Quote of the Day: Where Is America’s Partisan Political Ugliness Heading?

Our political Quote of the Day comes from Time’s Joe Klein, who attended a health care reform town hall in Arkansas and asks the question I’ve asked here at TMV many times: just where is America’s accelerating trend towards political ugliness headed?

Klein expresses shock at the number of people at the meeting who were convinced that President Barack Obama is a communist — he talked to one woman who insisted there were four Communists in the administration (she is a talk radio listener) and writes:

I was later told by a local observer that many of these vomitous, disgraceful notions were the fruit of Glenn Beck’s fruitful imagination. “We are living Glenn Beck’s fantasy life,” said this audience member. The amazing thing remains not only the unwillingness of responsible Republicans–a term that is in danger of becoming an oxymoron–to call bull– on this, but also the willingness of many prominent Republicans to join in the slinging of garbage. Michelle Cottle reports that there are Republican-sanctioned efforts afoot to have parents not send their children to school on September 8 because the President is scheduled to address the nation’s school-children that day and they are afraid that he will fill their little heads with socialist propaganda. That is somewhere well beyond disgraceful.

Could I just say that the intensity of this getting pretty scary…and dangerous? We are heading toward a cliff and the usual brakes of civil discourse are not working. Indeed, the Republicans have the pedal to the metal–rushing us toward a tragedy far greater than the California health care forum finger-biting Karen describes below. [See TMV's earlier post on this story about a health care reform supporter biting off the finger of a health care reform opponent.] I’m usually not one to panic or be overly worried about the state of our country–even when we do awful things like invade Iraq and torture people, we usually right our course before long–but I have a sinking feeling about where we’re headed now. I hope I’m wrong.

For instance, putting aside screaming and accusatory partisan old and new media writings and broadcasts, here is how the AP describes Obama’s speech to school kids:

The president will speak directly to students Tuesday about the need to work hard and stay in school. His address will be shown live on the White House Web site and on C-SPAN at noon EDT, a time when classrooms across the country will be able to tune in.

Schools don’t have to show it. But districts across the country have been inundated with phone calls from parents and are struggling to address the controversy that broke out after Education Secretary Arne Duncan sent a letter to principals urging schools to tune in.

And here is an AP quote that shows just have much hatred and demonziation of those who do not agree with you has taken hold of America — just as if the bodysnatchers have taken over the bodies of people who might once have raged over issues, rather than try to politically define and discredit someone who sees things differently:

“As far as I am concerned, this is not civics education — it gives the appearance of creating a cult of personality,” said Oklahoma Republican state Sen. Steve Russell. “This is something you’d expect to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.”

So far districts in six states are refraining from showing Obama’s speech due to conservative parent complaints.

But Presidents and first ladies have talked to kids before in classrooms or White House encounters about the importance of hard work, staying in school, and thinking about the country. What’s different is that Obama is simply using old and new media to offer his talk to a wider school audience. Yet, in other times when demonization wasn’t king, people belonging to a different political party didn’t make their kids to stay home if JFK, Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan, or George Bush (who was at a school on September 11) spoke at a school. It wasn’t “Let’s hide the kids because this President doesn’t agree with me on some policies and if he says hello or stay in school he’ll have a magical power to brainwash them!” There were limits to partisanship. [The LA Times notes -- see update below -- that Democrats criticized President George HW Bush for a 1981 speech televised from an 8th grade classroom. What is different here is the demonization. Ronald Reagan spoke to school kids also and mentioned Republican principles.]

What has changed? The country.

We are now seeing the triumph of the talk radio political culture — a politics that now is framed in terms of high-concept sound bites, trying to affix labels to those who disagree on an issue, trying to push emotional hot buttons so that the political target is hated enough to serve as a catalyst for a goal (in the case of talk shows to grow and maintain an outraged audience; in the case of politics, to mobilize one side).

And when people say they fear where this is headed, just what does that mean? The bottom line is that there are fears that someone will get killed — someone on one side or another, or a political figure — which does not mean only Obama — or that a large number of people could get hurt of killed in some kind of political nutcase act.

But it isn’t just that.

