Degeneration

‘Politics doesn’t have to be this way.’

It’s time for everyone to take to heart some of the comments by people like former president Bill Clinton, Kansas political icon Bob Dole and Jim Wright, former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives who now writes regularly for the Knight Ridder newspapers.

When Clinton spoke to a packed Allen Fieldhouse audience earlier this year, he called for less rancor and more civility in the American political process, more cooperation among opposing factions and elimination of the ugliness and personal attacks that we have been seeing far too often.

Regardless of whether one likes Clinton personally or politically, his message here was an outstanding appeal for more decency and sensitivity in dealing with each other. Some Kansas University professor could take the text of the Clinton talk and create a full semester of study on the field of statesmanship and political positivity. Young people, jaded by negativity, need higher standards to aim for.

Former Sen. Dole concurred with Clinton and pointed out how he and fellow Republicans for many years were able to agree or disagree without the meanness and backbiting we now see. The fact that a former Democratic president and a former Republican presidential nominee could agree to come here together, in obvious harmony and respect, and discuss the issues was a clear indication of what should exist.

Sadly, we see so little of that kind of thing, as ex-Rep. Wright of Texas recently noted.

Wrote Wright: “Some consider this (2004) the most important presidential election in the past generation. It could influence America’s direction for years to come, but that doesn’t excuse a personally abusive campaign. We mustn’t reduce it to a choice of which side can more flagrantly defame or misconstrue the other’s position.”

Sadly, we see too many expressions of hate. Do people really “hate” George W. Bush or “hate” John Kerry? They’ve been schooled by some politicos to think they have to do so to make their points. They don’t. No one does.

“Politics doesn’t have to be this way,” writes Jim Wright. “We shouldn’t condone its degeneration to this level of abuse. Some of us have known a better, fairer, more American way. … Though sometimes vexed by political opponents over the years, I’ve never hated one, and hope that none ever hated me. Nor should I, or any decent person, sink to defaming the good name of an adversary for the sake of winning public office … Presidential politics need be no different. If anything, it should impose an even higher standard of civility.”

As for the constant and growing mud-slinging of 2004, Wright says: “It isn’t the presidential candidates themselves who have been so nasty this year. … It’s the anonymous gaggle of backstage connivers and ‘independent-expenditures’ fat cats who’re trying to purchase the elections with big buys of horrifically negative, untrue and even slanderous claims that blacken the reputation of the candidate they oppose and are out to destroy.”

Bottom line, we are, or should be, better than the kind of political behavior too many of us have indulged in this year. Will we learn and improve from this disgusting trend or will we allow ourselves to keep degenerating?

There is plenty of room for an uplifting comeback. Are we up to that challenge?