Case In Point: The Politics Of "Truth" genre: Polispeak & Six Degrees of Speculation

Those readers that follow Thought Theater have a good sense of my thinking. I frequently defy convention and I'm certain my positions on any number of issues are seen to be in conflict with any purist ideological or political persuasion. While it is often easier to affiliate with a particular group or a way of thinking, it is contrary to my objective...the pursuit of more "truth". I don't presume to know all that is "truth" and I am readily willing to admit when my notion of the "truth" is incorrect. Believe it or not, I am solely driven by finding more "truth"...a huge task in a world that often prefers denial and deception. Nonetheless, I persist.

I happened upon a critique of my recent posting, Political Strategy: The Horse Race Begins, at another site, Stubborn Facts, and I decided to use it to demonstrate what really underlies many of my ruminations here at Thought Theater. First, let me be clear that in doing so, I am in no way intending to attack or insult the author of the critique. In all honesty, since I initiated Thought Theater, this situation is one of an all too few that allows me to address the essence of what I believe and why I launched the site.

We live in a world that assumes everyone has an agenda...and for the most part that is an accurate observation. I too have an agenda but it is one that few understand or actually believe to be sincere. To state it as clearly as possible...I want to know as much "truth" as is humanly possible before I die. I have opinions on what I think to be "true" and I enjoy being engaged in order to test those "truths"...but not to be able to say that I was right...but to be able to say that I found and accepted as much of the "truth" as was actually available. In that regard, I guess I am a purist...but that is often confounding to those that don't know me well.

For the most part, people assume that all other people are biased and make discriminations...and that is generally an accurate conclusion. The purpose of Thought Theater...an extension of Daniel...is to find the means, the methods, and the motivation to put the "truth" of our humanity ahead of that bias and those discriminations...in order to advance all of humanity...not merely one person's or one group's or one political party's or one particular country's preferred version of humanity's "truth". When we aren't acting to advance all of humanity, we are merely engaging in the practice and pursuit of power (politics)...as opposed to the uncovering and unfurling of the only enduring power..."truth".

Call me a dreamer, but I remain convinced that we have the capacity to find "truth" and I am reassured each time I encounter youngsters like my niece and nephews. They enter this world in the embrace of the ability to find, and with the desire to discern, that which is "truth". Unfortunately, once they arrive we quickly begin the process of convolution. Nonetheless, each time I encounter a child, I am reminded that humanity has the potential to pursue and embrace "truth". It provides the hope that sustains me each day.

The following is the posting from Stubborn Facts:

I get a bit aggravated when I see pundits criticize normal, legitimate political debate as some kind of inappropriate "playing politics". We're facing serious problems, and the opposition party should be proposing serious alternatives, not trying to trivialize the substantive policy choices of the party in power as being mere political tactics. With that in mind, let's take a close and unflattering look at a recent post by Daniel DiRito at Donklephant and Thought Theater: Political Strategy: The Horse Race Begins.

DiRito's article begins with the typical Bush-critic's reference to Karl Rove. I've recently decided to not bother taking seriously any political commentary which includes the word "Rovian", but this article falls under the exception that it provides an opportunity for education in rhetorical tactics. DiRito's beginning with Rove is to suggest that all the policy positions of the Bush Administration are purely political. Iraq? Political. War on Terror? Political. If Rove is behind it, he leads you to assume, then it must be political, not the result of real policy decisions based on the best interests of the country.

Next, DiRito engages in a cynical bit of misdirection, claiming a change in the GOP argument which never happened, but which feeds into Democrats predisposition against the President.:

The important thing to note in the 2006 strategy is a minor, though significant, shift in the GOP framing…a technique that has been the hallmark of their success. This week the President gave a candid answer to an oft asked question…on a topic that has been the source of repeated Democratic criticism. He was asked what Iraq had to do with 9/11 and he quickly replied, “Nothing"…but then went on to explain that he believes the lesson of 9/11 was that we must take threats seriously before they materialize.

Herein is the shift. Republicans realize that the conflation of Iraq and 9/11 is no longer the viable tool that it was during the 2002 and 2004 elections. In a classic counterintuitive Rovian shift, they have taken the Democratic strategy for 2006 and incorporated it into the GOP’s new framing. When Bush uttered “Nothing", the revised strategy was revealed. Simply stated, the new GOP strategy is to incorporate the Democratic message into their revised rhetoric. This isn’t the first time that the Bush administration has co-opted the message of the opposition when it became apparent that they were perilously close to a position of checkmate.