The present frenzy suggests that the seeds are now being sowed for a mega-polarized America that could be almost ungovernable in the 21st century if this trend continues unabated.

If Republicans and conservatives make the very legitimacy of Obama his patriotism — even the safety of allowing little kids listen to him tell them to stay in school and think about helping their community — the issue, and link his name to Hitler and/or Nazism, precisely how do they think Democrats and the left will respond next time a GOPer is in power? How will the next Republican President be treated in terms of legitimacy and doing what he/she feels is in the best interest of the country? The bar on discourse is being lowered and lower and right now it’s touching the soil.

It’s a question that should give thoughtful Republicans — and there still are many of them — pause.

But so far we’re not seeing a pause.

Just a country seemingly heading towards a cliff.

UPDATE: The New Republic’s The Plank on the school boycott:

Tammy Bruce has gone so far as to encourage parents to keep their kids home that day. “Make September 8 Parentally Approved Skip Day. You are your child’s moral tutor, not that shady lawyer from Chicago,” she tweeted.

This is disgraceful. For starters, Obama’s message, as described in a press release from Ed Sec Arne Duncan, will stick to anodyne topics like the need to work hard and take responsibility for one’s own success (which once upon a time were values Republicans could cheer.) Admittedly, I don’t have an advance text, but I’ll bet a year’s supply of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey that Obama will not be lecturing America’s youth about the joys of bank bailouts, universal health care, or cash-for-clunkers–just as I am confident George W. Bush would never have used school children to hawk the Iraq war, the Medicare drug program, or “enhanced interrogation” techniques. Dick Cheney, maybe. But not Bush.

More broadly, Obama is the leader of this entire nation. It doesn’t matter if you voted for him–or even if your head threatens to explode every time you think about him. He is the president, and, as such, it’s a big deal that he’s speaking directly to students about the importance of education. (Not teachers unions, you hysterics.) And, whatever one’s party registration, the idea that any child should be kept home from class purely so their parents can make a political statement about an apolitical speech is appalling. Is the idea that we should shelter children from any contact with or knowledge of any president we personally dislike? Maybe, during the years our preferred party is out of power, we should just pretend that the president doesn’t exist. That’s a healthy way to run a democracy.

UPDATE II: Some other reaction (these are only excerpts so go to the links and read these posts in full to get a variety of opinions on this issue):
–Political scientist Steven Taylor:

I have two basic reactions. First, what is so controversial (or, for that matter, all that unusual) for a president to extol the youth of America to take education seriously? Second, I have to admit that given all that a given president has to do, that perhaps these kinds of symbolic acts are perhaps not the most efficient usage of time (although I acknowledge that symbolic acts of this type do go along with the president’s role as head of state and the much vaunted “bully pulpit.”)….One can argue whether a back to school speech is the best use of either the president’s or the children’s time. However, it is hardly a prelude to totalitarianism.

–James Joyner:

I actually agree with every word of that. Granted, “stay in school” is such an innocuous message that it’s hard to object to its being presented. But do we really need to add to the already inflated sense of the president of the United States as our national daddy? The man’s in charge of one branch of the federal government; he’s not king.

Still, as Doug Mataconis points out, this is hardly new. Why, Ronald Reagan himself gave such as speech. So did both Presidents Bush. Indeed, Reagan went to far as to answer questions from the kiddies on federal budget priorities and gun control!

–Patrick Appel:

I’ve ignored the furor over Obama’s address to the nation’s schoolchildren about working hard in school because it’s a fake story fueled by misguided outrage.

–Just One Minute:

We eagerly await Mr.Gandelman’s return to our Solar System.

When (if) he returns, perhaps he will contemplate an alternative scenario – Joe Klein and the media on the left are highlighting the zaniest Obama critics they can find with the goal of discrediting all Obama critics. It’s an old, old game and I am surprised that Mr. Gandelman can’t recognize it.

…Again, a challenge, but for those who remember all the way back to 2004, try to think back to the prominent Democrats in attendance at the Fahrenheit 9/11 premieres, and Michael Moore’s guest-of-honor appearance at the Democratic Convention.

