Blogatron

Reasonable People

I missed the second debate and only caught up last night. It was disappointing to see that Bush pulled himself together for this one - I've read commentary that he seemed shrill and angry, but I think this posturing was quite deliberate and will play well with his base, where it's going to be read as Bush taking charge and rebounding from his dithering in Round 1. He went a little too far during that bizarre exchange with Charlie Gibson, but on the whole, I think he did just what he set out to do, stylewise, and that it'll work just like Rove undoubtedly planned it. The good thing is that he went into this debate on the defensive, needing to shore up confidence within his base rather than gaining new supporters, and there's only one chance left for him to do the outreach he could have accomplished here had he not been focused on damage control.

Mostly it was just more talking points ("Changed his mind! Wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time! We've gained jobs!" "90% of troops! I have a plan! They've lost jobs!"). Kerry had some good moments: hammering the deficit and the disintegrating coalition, picking apart Bush's ludicrous "I'm a good steward of the environment" claim, and, as has been discussed ad infinitum, his elegant response to the abortion question (look here for the transcript, almost at the bottom of the page).

There was something in that discussion that jumped out at me, something I found very telling. Bush, in responding to Kerry's careful discussion about the difference between his personal beliefs and the rights he would uphold as a leader, about the importance of education and funding for family planning around the globe, had this to say:

BUSH: I'm trying to decipher that.

My answer is, we're not going to spend taxpayers' money on abortion.

This is an issue that divides America, but certainly reasonable people can agree on how to reduce abortions in America. [Emphasis mine.]

That, to me, is the whole deal right there, that "reasonable people can agree." That's what sends this administration over the line from "I don't like their policies" to "They scare and infuriate me." Kerry gives a long, nuanced explanation which explicitly addresses how he thinks you can reduce abortions while still protecting the right to have one, and Bush responds with his "reasonable people can agree" and goes on to talk about banning partial-birth abortion, promoting parental consent, and the like. Bush might talk the talk about trying to understand where Kerry's coming from, but really he doesn't need to: as far as he's concerned, bans and restrictions are the one and only way that "reasonable people can agree" to reduce abortion statistics.

Bush doesn't need to decipher a damn thing, because he already has his answers and he goes backwards from there for the whys and the hows, and it's not just The Abortion Question but the whole shebang, don't you think? Isn't that what we've been told all along, in words and attitudes and deeds? "Reasonable people can agree" that there are WsMD in Iraq, and "reasonable people can agree" that when it turns out there aren't it doesn't matter because the world is better off, and "reasonable people can agree" that the US can go it alone if the whole world turns its back in disgust, and "reasonable people can agree" that the economy is getting better and the jobs that are slowly replacing our lost jobs are just fine even if they do pay less, and "reasonable people can agree" that marriage needs to be protected from activist judges, and so on and so forth. This little piece of linguistics is brilliant, because it takes all other opinions right off the table: express dissent, and you find yourself fighting not to be portrayed as an "unreasonable person" before you even get to make your case.

Bush wants us all to start from the same set of answers, and he lives in a world where we don't, and it scares me that he hasn't managed to accept or adapt to that somewhere in the last four years. I don't want a leader for whom the decisions come first and the reasoning second, because that leader will never, ever be able to grasp that there's validity to the opinions of someone who disagrees with him. He will assume that, just like him, these naysayers made their reasoning up to match their conclusions, so nothing they have to say by way of explaining themselves will really matter. And that will make the people who disagree with him a little - maybe a lot - less real. And one thing a leader needs is the ability to see the humanity, and the reality, of his opponents as well as his supporters, because like him or not we are all depending on him to a certain extent for our continued well-being.

When I was a kid my mom refused to ever use that "because I said so" crap when I challenged her authority - she always gave me a reason and, much to her dismay, occasionally discovered that she couldn't come up with a good one and had to change her parental rulings accordingly. She did this because she wanted me to respect rather than fear or resent her authority, and because by walking through the reasoning with me she could help me learn to make good decisions for myself. Should I expect less from my president? Surely reasonable people can agree that I should not.

Posted by hilatron at October 12, 2004 02:41 PM | TrackBack