As much as Jon Stewart makes me believe it is, the extreme partisanship
of today is no laughing matter. It might be humorous if it were limited only to the
halls of Congress, but today, the bitter partisanship plaguing American
democracy extends to every big city and small town across the United States.
Look no further than the billboards dotting highways from sea to shining sea accusing us of committing such extremes as bigotry and murder.
The fact is that partisanship is meant to work, and it certainly can.
Partisanship is productive to the extent that it fosters vigorous debate in the
United States. Conversely, however, partisanship is harmful to the extent that it
limits collaborative policymaking. Unfortunately, today the scales tilt
overwhelmingly towards the harmful side.
If this were not so, broadcast news would not have needed countdown
clocks that nearly reached zero last August when the United States was scheduled
to lose all borrowing authority. If this were not so, our personal politics would be
more nuanced than what can fit on a bumper sticker. If this were not so, Olympia
Snowe would stay in the Senate, Obama would lose his photoshopped-Nazi
mustache, and Romney would be free of the fabricated online stories painting him
as a racist.
So how do we fix it? While not audacious enough to believe I have the
“silver bullet” to fix all the problem of split screen American politics, I propose
one honorable way to begin. I believe responsible journalists and concerned
politicians should take a lead by changing the name and format of the
“Presidential Debates” this fall to something more closely resembling
“Presidential Dialogues.” Albeit a small change, this would shift the paradigm in
terms of how our leaders interacted and how our journalists discussed American
politics.
There is no doubt that small rhetorical shifts can significantly alter our
understanding of political issues. My hope is that it could change our
understanding of American politics itself, too. For example, the conceptual
difference between “illegal alien” and “undocumented worker” is as vast as the
Rocky Mountain Range. We know too that referring to the peace-loving Muslim-Americans around us as “Americans” instead of “potential terrorists” has
important repercussions for their citizenship rights. My hope is that encouraging
journalists to facilitate “dialogue” this Fall instead of moderating (inevitably
partisan) “debate” would have equally important repercussions on the way we
perceive the media, our leaders, and ourselves as a people.
Creative policymaking has always led our country in the right direction,
and we should not worry to ask our experienced journalists to facilitate such
productive dialogue between our politicians.
In fact, we should seriously worry if we continue not to.
