Vitriol and invective stain US political history, but the poison of falsehoods, half-truths and innuendo now spreads with the speed of light across partisan airwaves and the Internet — the din drowning out the country’s moderate political center.
Countless Internet blogs have taken on the administration of the first black president, claiming — falsely — that US President Barack Obama isn’t a US citizen, is a secret Muslim, is a socialist, wants to establish death panels to decide when elderly Americans would no longer receive medical care and be allowed to die. The list is long.
Most recently, a partisan furor blew up when Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. Republican national chairman Michael Steele set the tone, declaring that giving the prize to the US commander in chief showed “how meaningless a once honorable and respected award has become.”
Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, was not immune, nor was former US president Bill Clinton. But today the volume of screeching partisanship is cleaving the US electorate, perhaps, as deeply as at any time since the US Civil War a century and a half ago.
“The environment is much more extreme today because of the level of public involvement, the level of incivility among both the political elite and the public,” said Chris Dolan, a political scientist at Lebanon Valley College, Annville, Pennsylvania.
At Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina, Clyde Frazier said: “It is nasty and getting nastier.”
While he believes US history is littered with dirtier political periods and nastier claims among politicians, Frazier, also a political scientist, sees today’s climate partly the result of the “media culture.”
“Vitriol seems to sell. If you are telling people the end of the world is at hand, they watch,” Frazier said.
From the lectern at the White House briefing room, spokesman Robert Gibbs routinely bemoans what he sees as the negative slant on coverage of Obama by the conservative Fox News cable television outlet.
While Americans once sought news from media outlets that aimed for objectivity, they are now turning to sources that reinforce their political viewpoints, including the conservative Fox news and the liberal MSNBC on cable television and the exploding blogosphere that ranges across the political spectrum.
The heated partisan atmosphere produced a staggering break with decorum last month when a member of the House of Representatives shouted out “You lie!” as Obama spoke to a joint session of Congress, extolling his efforts to overhaul the US healthcare system.
Representative Joe Wilson’s outburst drew the South Carolina Republican a rebuke from the House, but, tellingly, supporters quickly began donating heavily to his political war chest. Obama backers did the same for Wilson’s Democratic opponent in next year’s election.
Not long afterward Florida Democratic Representative Alan Grayson took the House floor to attack minority Republicans on healthcare, declaring: “The Republicans want you to die quickly if you get sick.”
A Republican congressman quickly drafted a call for Grayson’s reprimand, but the matter was later dropped.
Partisan political pundits took both events and ran with them.
Conservative Republicans praised Wilson’s courage as liberals voiced shock over his lack of respect for the president.
Grayson took praise and heat from opposite ends of the political spectrum.
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