The magazine of the North Carolina Center for Voter Education • Saturday May 19, 2012

The Myth of Civility
Congressman Joe Wilson’s outburst didn’t signal the death of civil political discourse, but was just another bitter chapter in the nation’s long history of partisan rancor

By Bryan Warner
Published: Sep. 22, 2009

RALEIGH - The look of shock and outrage on the face of Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it all.

A line had been crossed.  It was one thing for Republicans to boo the president or laugh derisively -- Democrats had done both to President George W. Bush when he addressed Congress.

No. This outburst was something different.  Too clear.  Too raw.  Too much.

“You lie!”  A lone voice had shouted in response to President Obama’s assurance that the various health-care plans under consideration by Congress would not provide coverage to illegal immigrants.

Pelosi looked piercingly toward the gaggle of GOP lawmakers, then turned to Vice President Joe Biden, his head bowed, melancholically shaking. 

“Joe Wilson,” Pelosi whispered, like a schoolteacher scribbling the name of an unruly pupil upon the blackboard.

Suddenly, the then-little-known backbencher from South Carolina stepped center stage in the viciously bitter state of modern American politics, knocking off the husband of outed CIA operative Valerie Plame as the most famous Joe Wilson in Washington.

The pundits and partisan flacks leapt into action.  What did Wilson’s outburst mean?  What was his motivation?  Did these two words uttered boorishly, foolishly by Wilson signal the death of civility in American politics?

Hardly.  It’s long been dead.  Perhaps it never existed.

Americans take some pride in the fact that our elected officials, for all their heated rhetoric, don’t come close to the combative outrageousness seen hurled at the British prime minister during his frequent grapples with Parliament across the pond.  Nor do we see in our Congress the frightful displays of fisticuffs that erupt in such places as the Taiwanese Parliament, where politicians wield the soles of the their shoes as blunt instruments.  And it goes without saying that the U.S. has been blessedly spared the brutality endured in other nations where violence-fueled coups are almost commonplace.

By comparison, American politics can seem as staid as a quilting bee.  But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a historical and contemporary tradition of incivility in American democracy.

A few examples.

George Washington has been exalted to demigod status by modern Americans.  But even the Father of Our Country was not spared the slings and arrows of political critics in the young Republic. Some allies of Thomas Jefferson printed polemical broadsides questioning President Washington’s state of mind and spread rumors of his senility when he drew too closely to Federalist advisors.

Soon after, Washington’s former treasury secretary and fellow charter member of the Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton, was shot and killed in a politically motivated duel with then-Vice President Aaron Burr.

And then there was the case of Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee, Revolutionary War hero, former governor of Virginia and father of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.  When a group of pro-war Democratic-Republicans stormed the offices of the Baltimore Federal Republican newspaper for its opposition to the War of 1812, Henry Lee defended the paper’s editor from the thuggish mob.

Lee suffered extensive injuries, dying six years later from complications related to the beating he received from the partisan assailants.  To put that into perspective, it would be as if John McCain -- like Lee a war hero and nationally known politician -- were beaten by a mob storming Fox News. 

Perhaps the most egregious case of American politicians gone wild is that of Democratic Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina -- the home state of Joe “You Lie” Wilson.

But quite unlike Wilson, Brooks preferred to speak softly and carry a big Gutta-percha wood walking cane, with which he tried to de-brain the skull of Sen. Charles Sumner, who had given a fiery speech denouncing pro-slavery Southerners using some salty language.  As a fellow congressman kept senators at bay with a pistol, Brooks bludgeoned Sumner on the Senate floor until the cane broke.

Though the attack shocked and outraged many Americans, Brooks found adulatory support from some South Carolinians, with several dozen sending him new canes, including one emblazoned: “Hit him again!”

Brooks deflected charges that he had intended to murder Sumner -- who thankfully recovered -- by arguing that if he wanted to kill the senator, he would have used a more effective weapon.  Apparently his fellow lawmakers found that logic airtight, as Brooks faced down an expulsion vote in Congress. (Note to members of Congress:  Shouting “You lie!” -- unacceptable.  Caning a senator -- just part of the grand legislative tradition.)

Such times make adolescent verbal outbursts on the floor of Congress seem less than mortal strikes to civil discourse.

That is not to say that the current level of political debate is desirable.  There are folks on the far left consumed by hatred for George W. Bush, with fringe elements claiming his conspiratorial complicity in the horrors of 9-11. There are folks on the far right consumed by hatred for Barack Obama, with fringe elements claiming him to be a Muslim Manchurian Candidate.

Unlike the first two centuries of the American experiment, we live in a time when a torrent of fire-and-brimstone partisan bile is spewed online and through the airwaves on a 24-hour basis.  (Indeed, Fox News and MSNBC seem so farcically obsessed with deriding each other that if the cable news wars were a romantic comedy, one would expect Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly to confess their secret love before the credits rolled.)

Never have we had so much noise and so little signal. Are we better off for it?

Rep. Wilson’s nationally televised outburst was not the death of civility in American politics.  It has been dead for quite some time -- if it ever lived at all, at least in a widespread manner. (Even the so-called “Era of Good Feelings” that shone for eight brief years in the 19th century seemed warm and fuzzy only to the one dominant party of the day.)

But perhaps Wilson’s words can serve as an opportunity for all sides of the political spectrum to take a deep breath.  Perhaps we can stop assuming the worst in those who see things differently from ourselves, and recognize that intelligent people of good intent can hold divergent viewpoints, but love this country just the same.

Perhaps we as a country will take this chance to agree to disagree, without being disagreeable.

Perhaps.

But given our nation’s long history of political incivility being profitably perpetuated by today’s pundits on the right and left, let’s not hold our breath.