–And this LA TIMES UPDATE:

In the wake of the uproar, the Department of Education decided to alter its language about one of its activities.

The original version suggested students “write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.” The updated version asks students to “write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals.”

Individual school districts in at least half a dozen states have indicated they will not show the speech.

Monique Bond, a spokeswoman for Chicago Public Schools, which Duncan headed before joining Obama’s Cabinet, said that no school would be required to participate in the activities surrounding the president’s address. She added that teachers could offer alternative activities for students whose parents elect for them not to participate.

Wayde Byard, public information officer for Loudon County Public Schools in Virginia, said the speech “just doesn’t fit in with the first day of activities.”

In October 1991, President George H.W. Bush delivered a speech from an eighth-grade classroom in Washington, D.C., that was broadcast nationwide. The move was criticized by Democrats at the time.

–Steve Benan:

In 1988, then-President Reagan spoke to students nationwide via C-SPAN telecast. Among other things, he talked about his positions on political issues of the day. Three years later, then-President Bush addressed school kids in a speech broadcast live to school classrooms nationwide. Among other things, he promoted his own administration’s education policies.

President Obama wants to deliver a message to students next week emphasizing hard work, encouraging young people to do their best in school. The temper tantrum the right is throwing in response only helps reinforce how far gone 21st-century conservatives really are.

This is no small, isolated fit, thrown by random nutjobs. The New York Times, Washington Post,LA Times, AP, and others all ran stories this morning about the coordinated national effort to either keep children at home so they can’t hear their president’s pro-education message, or demanding that local schools block the message altogether.

…The administration not only edited the supplementary materials, but has offered to make the text of the address available in advance, just so everyone can see how innocuous it is. It’s made no difference. Conservatives don’t want school kids to hear a message from their president. Those who claim superiority on American patriotism have decided to throw yet another tantrum over the idea that the president of the United States might encourage young people to do well in schools.

--Thoughts of a Conservative Christian:

While it appears the President’s speech will focus on the value of education and personal responsibility, federally-directed lesson plans set a concerning precedent for the government’s role in education. Education analyst Frederick Hess writes at the American Enterprise blog that the lesson plans “were developed with federal funds, devised on taxpayer time, and made available on the Department of Education’s website” and “might be construed as an invitation to engage in advocacy rather than instruction”.

The President, however, clearly wants his own children to be off limits to such classroom politicization. Upon moving to Washington, he chose to enroll his children in the private Sidwell Friends School.

But children in many of the country’s public schools will not be off limits on Tuesday. It is one thing to teach about the historical relevance and accomplishments of past administrations. It is another thing entirely to encourage children to implement a sitting president’s political agenda.

–Jeff Woods:

Now even school officials are kowtowing to the right-wing radio loudmouths and their zombie followers. No longer in America can the president give a speech to schoolchildren about the importance of taking education seriously and having aspirations.

Can you imagine this happening if John Kennedy or Ronald Reagan had given this speech? Schools would have devoted the whole day to social studies and patriotic pageants. Now, Obama haters fear he might try to indoctrinate their children. Mark Steyn, substituting for Rush Limbaugh on his show yesterday, accused the president of trying to create a personality cult like Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-il.

…Florida’s Republican Party chairman, Jim Greer, said he “was appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology.”

–Michael Landauer’s Dallas Morning News blog post must be read in FULL. Here is just the beginning:

A few very reasonable people I know have said that there are valid reasons why people worry about the speech the president is giving to schoolchildren. Here’s my best attempt at understanding the three informed lines of reasoning (I just don’t have time to deal with the myriad uninformed opinions on this subject):

1. You’re libertarian to the Nth degree. If you really think this is too much power for the president, then certainly you also think it’s wrong to have the kids say the Pledge of Allegiance every day, too. And you may not even think public education is a great idea. It’s not in the Constitution, after all. Fine. I disagree, but I respect that. And it’s hard to believe when you’re someone who has never done anything but criticize the president. But I’ll just have to take your word for it that you have a pure libertarian point of view.

Read it in full.
–JBS.org:

I wouldn’t send my child to school on September 8, unless I had a strong death wish for America. On September 8, President Obama will be broadcasting a prepared speech to every school child, grades K-12, in America. On September 8, Obama the Change Agent begins his takeover of the schools…but not with my child, and hopefully not with yours.

