Posted by
PeterE on Thursday, August 30, 2007 11:15:18 AM
Published yesterday (8/22/2007) on WSJ Online. Jay Cost is an editor on RealClearPolitics.com - see his Horse Race Blog. Mr. Cost's take on partisan politics goes someway in my direction:
"The psychological embrace of a partisan worldview is easy and satisfying. Both partisan narratives are easy to understand. Each helps us make judgments about a whole host of things for which we lack direct referents. Each is psychologically satisfying. Few things in life are more pleasurable than righteous anger. However, neither is all that valid on an empirical level. Embracing one might enable us to identify one actor as good and another as evil. It might allow us to feel good about ourselves. But it will not move us any closer to the reality of our politics. In fact, it will move us further from it."
Cost is writing about the way that certain Democrats have vilified Karl Rove, based on taking hearsay and assuming the worst about Mr. Rove's motivation. Instead, Cost argues that there is good reason to make a "good faith assumption" about the motivations of political actors (and anyone in the glare of media).
Such as assumption certainly would help to avoid the brazen misrepresentation of another human being who happens to be involved in the art/war of politics. And Cost reinforces his position by quoting Madison on the function in a republic of partisan infighting. It is another means of dividing power.
But surely after the embarrassing mess of the "debate" on Iraq, it is time to ask whether this conflict model is the best way to conduct politics in the world's only superpower.