they are trying to save the country. What hypocrisy!

Bob: "Socialist agenda?" Really, Cal? You know better than that. I think the threat to Cantor was disgraceful, but so were the many similar threats against Democratic members.

Cal: Agreed.

Bob: The Republican House leadership disavowed the action of such supporters, but then proceeded to use the most inflammatory language in the health care debate that I have witnessed in 30 years of observing Congress.

Cal: You must have missed the remarks of California Democratic Rep. Pete Stark, who accused President George W. Bush on the House floor in 2007 of sending American soldiers to Iraq "to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement." And as Pat Buchanan noted in a recent column, the inner-city riots in the 1960s "were not the work of George Wallace populists or Barry Goldwater conservatives. They were the work of folks who went 'all the way with LBJ.' "

Bob: I like Pat, but he's not an objective historian.

Cal: History is history. But Bob, there's a palpable eagerness by too many in the news business to find the right-wing crazies and use them as a caricature for — a ha! — conservative thinkers. Yet the same journalists treated Bill Ayers, who tried to blow up the Pentagon, as a once-misguided, and perhaps misunderstood, liberal. And then the press thunks its collective head when Americans view news organizations as biased?

Bob: The incivility on display during the health care debate is extreme. That, we can agree on. And inflamed rhetoric and unlawful actions might fire up the base, but this turns off moderate voters who will be key in the midterm elections. Democrats are guilty, too.

Cal: OK, OK. We've got in our main points and don't want to get bogged down arguing. After all, we're supposed to be pursuing common ground. Do you see any in this fog of nastiness?

Bob: This is an election year, and Republicans smell blood. Some very good impartial election analysts like Charlie Cook at the National Journal see a real possibility Republicans could take the House back and maybe even the Senate. I agree the House is in play, but not the Senate. But I find it hard to imagine any Republicans willing to support this president's agenda going forward. The realist in me has the optimist in me in a hammerlock.

Cal: You might want to sit down, Bob, because I'm about to praise President Obama. Ready?

Bob: Ready. Though I feel like I better watch out for the pie-in-the-face gag. Go on.

Cal: Drill, baby, drill. The president's slight shift on offshore drilling for oil and gas is worthy of at least a polite opera clap from the conservative camp. It isn't everywhere I think it could be done, but Republicans have been trying to get the ban on exploration in our own backyard lifted for years. If this is our "Nixon goes to China" moment, I'll take it. I'm glad he now says he's for it.

Bob: You're a brave and fair man. I wish more conservatives would give the president credit for the drilling decision. In a sure sign that Obama's on the right track, The Wall Street Journal editorial page grudgingly, and tepidly, applauded the move, though like you wanted more. And The New York Times called it a " sensible" plan but wasn't exactly gushing, as it is prone to do with anything Obama.

Cal: I'm shocked to hear that!

Bob: Give Obama credit for challenging his green base. Greenpeace is up in arms over this one. After all, the president is reversing his campaign commitment to maintain the moratorium. Liberals and environmentalists are hopping mad.

Cal: That breaks my bleeding heart.

Bob: I'll bet. The president has also committed $8 billion to restart the moribund nuclear power industry. These decisions are the right ones if we are going to secure energy independence, but still, conservatives — save you — remain silent.

Cal: Energy independence is an American issue. Every president from Nixon on has vowed to pursue freedom from OPEC.

Bob: Yet the oil shackles are still in place.

Cal: Both parties are so afraid of giving any credit to a president of the other party that they've almost lost sight of what it means to be an American first. I don't care if the president gets credit for moving our country away from dependence on foreign oil as long as he does it and we can tap energy sources on our own turf. That would be a victory for all Americans. Come on, my fellow conservatives. You won't lose by encouraging the president when he does the right thing.

Bob: And maybe, just maybe, such small compromises could lead to larger ones.

Cal: In an ideal world, sure. But in this political world, there's no telling. Let's hope the drilling compromise is a sign of things to come. Americans could use a system that works for all of us, instead of just for the entrenched interests of Washington.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/fo ... 8_ST_N.htm