The usefulness of what is not

It’s not often that C-SPAN can inspire envy in a person, but that’s precisely what I felt a few weeks ago when I paused long enough while channel surfing to catch a glimpse of the British Parliament.

This was during the worst of Gordon Brown’s popularity woes, and I expected to see him burned at a stake of droll British sarcasm. Instead, I found civility.

It felt like that scene when the Grinch realizes that even after Christmas is stolen, the Whos are still doing OK. The figures on television kept referring to other legislators as “my right honorable friend,” and indeed, my heart grew three sizes that day. It was a trend I wished I saw in America – disagreement with at least the grudging acknowledgement that those we disagree with are necessary. Britain might have its own partisan mess, but those four words provide a valuable reminder.  

Take, for instance, a recent column in the New York Times. The arc of this piece was essentially this: The health-care debate is being fouled up by Republicans, who are too involved, but they’re all ignorant and believe in creationism, and that’s sad. “This is no party of Einsteins,” the author wrote.

That’s the health-care debate for you.

Forget basic concerns about whether it’s fair to make all citizens pay for health care despite how much they value it, the potential impositions of having government potentially dictate what is and what isn’t elective surgery (sex change, anyone?), or whether universal health care is working out elsewhere in the world.

No, it’s “Republicans are uneducated; they should shut up.” Granted, most Republicans aren’t now, nor have they been recently, particularly appreciative of what bipartisanship can do, but that’s why everyone needs to change, not just the ruling half of the current term.  

Sometimes I wonder if they have any of those bumper stickers left from when opposition to the war in Iraq first got mainstream – the ones about how “dissent is the highest form of patriotism,” or about how when political opposition dies, “the soul of America dies with it.” They should hand them out at the next Republican convention. No, Republicans aren’t being accused of being unpatriotic – just dumb and ignorant. Either way, it’s a diversionary, ad-hominem policy parlor trick, not a real contribution toward political solutions.

That might be today’s biggest threat to democracy: our perpetual wish that the other party would stop fouling up our initiatives. And yet it’s precisely the countries that get this perverse wish and wind up as one-party states that are the least free. Sure, legislation can be hard to pass in America, and the discourse on both sides of the aisle is sometimes downright immature, but it’s better than unanimous accord. And while I think the optimal solution is to do as George Washington once prescribed and forget political parties entirely, that’s a goal better whispered to a magic lamp than asked of today’s American citizens.

If partisanship is what we have to deal with, we should at least appreciate what it does for us. It preserves, even if through paralysis, this wonderful thing we have.