Is It Finally Time to Stop Being so Damned "Nice?"
“When they go low, we go high.” These were the words of a political catchphrase first made famous by First Lady Michelle Obama at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. “When they go low, we go high,” she said while discussing how to best “handle bullies” in support of Hillary Clinton’s bid for the White House. Her motto quickly caught on. Even Secretary Clinton herself used it to defend herself against then-Republican candidate Donald Trump a few months later during their final presidential debate. “Going low is easy, which is why people go to it,” the former First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State told Oprah Winfrey in 2020. “It’s easy to go low. It’s easy to lead by fear. It’s easy to be divisive. It’s easy to make people feel afraid. That’s the easy thing and it’s also the short-term thing . . . . When I want to go low, it’s all about my own ego. It’s not about solving anything.... It’s about seeking revenge on the thing that happened to you.”
For quite some time, many of us - mostly Democrats and Independents, but a handful of Republicans to boot - have found Michele Obama’s pronouncement to be on the money; an accommodating, well-conceived and gracious response to irresponsible political lunacy. But now, after having lived through the first six-months of the Biden presidency - which has, in the main been quite successful despite what the opposition would have their core backers believe - have begun reconsidering Mrs. Obama’s bon mot. To wit:
When they go low, we might well consider going even lower;
When they lie, we must call it out in 1,000 decibel syllables;
When they insult, we should return fire;
When they use fear instead of a political platform, we must boldly proclaim what our positions are.
It’s easier said than done . . .
For as long as many of us can remember, it simply hasn’t been in Democratic DNA to “go low.” Holding our heads up high and traveling a road of higher elevation has been both our wont and our custom. The party of FDR, JFK, LBJ, Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden has produced few - if any - demagogues. Oh sure, back in the days of the “solid south” there were any number of Democratic S.O.Bs and racist brutes to make us quake in our brogues and loafers. But that was then and now is now . . . when the brutes and liars, the fictionalizing fearmongers and abject bigots all seem to be products what was once proudly called “The party of Lincoln.” Today. it is “The party of Trump,” and whereas it was founded on the lofty principles of honesty, humanity and justice for all, today it is swirling around a toilet bowl overflowing with grifters, gougers and alarmist prophets of doom. In these days of paranoid Cassandras, can we continue to afford “going high” when they persist in remaining “low?”
In a recent article entitled For Republicans, ‘Crisis’ Is the Message as the Outrage Machine Ramps Up the New York Times’ Jonathan Weisman summarizes the above by noting: House Republican leaders would like everyone to know that the nation is in crisis. There is an economic crisis, they say, with rising prices and overly generous unemployment benefits; a national security crisis; a border security crisis, with its attendant homeland security crisis, humanitarian crisis, and public health crisis; and a separate energy crisis. These seemingly disparate issues have one thing in common: they are all meant to scare the pants off of Republicans and reinforce the absolute necessity of ridding America of the “Communist/Socialist Democrats.”
For fans of Fox News, News Max and One America News America is on verge of becoming a Marxist dictatorship. The supreme enemies of the state are President Biden (whom, they claim, is suffering from significant mental deficits), Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (both of whom are pushing an obvious Socialist agenda), the six House members making up “The Squad” (who are all virulent anti-Semitic racists) and Dr. Anthony Fauci (whom Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has accused of being "criminally liable" for allegedly helping to create the COVID-19 "bioweapon” and then making a personal fortune off of it. Then too, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the loudest and most pugnacious of all Republicans, has been telling anyone who will listen that that President Biden's face-to-face meeting this past Wednesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Switzerland was a “disaster” which showed that American leader “has no idea who Putin is.” And let’s not to forget about Vice President Kamala Harris, she has come under fire for not having visited the nation’s Southern Border while on a recent diplomatic mission to Guatemala and Mexico.
Yes indeed: according to Trumpeters, QAnon aficionados and other assorted conspiratorialists, there is so much to be fearful of . . . and we haven’t even mentioned the teaching of Critical Race Theory (a.k.a. “Lessons in ‘how to hate America’”), stolen elections, the participation of transgender athletes participating in high school sports, and the taking away of oh so many liberties from “real” Americans by “forcing” them to become vaccinated against COVID-19 and confiscating all their automatic weapons.
