On Partisanship

"All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They (political parties) serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests. "

-George Washington's Farewell Address, 1796

Evidence of Washington's wisdom is on full display today: Partisan hacks are seeking to make a scandal out of a cliche. A cliche used infinitely, by so many politicians, by John McCain himself, and by Barack Obama well before Palin was even chosen as a running mate.

We are in the stretch run of an election for Chief Executive Officer of the world's most powerful nation, and one of the candidates has taken the advice of his partisans to make a cliche an issue of major importance.

Does anyone even remember when the McCain campaign was about issues? I know it has not been since the Convention, where the major speeches were completely devoid of any policy positions. Instead, the McCain campaign simply adopted a new slogan, chose a running mate that allowed them to shift to identity politics (any criticism of Palin = misogyny), and made a run for a faction just large enough to win an election.

The hypocrisy of this is stunning. Just weeks ago, before the Dem convention, the McCain campaign focused, with much merit, on Obama's lack of specifics and reliance on star power. What a difference a dew weeks makes: today it is identity polics, factionalism, the "change" slogan, and no specifics whatsoever.

As I've mentioned on Rick Esenberg's blog, hypocrisy is the mothers' milk of partisan politics - it requires the constant justification by your side of that which you'd pillory on the other.

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Much more than hypocrisy, partisanship is a shortcut to thinking. Plaisted is somewhat right but mostly wrong when he complains constantly about talking-points based arguments from the right. Partisanship dictates, for those who allow it, people's opinions on any given issue. Therefore if a politician with the wrong letter after his or her name uses a cliche that can be stretched (to a mind-boggling extent) to be an attack, then it was an attack. If that politician has the right letter, then it is to be justified as just a cliche, or a remark taken out of context, or whatever else works.

This shortcut to partisanship, more than rank hypocrisy, is the biggest problem. Too many people are willing to tune out the ideas, and the small to large nuggets of truth in arguments made by people simply because of the letter after their name.