Consider the implications of his grand plan. In a style typical of dictators, he is preempting the communications into every school in the nation. He has not sought the permission of parents or local school boards. He will not sign in at the office to get clearance and a visitor badge as everyone else must do.

As a parent, I expect the schools to notify me in writing if a controversial person or group would be making any kind of presentation. I could then decide whether to keep my child home, or ask that he be sent to the library to read during that time. But Barack Obama, with one huge broadcast, will dismiss the rights of everyone, ignore laws, and kick dust on the Constitution……The problem with the usurpation of nationwide instructional time on September 8 is not so much the message, but the manner. What gives Obama the legal right to trod upon the Constitution in this, and other matters

--Patriots and Liberty:

On September 8th at 1pm EST, President Obama will be the first U.S. president to speak to America’s school children in an address that is directed specifically to them. I would not agree with this even if it were President Ronald Reagan delivering the speech. It is highly offensive for our children and our schools to be used by the President to push a political agenda. [EDITOR's NOTE: Read above post and links. Other Presidents have talked to schoolkids also..] The U.S. Department of Education event put out an activity package for students to use before, during, and after the speech including making posters that will hang on the walls for several days. I read the activity sheets and I noticed that the questions students were being asked assumed that they would agree with whatever the President’s agenda might be. The questions were written in such a way as to discourage dissent and to seek group consensus on the President’s agenda.

Parents from all political parties should be offended and outraged by this disrespect of parental authority and personal family values and should reveal their disapproval by removing their child from any class period that will broadcast this speech. Take your child or children to lunch and then return them to school when the propaganda program has ended.

–Revolution Radio:

Obama is planning to speak with our kiddies live from the White House Sept. 8th at 12:00 Eastern time. Secretary Arne Duncan sent a letter to School Principals announcing the 20-minute speech by the President and offering questions and suggestions for discussion. All of us can apparently watch this socialist, manipulative speech to our children. The address will be streamed live.

The Dept. of Education is expecting our kids to read books on Barack Obama and his special life. This is supposed to happen before the speech. One of these books is Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope. Let’s have a moment of silence. In reading excerpts from this book you would think you were reading about Abraham or Jesus Christ. It is the story of a disenfranchised, almost hopeless black man who miraculously rose up through the ranks with the motto “Yes! We can!” You can read a few of the Messiah set up excerpts at the PUMA site taken from the official publisher.

Ever since Barack Obama was young, Hope has lived inside him. From he beaches of Hawaii to the streets of Chicago, from the jungles of Indonesia to the plains of Kenya, he has held on to Hope. Even as a boy, Barack knew he wasn’t quite like anybody else, but through his journeys he found the ability to listen to Hope and become what he was meant to be: a bridge to bring people together.

His mama, white as whipped cream; his daddy, black as ink…

–Salon’s Joan Walsh:

I never imagined the outbreak of right-wing crazy that Obama’s gesture would provoke, and this time it’s hard not to see racism behind the hysteria. The message is “Obama’s coming for our children!” the standard cry against scary boogeymen in every culture. I mean, really, what besides Obama’s race could make him so scary to these people? That he’s a Marxist socialist fascist Nazi? I’d argue that the only reason those extreme epithets have taken hold goes back to reason No. 1: Our first black president is provoking some outsize and irrational reactions.

Especially since, as has now been well-documented, President George H.W. Bush addressed American students in 1991, and Ronald Reagan did so via C-SPAN in 1988. (Bush talked mainly about the importance of education, while Reagan hailed the benefits of low taxes and the line-item veto.) President George W. Bush appealed to “the children of the country” to back the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, to no public criticism. Admittedly, some Democrats accused his father of playing politics in ‘91, while Newt Gingrich ardently defended him. (Waiting for Gingrich to defend Obama. Still waiting.)

But there was nothing like the frenzied reaction to Obama’s planned speech (which school principals are free to ignore if they so choose) to any of the other presidents’ statements to students. The Florida Republican Party went into full-tilt crazy against Obama’s plan to spread his “socialist ideology,” claiming “schoolchildren across our nation will be forced to watch the president justify his plans for government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt than any other president.”