As anyone who follows national politics closely knows, there is a lot of tension and dislocation within the Republican Party. While many give the public impression of being 100% dyed in the wool supporters of the former president, in reality, it is not truly political support they are expressing . . . it is a fear of falling out of favor with their “beloved leader” and facing an even more stridently pro-Trumpeter in the 2022 primary. About the only tie that binds Republicans together is outrage . . . and fear-mongering. Outrage at what the “Socialistic Democrats” are planning for America, and the spreading of abject fear. In his aforementioned Times “memo,” Jonathan Weisman noted that “House Republicans, still overwhelmingly in the thrall of Donald J. Trump, have learned over the last four years that grievance, loudly expressed, carries political weight, especially with their core voters.
In other words, House and Senate Republicans are already in full mid-term election mode, stressing not political policies or plans, but the need for a one-party Congress. They have made abundantly clear that they will stand up defeat whatever Democrats seek to enact, and live up to the old saw that “the best defense is a good offense.” It also keeps them from having to deal in any way, shape or form with the cataclysm of January 6.
Republicans have long been far better than Democrats at imparting a sense of impending crisis. Well, isn’t it about time that the Democrats learn from their so-called “friends across the aisle?” Republicans have long been better than Democrats at imparting a sense of crisis. How many remember the Solyndra crisis? Congressional Republicans made the failed solar company a household name back in 2011, with heated news conferences, accusatory hearings and angry statements, when the solar company went bankrupt and left the Obama administration — and the taxpayers — the bill for a $535 million federal loan guarantee. This week, an electric pickup truck plant in Lordstown, Ohio, midwifed by the previous president, lost its top executives, its prototype burst into flames and it is on the brink of economic collapse. And yet, there hasn’t been word one emanating from the Biden White House, Speaker Pelosi’s office or any Democrat of note. As we used to say in high school, “There are times when you just have to ‘show some hair.’” If they really tried, Democrats could make Lordstown the new Solyndra.
Then too, there was the 2012 deadly terrorist attack on Benghazi in Libya, which became a two-year ordeal for Hillary Clinton, thanks to the Republican outrage machine. Literally dozens of congressional hearings were held, all seeking to turn the then-Secretary of State into the guilty party. It wasn’t until late June 0f 2016 that the the House Select Committee on Benghazi issued its final report, finding no new evidence of culpability or wrongdoing by Secretary Clinton in the Libya that left four Americans dead. The 800-page report delivered a broad rebuke of the Defense Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department — and the officials who led them — for failing to grasp the acute security risks in Benghazi, and especially for maintaining outposts there that they could not protect. And keep in mind, that all of the committees which held hearings were chaired and staffed by Republicans.
Then there was the botched military attack ordered by President Trump in Niger, in which 4 American soldiers died. Not only did the Republican-controlled Congress fail to look into this tragedy which led to the largest loss of American troops during combat in Africa since the 1993’s “Black Hawk Down” debacle in Somalia; the president fumbled the name of one of the dead and told a grieving widow her husband “knew what he signed up for.” This debacle quickly became forgotten, due mostly to the Democrats keeping their mouths shut. Once again, Democrats failed to explain to the American public the gross culpability, insensitivity and incompetence of the other guys.
I say it is time to stop being so damned nice and quit “going high” whenever Republicans “go low.” The traditional Republican playbill, which for eons has stressed “more freedom for individuals with lower taxes, a stronger economy and a safer nation,” has all but evaporated amid a constantly shifting menu of crises and outrages. For whatever reason, most Democratic leaders don’t believe the Republicans’ crisis talk is working, beyond spinning out clicks for right-wing media outlets and Facebook algorithms that thrive on outrage over such things as the decision by Dr. Seuss’s estate to cease publishing works that include egregious racial and ethnic stereotypes or the switch by Hasbro to a non-gendered brand name for its iconic plastic toy, now known as Potato Head. Democrats who truly believe this, do so at their own political peril.
It seems to me that if Democrats really, truly want to counter the Republican “world of crisis,” they must stop going high and, with all apologies to Michelle Obama, attack the current Republican strategy by calling a spade a spade, and replacing that spade with a full-throttled agenda. Democrats are not pernicious Socialists; Republicans are not prideful Patriots.
It’ time to stop being so damn nice, and start fighting pernicious fire with the power of full-throated truth.
Copyright©2021 Kurt F. Stone