I was talking to a friend the other day and he was bemoaning the fact that his mailbox has been over-flowing lately with political advertising from all kinds of different candidates and ballot measures wanting his vote in the big mid-term elections.
“And if it’s not my mailbox being stuffed with political flyers,” said my friend, “it’s my telephone ringing off the bloody hook with some phone bank message asking for me to vote for this or that proposition. Plus, it seems like every other ad on television, or the radio is a political one and most of them are so misleading and dishonest that it’s almost funny if it wasn’t so sad. Do those very well-paid ad agencies who create all that garbage actually think we are that stupid? To tell you the truth, I often decide on who or what I’m going to vote for or against by how much advertising I get from their campaigns.”
“What do you mean?” I asked with interest.
“Well, I simply figure that whoever or whatever has all that money to blow on political ads is being supported by the big money interests, who are never interested in my life. And now that our beloved Supreme Court has made Citizen’s United the law of the land, with another one of those poorly thought out five to four decisions, the floodgates are wide-open, and our political system is awash in special interest money like never before. That only makes it easier for the very well-financed extremists in this country to polarize things even worse than they already are, and that is simply not good for democracy. If we don’t all start pulling on the same rope soon, we’re going to have a country that can’t get anything positive done.”
Years ago, with the help of a book entitled “Founding Brothers” by Joseph Ellis (which my son gave to me one Christmas), I was reminded that when it comes to American politics it has, and always will be, a very loud shouting match between often ruthless adversaries who see the world very differently.
From the day our Founding Fathers pulled off their “Miracle in Philadelphia” to the present, America has always been a messy political work in progress. In fact, Ellis argues that politicians have been basically fighting the same battle over and over again, although they have called themselves by different names from time to time. But whether it’s been the Jeffersonians vs. the Hamiltonians, or States Rights believers vs. Unionists, or Democrats vs. Republicans, or liberals vs. conservatives, true believers have never shied away from the lowest means imaginable to win the political day, and we should not be too terribly surprised or saddened when they continue to do so.
And for those who believe that politics has never been nastier than it is today, and that it has now reached a point where it is destroying the average citizen’s urge to participate, Ellis reminds us that today’s rhetoric is nothing compared to that which was unleashed in the earliest days of our country.
“Historians have labeled the 1790s `The Age of Passion’ for good reason,” writes Ellis, “for in terms of shrill adversary rhetoric, flamboyant displays of ideological intransigence, intense personal rivalries, and hyperbolic claims of imminent catastrophe, it has no equal in American history.”
Our Founding Fathers certainly didn’t shy away from making things personal, either. For instance, John Adams despised Alexander Hamilton and often referred to him as “the bastard brat of a Scottish peddler”; Tom Pain was known to pray for the death of George Washington; Thomas Jefferson secretly hired a poison-pen writer to publish any dirt he could find on John Adams, only to later discover that same writer was penning newspaper articles claiming Jefferson had a black mistress; and Alexander Hamilton’s well-known view that he considered Aaron Burr to be “unprincipled and despicable” eventually led to a duel between the two which left Hamilton mortally wounded on a New Jersey field of honor.
So, you may ask, why has all this nasty political bickering continued on down through the ages? The answer turns out to be very simple, because the stakes are so very high. America, with all of its imperfections and contradictions, has always been a highly problematic project. Men freely governing themselves is not and never will be a stroll in the park. Plus, whether we want to admit it or not, liberals and conservatives both have a legitimate claim to our political truth and “speak from the deepest impulses of the American Revolution”.
So, with yet another important election getting closer all the time, history tells me that the political verbiage is only going to get nastier. And when it reaches the point, as it always does, when like my friend, I can’t stand to view one more political ad or listen to one more candidate debate, I will simply force myself to recall the following words of Frederick Douglass: “Those who profess to freedom, yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing, rain without thunder and lightning, and the ocean without the awful roar of its mighty waters.”