–Digby:

Where the…are the Democrats?

Democrats should be all over this. Republicans have just lobbed the most perfect softball their way – telling kids to study in school is a message Republicans don’t want schoolchildren to hear??? Democrats should let them have it with both barrels. And the counter-attack should come at exactly the same level – state leadership, if not higher.

If you’re serious about 21st Century American politics, you don’t let the insane charge that the President of the United States is trying to corrupt the Youth of America go unanswered when it’s being made at the highest levels of the Republican party. Why?

Because if you refuse to fight back, it creates the distinct impression that there’s some truth to it. These aren’t merely deranged talkshow hosts accusing the President of fomenting subversion; these are leaders of a major political party. They cannot be ignored.

–Daily Kos gives this long excerpt of Ronald Reagan’s talk to school kids. Here is part of the Reagan quote:

Because you see, the taxes can be such a penalty on people that there’s no incentive for them to prosper and to earn more and so forth because they have to give so much to the government …

There was talk about having a gun ban in California. It didn’t go through. But I got a letter from a man in San Quentin Prison. And from the prison he wrote me the letter to tell me he was in there for burglary, he was a burglar. And he said, “I just want you to know that if that law goes through, here in San Quentin there will be celebrating throughout the day and night by all the burglars who are in prison.”

–Lawyers, Guns and Money:

Because going over the heads of your own party, government institutions, and public opinion, directly to the people school children is such an unlikely strategy, it’s utterly devious.

Genius, that Obama, securing the second grade vote like this.

–Gawker:

President Obama announced that he will give a speech welcoming America’s young students into the new school year. Conservatives, happy to fight about anything this man does, came out swinging against the President’s “socialist” intentions. And they’re winning!

Basically, the speech amounts to nothing more than our nation’s Commander-in-Chief urging kids to stay in school, for, if they do, perhaps one day they’ll be president. Floridian Republican Jim Greer was one of the first to seize up over the news, and called Obama’s September 8th an attempt to “spread” his “socialist ideology.” Greer then got into nitty-gritty politics, and warned that the President would simply be indoctrinating guppies with his liberal politics.

Conservatives are easily swayed, almost collective organism, so their calls for prohibition only grew more voracious. They took particular offense over the announcement that students would be encouraged to “write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.”

Rush Limbaugh was soon on board. So was Glenn Beck. And then Greer reared his head on Hardball this evening. Though he and his knows Presidents often address students, this is different, because Obama’s a proselytizer of anti-American madness.

–Economist.com’s Democracy in America:

The opposition to Mr Obama’s speech is fundamentally an attempt to deny the legitimacy of the president. It should be resisted. No liberal parents pulled their kindergardeners out of class to avoid having George W. Bush indoctrinate them with the esoteric neoconservative messages embedded in the text of “The Pet Goat”. (No wonder he was so insistent on finishing the reading!) But it’s also part of a broader atmosphere of paranoia that has taken root in American child-rearing in recent decades. In 1969, 50% of American children walked to school; that is down to less than 15%, in part due to fears that their children will be kidnapped, even though violent crime against children hasn’t grown at all. Those parents are increasingly reluctant to vaccinate their kids, for fear that vaccines are secretly harmful—i.e., that the entire edifice of modern scientific medicine is an elaborate conspiracy to harm their children. Teachers have their licenses revoked for letting kids climb up hills. And so forth.

It’s nuts. Walking to school is safe. Vaccines are good for you. Climbing hills is healthy. And if conservatives are worried that Obama will beam his mind-rays through the television screens and turn their children into…pro-business moderate liberals, or something, they should chill out: the mind-rays don’t work. In 1988, Ronald Reagan addressed the nation’s schoolchildren via television, and in 1991, George H.W. Bush did the same. And in 2008, those kids, now aged roughly 24 to 38, voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. If, on the other hand, conservatives make the president’s speech seem like something forbidden and cool, that they’re not allowed to watch…that just might ensure those kids vote Democratic when they get the chance.