It is neither startling, nor particularly illuminating, that Jimmy Carter was the highest profile Dem to date to go hard for the race card. For the right, President Carter is a long-standing punchline, and for the left, there has long been an effort to focus more on his life after leaving office than anything he (may or may not have) accomplished while President. What President Carter thinks of the current political dynamic isn’t all that relevant, so for all but those spoiling for a partisan tussle, his rhetorical over-reach and descent into cheap hyperbole about President Obama’s racist opposition will ultimately come and go without much ado – as it should.
Jimmy Carter takes on Obama's detractors.
There are those on the right who love having the chance to wallow in that kind of point-counterpoint since they too deal in one-dimensional absurdities, and are looking to land a live one on the line – especially when they’ve been starved for much of a haul since the 2006 elections. I’m not sure how many buses have video cameras, or how many of those bus cameras catch fights among kids, but I can’t recall too many making the news and top-tier talk shows like the Belleville, IL West High beating of a white student by black students did this week. Naturally, ol’ Rush Limbaugh had to get in and stir the pot with as extreme a statement as he can plausibly deflect criticism from, saying that this incident is somehow “…(of) Obama’s America”, and that “white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering…” With all that President Obama has undertaken and done to highlight real and meaningful differences between his vision for the country and the GOP’s, on what rational basis would one choose instead to connect the President with an inter-racial fight between high school kids on a bus in downstate Illinois? What of value for one party over the other – let alone the country – can be created from that debate? What of value did this discussion create?
None. But the benefit of the country isn’t behind either President Carter’s statement or Rush’s. Both of these men play the far end of their respective fields, so at this point, it’s unrealistic to expect they would bubble up into the headlines for something of great meaning to the majority, let alone anything which could be considered magnanimous or forward-thinking. Both men are playing to their base, and in the process, continuing the flood of bilge into tanks that have long been dangerously over-filled. This week, they deserve each other.
It is too soon to go as far with fear of the rhetoric as Nancy Pelosi did earlier in the past week – and perhaps in going there this early, she too only makes things worse – but those of us tired of the politics of the decade-to-date still have a chance to walk ourselves back to a more meaningful debate – one much less shrill, accusatory, and exaggerated. There is nothing easier than getting caught up in the spiral of escalating accusation and insinuation of “the other side” when one is frustrated, feeling powerless, or just plain riled-up. I am as guilty as anyone. It doesn’t pay.
Ultimately, I think the right will see just how much the 2008 Presidential election was one of reaction to a swing too far over the course of the Bush years. I hope for the sake of all of us they take the proper lesson from that. On the other side unfortunately, the left does not appear all that eager to play a prevent defense against answering their opposition’s past over-reaching with a whopper or two of their own. My inclination when confronted with the business-as-usual ridiculousness of American politics, is to numb myself to the process and devote my energies to other things, but these days have to be different.
If nothing else, time has shown me that it is best to measure twice and cut once. To choose hyperbole to thwart an opponent is to guarantee it will be used to thwart you, and given that our nation is faced with serious and chronic problems – the type requiring all-hands-on-deck in finding solutions – there simply isn’t time for so imprecise and uncontrollable a tool as that to be employed. If one truly measures twice -once to measure the impact of their actions on themselves, and a second time to measure the impact on the rest of us – I don’t believe ANY of us will need to go as far as we saw several high profile partisans do this week. To continue to accept this sort of thing out of those who we allow to have the floor in our national debate is to compound past mistakes with more-of-same, and at this point in our political life, I know for certain that we all know better.
Related posts:
- Now Dem’s Fightin’ Words
- Shirley Sherrod’s Words Were Taken Out of Context, Obama Admin Stands by Firing (Video)
Rudy Grahn Jr. is a former talk show host turned writer turned analyst who currently writes primarily on the personal on his weblog Rudayday.com. Rudy is also a digital photographer whose work has been featured on PBS, NBC, and web outlets like BoingBoing.com and The Morning News. His nickname “Rudayday” was conferred upon him by John Romano in the 20th Century. 
