On: First world problems -- Concerning the public conduct and character of American discourse

by: Joshua Howell

Mayor Booker on Meet the Press

Two weeks ago, galvanized by what he perceived as a lack of focus on important issues, Newark Mayor Cory Booker took to Meet Press to bemoan the state of American discourse. Said the popular Democrat, “This kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides. It’s nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough. Stop attacking private equity, stop attacking Jeremiah Wright. This stuff has got to stop because what it does is it undermines, to me, what this country should be focused on. It’s a distraction from the real issues.”

Ho hum. Mr. Booker is but one in a string of recent commentators to criticize the supposed increasing toxicity of American debate. The Obama surrogate would rather talk about tax cuts, discretionary spending and other facets of President Obama’s record.

Of course, after realizing his political faux pas, Mr. Booker quickly (and nauseatingly?) reversed his position: “Let me be clear,” he said, “Mitt Romney has made his business record a center piece of his campaign. He’s talked about himself as a job creator, and therefore, it is reasonable -- and in fact I encourage it -- for the Obama campaign to examine that record and to discuss it. I have no problem with that. In fact, I believe that Mitt Romney, in many ways, is not being completely honest with his role and his record, even while a business person, and is shaping it to serve his political interest, not necessarily including all the facts of his time [at Bain].”

(Question: Is it humorous, hypocritical or both for Mr. Booker to flip-flop as if he were a tossed coin? First questioning Mitt Romney’s role at Bain goes too far and now the former governor is dishonest? Pick a gear and stay in it.)

Sure American discourse occasionally crosses the line -- both Rush Limbaugh labeling Sandra Fluke a “slut” and Democrats declaring a GOP “War on Women” come to mind -- but mourning this overabundance of political commentary seems equivalent to criticizing Chick-fil-a for being closed on Sundays. Yes it’s bothersome, but ultimately it’s a first world problem only the privileged have time to decry. All told, what would Chen Guangcheng have sacrificed to obtain such decadence in his native China?

American discourse isn’t becoming increasingly toxic; while no less energetic, it’s increasingly more politically correct and tuned out. It’s as if it were a bombastic John Williams’ score with the volume turned down.

Consider America’s first reelection campaign between incumbent John Adams and challenger Thomas Jefferson. In a widely circulated pamphlet titled “Concerning the Public Conduct and Character of John Adams, Esq., President of the United States,” Alexander Hamilton lambasted President Adams by calling him “far less able in the practice, than in the theory of politics.”

Mr. Hamilton claimed President Adams had an “extreme egotism of the temper;” was sick with “imagination sublimated and eccentric;” and “propitious neither to the regular display of sound judgment, nor to steady perseverance in a systematic plan of conduct.” These defects were to be compounded with President Adams’ “unfortunate foibles of a vanity without bounds, and a jealousy capable of discoloring every object.”

Is a steel-worker calling Governor Romney a "vampire" an equitable form of character assassination?

The KKK featured in an LBJ ad.

Fast-forward to the 1964 Goldwater-Johnson election. Compare Mr. Obama’s “inappropriate” One Chance video to Johnson’s now (in)famous ad in which a young, innocent little girl is killed via nuclear explosion. Contrast the Democrats’ attempt to tie Donald Trump like an albatross around the neck of Mitt Romney, to the LBJ campaign ad which said: “‘We represent the majority of the people in Alabama who hate niggerism, Catholicism, Judaism and all the isms of the whole world,’ so said Robert Creel of the  Alabama Ku Klux Klan. He also said: ‘I like Barry Goldwater, he needs our help!’”

When Lady Bird Johnson campaigned in the South for her husband, she frequently had to delay her speeches while she waited for chants of “Lyndon Johnson is a communist, Johnson is a Nigger-lover!” to die down. Would Michelle Obama be treated similarly?

Fellow journalists, commentators and columnists, America is perfectly fine. Until such time as President Obama releases a video in which a little girl is destroyed by some weapon of mass destruction, until such time as he is deemed a “f*gg*t lover” because of his support for same-sex marriage, cease and desist with the moralizing.

It is, in a word, nauseating.