In fact, neither the President nor any member of the Administration ever said that Iraq was responsible for 9/11. No, the President has consistently said just what he said after his "nothing" answer. The Iraq war was a consequence of the 9/11 attacks not because Iraq was directly responsible for those attacks, but because Iraq posed a real risk to the United States, and after 9/11 we realized that we can no longer wait for such risks to fester and grow until they result in a deadly attack. No, we must be proactive, not reactive. We must neutralize the risks before they kill thousands of us. (Bobby has an excellent discussion of the global strategic thinking here and here.)

The usefulness of this bit of misdirection is it gets people to stop thinking about the actual policy differences between the two parties right now. Rather than actually criticize the serious policy adopted by the President after 9/11, the doctrine to take the war to our enemies rather than wait for them to attack us, DiRito criticizes political tactics. He gets a lick in on the President without having to actually oppose directly the President's policy, and without having to propose anything with which to replace it.

DiRito's next rhetorical tactic is, rather bizarrely, to accuse the Republicans of planning to campaign (gasp!) on the actual policy differences between the parties.

Not only do they now want Democrats to make voters consider leaving Iraq, they will take it a step further and insist that voters consider the potential consequences and risks…once again invoking the power of terrorism in order to create voter doubt…all the while framing the Democrats as the object of that doubt. The goal is to make the doubt about leaving Iraq (the terror threat) greater than the dissatisfaction about the conduct of the war. Forcing voters to move beyond the GOP’s past poor performance is essential and can be achieved by refocusing voters on other more ominous potentialities.

Isn't that exactly what political campaigns are supposed to do? To "insist that voters consider the potential consequences and risks" of the policies proposed by the other side? Isn't that what Democrats do when they decry all the money and lives we are spending on Iraq as they call for immediate withdrawal? When they accuse the President of wanting Parkinson's patients to suffer because he's against federal funding of stem-cell research? That's not political strategy, it's a policy debate. And make no mistake that, however it began, Iraq is now a war of necessity.

DiRito continues in the same vein:

Here’s the Republican equation. They will not focus on aggressively defending the Iraq war…and to that end we have seen the President express frustration with the situation as well as concerns about the ongoing sectarian violence and even sharing a veiled insinuation that the new Prime Minister may not be up to the task. The uncertainty and chaos are beneficial to the revised strategy.

They have already ceded the poor execution of the war and will allow the Democrats to make the case that we were misled and that the war was mismanaged. The goal is to actually encourage and enable Democrats to criticize the war. While the GOP is allowing Democrats to make those points again and again…Republicans will begin to request that voters answer questions that seek to discern if the Democrats have any solutions beyond their criticism.

How horrible, that a political campaign ask what the other side is going to actually do about the problem they're complaining about. So much for that "if only the President would admit to mistakes" bit, which, we were assured at the time, would make us feel ever so much better about supporting him in the future. And how is it that the GOP "is allowing Democrats" to make an argument? I suppose he means that the GOP is not actively fighting back on that issue, which is probably correct. Here again, though, he sees this as evidence of cynical manipulation rather than an actual policy shift. I suppose the Democrat wish for the President to "admit his mistakes" was simply the first wish, and that he was then supposed to politely walk off the stage and turn everything over to John Kerry without a fight. Funny, though, it seems like just last month that the netizens were still complaining about the rose-colored glasses with which the President sees Iraq.

DiRito then shifts to the Connecticut race. It appears than once again the Connecticut Senate race is about the war, not Connecticut or the alleged shortcomings of Joe Lieberman. At least he acknowledges some reality:

Further, if Ned Lamont continues to be vague on the handling of Iraq, the GOP will again argue that Democrats are only focused on winning elections by playing on people’s dissatisfaction with the Iraq war…all the while doing so at the expense of a favorable outcome in Iraq and therefore a safe and secure America. They will play Lamont against Lieberman in order to highlight the uncertainty within the Democratic Party…the messier it gets, the better it will be…and Lamont and Lieberman (assuming they both remain in the race) will have no choice but to attack each other in order to win.

Heavens to Betsy. The nasty ol' Republicans are going to sit back and watch their opponents destroy themselves with internal disputes. Shame on 'em. It couldn't possibly be that this "Rovian" strategy will work because there is, indeed, "uncertainty within the Democratic Party" about the conduct of the war and what to do in the future.
DiRito again accuses the White House of some kind of "shift in strategy." Quoting a remark by Karl Rove that "al-Qaeda leaders view the Iraq war as the 'central front in the war on terror,'" DiRito says:

Again, note the shift in strategy. They are no longer defensively pushing the argument that Iraq is the focal point of the war on terror; instead they will ask Americans to determine if al-Qaeda thinks it is the “central front in the war on terror".

If the chief leader of the main terrorist group fighting us, the man whose decisions killed over 3,000 Americans on 9/11, says that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror, doesn't that pretty much make it so? If the enemy says "here is where we will defeat you", doesn't that all by itself make that battle pretty important? DiRito again tries to turn a real policy debate into just an argument over political strategy and framing.

