October 13, 2007
Debating In Name Only
By Bill Kraus
In an age when political persuasion is reduced to 30 seconds, when bloggers blast away from every direction, when newspapers are a.) shrinking and b.) losing readers, the worst development is the issue shortcut.
If a public issue can be reduced to a one liner in the form of a slogan or a label, discussion, debate, compromise, all those things that are at the heart of a system of representative government, can be bypassed.
“Socialized Medicine” eliminates the need to talk about the fact that our health care system which is universal by default not design is perhaps inefficient and expensive.
“Welfare for Politicians” means that any limitations on spending on elections or election hi-jacking will be derailed by the Supreme Court’s requirement that neither can be imposed—so why discuss them?—that public funding must be a part of any move in those directions.
“No New Taxes” takes tax reform and the role of the public sector off the table. The essential companion question of what taxes do or should or even should not by doesn’t have to be addressed.
The label “Pro-Life” implies, as one longtime Republican activist once lamented, that he is pro-death, and that ends that discussion.
The Republicans who label their mildly “heretical” contemporaries “RINOs” (Republicans In Name Only) turn the big tent into a purist sideshow, assume that political success will follow reading people out of their party, particularly those in Western and Northern Wisconsin who are the political heirs of the La Follettes.
“Tree Huggers” and their presumed antagonists “Big Business” don’t have to discuss the things that divide and connect them, because labeling has taken care of that. They are adversaries at best and probably enemies.
I will concede that labels and slogans are time and thought-saving shortcuts.
I will not concede that they should replace discussion, debate, and compromise, the crucial three legs on the stool that supports representative government.
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