Bucks County Herald – September 24, 2009

Joe Gable, Rick Santorum

Dear Friends,

Good morning. My readers know that I occasionally speak to former State Senator Ed Howard’s class at Delaware Valley College. One of those students is Joe Gable, a retired resident from Warwick Township. He responded to my recent column about civility in a letter to the editor. Here it is.

“I suggest that Mr. Meredith needs to get his facts correct about the march in Washington, “Gable began. He was referring to conservatives who were protesting the health care reforms proposed by the Democrats in congress. In addition to health care, the marchers were unhappy with the financial bailouts and the size of the national debt.

“It [the march] was not to protest the Obama Presidency,” Gable continued. “It was to protest the legislation for health care that includes a government managed insurance plan. I am shocked that Mr. Meredith called a few hundred thousand protesters “rabble.” That was not very civil of Mr. Meredith.

“Sad to say, in any group (on the left or right) there will always be radicals who are vocal and get the news media’s attentions, look deeper into the story of why and who was in Washington.

“Mr. Meredith singles out radicals like Limbaugh, Hannity but ignores radicals on the left like Oberman and Maddow. Why? Why does he [Meredith] ignore that Joe Wilson’s opponent also had a substantial increase in his fund raising?

“The school district also did not allow President Regan and Bush (the first) to speak, and now by not allowing President Obama means three strikes…the Central Bucks School district Superintendent is out, or should be.

“Why not bring back Amy Vanderbilt’s rules for good manners, “The Complete Book of Etiquette” and encourage parents to teach it at home and why not in elementary school? Something to think about.”

Joe Gable is correct. I should have included Oberman and Maddow as well. I was so upset with George W. Bush’s Presidency that I started watching Oberman and Maddow because they were so critical of the Bush administration. I should remind myself that the bullies on the left are really no different from the bullies on the right. All of them are entertainers and they provide megaphones for their listeners.

But I stray.

Last week, the Inquirer’s editorial on September 18 led with this headline: “Civility takes it on the chin.”

The editorial singled out South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson, rapper Kanye West and tennis star Serena Williams for bad behavior. “Their boorishness raises the question: What has happened to public decorum?”

Here are the editorial’s key points:

1. Respect and good manners seem dead these days, and misbehavior has taken their place.

2. Celebrities and politicians aren’t the only ones guilty of such behavior. The contentious town hall meetings held in cities around the country to debate health-care reform were a perfect example of where free speech collides with incivility.

3. Wilson, West, and Williams should be role models for young people, including aspiring politicians, entertainers, and athletes. Instead, they put on unconscionable displays of how not to act in public.

The lack of civility from these three W.’s underscore a need for this country to return to a gentler time, when good manners and civility were the rule, and people tried to disagree without being disagreeable.

Former President Jimmy Carter asserted that racism was behind Congressman Wilson’s breach of civility. Fortunately, President Obama has distanced himself from Carter’s conclusion.

Colin Powell, the former Secretary of State, discounts the racial implication but blames the partisan culture of the Internet and cable news, which amplifies the more extreme voices.

In the New York Times (Sept. 17), Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster, said that some race-based discomfort was inevitable, especially among very conservative white voters who see Mr. Obama’s rise as reflecting a shift in the social order that comes at their expense.

In 20 years, the official color of America will be tan. That’s because American Asians and Hispanics are growing at an accelerated pace. The American Caucasian race is stuck and the black race is declining slightly. Today, demographers tell us that whites are in the minority in Arizona, California, and New Mexico.

Finally, did you see that Rick Santorum may be considering a run for the Presidency in 2012? The former Pennsylvania Senator will be speaking to conservative activists in Iowa next month.

“Santorum, known nationally for his outspoken opposition to abortion, could find support among the Christian conservatives who dominate Iowa’s GOP caucuses,” the Inquirer reported September 18.

Santorum has been out of office since 2006, when he lost his bid for a third term to Senator Bob Casey by 18 percentage points. Why did Santorum take such a beating? I think that there were two main reasons.

First, the sitting Republican President was very unpopular. The public blamed President Bush for initiating a war in Iraq that should not have been waged. Rather than shrinking the federal government as he had promised, it was expanding. The federal debt was skyrocketing. And the Great Recession began during his watch.

Second, Santorum was marginalized. He’d become the prince of the far right…from religion to economics. As long as hard liners on the right lead the Republican Party, it has little chance to become the majority in the congress or win the presidency.

That’s one of the reasons why I think the GOP is headed down the same road that the Whig Party traveled in 1856.

Sincerely,

Charles Meredith