DiRito does do a pretty accurate job of summarizing the fundamental message from this White House, though:

While Democrats will seek to focus the voter on making the election a referendum on George Bush and the Iraq war…attempting to frame it as a yea or nay on keeping Republicans in power, Republicans will step beyond that framing and ask voters a series of questions intended to raise doubts and shift the focus to a hypothetical equation…can Democrats protect America and do they understand what is really happening in Iraq and in the minds of the terrorists?

As I've previously noted, the Congressional races around the country will be decided mostly by local voters based on local issues. National issues will play some part in the campaigns, but no matter how much the Democrats may want this to be a national referendum on how the President has conducted the Iraq War, it is not.

Perhaps after reading all this you think I am being too harsh on Mr. DiRito. Surely all of his agonizing is not just about partisanship; surely he is concerned with actually answering the substantive and difficult policy choices facing us. But no. His conclusion reveals that, as much as he's tried to suggest that it's Mr. Rove who is all about politics over substance, the reality is that he and the Democrats are the ones focused on politics rather than crafting good policies:

Unless the Democrats want to be caught flat footed again, they will have to find the wherewithal to listen intently to the carefully crafted Republican rhetoric and be prepared to make rapid strategic adjustments. If they fail to do so, they may well find themselves eclipsed by a familiar nose at the political finish line.

Nothing there about the Democrats actually coming up with real policies. No call for them to end the rabid divisions within the party. No call to come up with a plan for Iraq beyond "cut and run". No, he just wants them to figure out how to sell what they've got a little better. The Democrats will not succeed until they propose real policies which are supported by most of their leaders and voters. Criticism of the other guy is not enough to win elections unless it is accompanied by real proposals which Americans can support.

The following was my response:

I certainly appreciate your critique and I welcome robust dialogue and debate...however I believe it would be best to do so after reading my entire series on "Political Strategy" which is linked in the first paragraph of the posting at Thought Theater. The particular posting you reference, Political Strategy: The Horse Race Begins, is the eighth in a series on "Political Strategy"...a topic that I find fascinating given my psychology background.

If you do read all of the postings you will find that I have been suggesting that the Democrats do more than oppose Republicans and I have argued that they should put forward a comprehensive plan for Iraq and the war on terror.

Unfortunately, your effort to conflate my discussion of political strategy with a disregard for policy disputes is your prerogative...but it is a misrepresentation of the purpose of the "Political Strategy" series at Thought Theater. You presume that my remarks are meant to be policy statements in order to make your argument that I, along with the Democrats, am only focused on politics. To be clear, in the posting you've noted I am focusing on strategy (not policy)...wherein strategy is the means by which we humans attempt to convincingly make our points.

While I find politics fascinating from a psychological perspective, it also frequently makes for lousy policy...something both Republicans and Democrats engage in all too often. Your posting seems to be suggesting that Republicans don't play politics...a position you're welcome to embrace...but one that I would characterize as either naive or blindly partisan.

If you were to read the bulk of my thoughts at Thought Theater you would find that my prevailing purpose is to offer what I'm able to in order to expose more "truth" in a world that is all too frequently filled with manipulations and misrepresentations. I believe that watching behavior (strategy) helps us uncover bias and discriminations in order to expose "truth"...I am not interested in determining what I want to be true and then setting out to impose that "truth"...I am interested in dissecting that which I encounter in order to find more of the "truth"...and that is a quintessential distinction.

I try to avoid getting aggravated because I'm always willing to listen, read, and observe since it is the only path to more "truth"...getting aggravated simply means one has an agenda that isn't being supported or endorsed. The pursuit of "truth" is never aggravating if one is actually committed to finding "truth". Politics is merely the game people engage in to attempt to influence "truth"...sometimes they are one and the same and many times they aren't.

As I read your final paragraph, it struck me that you were doing exactly what I oppose...pushing an agenda (your version of the "truth") absent enough information to do so...an unflattering indication that you prefer politics over "truth" and that you couch your version of the "truth" as the practice of policy...and I find that to be intellectual dishonesty.

Ironically, had you looked at the main page at Thought Theater you would have found another of my postings, Biden: Seeking A Reasoned Plan For Iraq, just two entries down from the one you've discussed here. It is an entry about the need for a plan in Iraq and a need to get beyond politics in order to do so.

I would be delighted to engage in a dialogue about what needs to be done in Iraq and with regards to the war on terror if you're interested in doing so...but I would respectfully suggest you forego your hasty attempt to place me in a category. I think you will find me to be far more thoughtful than you've concluded herein.

Regards,

Daniel

Daniel DiRito | August 26, 2006 | 3:15 PM
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