MysteriousFaith

Sharing Sorrow with a Fallen Enemy

The next couple of weeks are going to be some of the headiest moments of political intrigue since Watergate. By the end of the week, Tom Delay will surrender to the Texas court where an arrest warrant has been issued for him. The prosecutor investigating the Valerie Plame leak may well indict Presidential adviser Karl Rove in the near future. Many pundits are suggesting the indictment will go as high as Vice President Cheney himself. Now is the wrong time to gloat; this is, regardless of your political persuasion, a bad thing for the country. As with most crises it will force upon America choices to either expect more of our leaders or to simply resign ourselves to a level of cynicism caustic to a republic. The very real potential exists to drive a further wedge into American culture between three increasingly polemic groups: conservatives, liberals and the disaffected majority. People insincerely and illegally gather power regardless of what political stripe they are grouped into; the most recent stumbles within the conservative political movement has nothing to do with conservative ideology and everything to do with the ideology of power.

Only one thing should win in the political forum – the right ideas. Unfortunately, political power is often times wielded by people who know how to pit people against one another and special interests against other equally entrenched groups. Of all the reasons to delight in seeing Rove and Delay fall perhaps the best is that both have deliberately made careers out of creating wedge issues that divide people. However, ultimately men such as these are to be found in every political camp at every time in history. Of import is that these men come to power only when people with good ideas cease to involve themselves in the public sphere. A simple challenge now exists in American politics: will we further descend into cynicism, anger and vitriol or will we attempt to rise above them and look for good solutions to those problems that actually matter the most in society? The response to the fear of 9/11 led to an uneven and poorly executed war in Iraq; similarly, an insipid purely political response to these crises will do nothing meaningful within the bloated American political culture.

It is true the potential fall of Karl Rove is going to illuminate weaknesses in President Bush many have been aware of since Bush was a candidate. In an equally relevant problem, the coming three years of Bush’s presidency may reveal a presidency afloat in a world that desperately needs anchored leadership. Bush’s foibles may grow beyond petty frustrations into raw open wounds that fester into a deeper desire for meaningful change and meaningful leadership. Much more problematic is the question of whether if Bush’s grasp of the world is as one-dimensional as many fear what direction will he attempt and take the country? This is a haunting question and should not dissuade anyone from recognizing the potential problems in front of American democracy. However, even with this in mind, the answer to the problem of Bush’s potential wandering is not solely to attack him; it is to offer our own ideas about where the country should be going.

Within my own limited readership are people who are of similar political persuasions as I. It is to these people that I am primarily writing: I beg of you and demand of myself a level of graciousness and a depth of desire for real solutions that has not previously always been a part of our political attitudes. The wrong thing to do now is to pour salt in the wound. A healthy political system has productive dialogue between people that disagree with each other but believe that in the act of wrestling with truth compromise shapes the best solutions. If we respond to the parts of the conservative movement that are angry and brittle with equally mean spirits, the opportunity to fashion real compromise and progress will diminish.

Now is the time to set aside bitterness and to present our own ideas. This is not the time to gather political power just because it is available; now is the time to present ideas that previously were not on the table because people were not genuinely ready for the necessary level of change. I am unclear as to whether or not this crisis in conservative leadership will change the attitudes of personalities like Hannity, Coulter and Limbaugh who thrive on vitriol and hubris. Appealing to people whose ideology is embodied by these people is probably not relevant; however, the majority of the American citizenry cares about solutions more than politics, ideas more than power. If the rudderless liberalism can find direction and drink deeply from the depths of its own well, it could reinvigorate the American political scene. Now is the time for graciousness, to realize that every political body has people within it who grab power for all of the wrong reasons. The conservative movement is going through its own dark night; the response of liberalism must not further darken an already distressed American moment.

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• October 19, 2005

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