The
Civility Crisis and How to Cure It
by Winograd and Hais
While the
nation has been right to focus on the most
recent outbreak of incivility, if not
downright hostility, directed toward
President Obama generally and his health
care proposal specifically, the diagnosis of
what ails the country and what must be done
to end this type of behavior has been way
off target.
Republicans,
who were quick to compare the actions of
their party's fringe elements to harsh,
sometimes over the top Democratic criticism
of former President George W. Bush missed
the qualitative difference between
expressing strong policy disagreement with
the opposition, which is fair game in any
political season, and taking guns to
Presidential appearances. Ironically,
Republicans are guilty of the same "moral
equivalency" judgment error that they
accused Democrats who minimized Communist
war crimes in Vietnam and the actions of
urban rioters of in the 1960s of committing.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi was closer to the truth
when she likened today's vitriolic rhetoric
to the hate speech directed toward gays in
San Francisco in the 1970s, but she failed
to pursue the historical analogy far enough.
This kind of
anger, born out of a sense of fear of a
rapidly changing world, and directed at
those that seem to be causing the world to
move both too fast and in the wrong
direction, has erupted regularly whenever
America has gone through the type of
generational change it's now experiencing.
As
generational theorists, William Strauss and
Neil Howe pointed out, an idealist
generation animated by moral beliefs, such
as today's Baby Boomers, have, in their
youth, regularly shaken American society by
confronting the cultural values of older
generations. Such generations have always
been followed by an alienated,
individualistic generational archetype,
which tends to be rude and disrespectful,
especially toward its elders. The most
recent historical examples of this archetype
are the Lost Generation who came of age in
the 1920s and Generation X, born 1965-1981.
As members of these two types of generations
mature and assume positions of leadership,
society coarsens and rhetoric escalates from
being merely confrontational to speech that
is deliberately designed to provoke and
incite. It's the difference between Boomer
rock n' roll and Gen X rap--or between Newt
Gingrich and Sarah Palin.
But
inevitably, this harsh cultural style
engenders a backlash from an emerging
civic-oriented generation. The most recent
civic generations are Millennials (born
1982-2003) and, in the 1930s and 1940s, the
GI Generation. Historically, the type of
generational alignment we see now is
associated with the most traumatic and
significant crises in American history: the
American Revolution and adoption of the
Constitution, the Civil War, and the Great
Depression and World War II. The way this
generational confrontation has been resolved
in American history should give pause to
those who encourage incivility, either by
their silence or their direct involvement.
Popular
opinion was sharply divided during the
Revolutionary War. Between a fifth and a
third of the population of the Thirteen
Colonies supported the British. Estimates
are that after the war, between sixty and
one hundred thousand Loyalists fled the
newly born United States. Nor did the
Constitution's ratification end our
divisions. In spite of George Washington's
warning against the "partisan spirit" and
the intentional failure of the Constitution
to mention them, nascent political parties-
Republicans and Federalists -formed by the
end of his administration to confront one
another on the issue of the proper role and
size of the federal government.
Roughly eighty
years later, seemingly irreconcilable
differences between generations and regions
led to the Civil War. Once Lincoln assumed
the presidency, he faced opposition from all
sides. The words, if not the deed, of his
assassin, John Wilkes Booth, "Sic semper
tyrannus" ("Thus always to tyrants")
succinctly expressed the thoughts of most
white Southerners about Lincoln. In the
North, much of the criticism was intensely
personal: Lincoln was called an "ape," a
"baboon" or worse. Many opposed what they
perceived to be a war sacrificing the blood
of white men to free blacks. Riots
protesting the military draft broke out in
Northern cities. In New York blacks were
lynched and the city's Negro orphanage
burned. Even within his own Republican
party, a faction called him timid for
failing to emancipate the slaves sooner than
he did or to pursue a more vindictive policy
against the secessionist states.
When the
generational archetypes were again aligned
in a similar way in the early 1930s, the
country was confronted by the greatest
economic crisis in its history. While a hero
to many, a month before his inauguration,
Roosevelt was nearly the victim of an
assassination. Giuseppe Zangara, an
unemployed bricklayer with anarchist
leanings, fired at FDR but hit Anton Cermak,
the mayor of Chicago instead and killed him.
Once in office, Roosevelt was personally
criticized from the right for being a
"traitor to his class." In shrill language
that is once again being tossed cavalierly
around Washington today, FDR's policies and
programs were labeled "foreign,"
"socialist," "communist" and "fascist." His
Social Security proposal was derided as a
severe invasion of privacy. At the same
time, from the other side of the political
spectrum, Roosevelt was criticized for not
doing enough to dismantle the capitalist
system and, in the words of Huey Long,
"Share the Wealth."
History
demonstrates that the first years of a
transition from an ideological era, such as
the one Boomers and Xers dominated from 1968
to 2008, to an era dominated by civic
generations, like the GI Generation and
Millennials, are initially among the most
rancorous, contentious, and sometimes
violent, of any in American history. But
history also provides valuable lessons for
how to deal with these tensions in order to
increase civic unity.
The Founding
Fathers worked hard to promote an "era of
good feelings," admonishing citizens to
maintain decorum in their public debates,
even as they privately excoriated their
opponents. Lincoln confronted his detractors
directly, most famously with his principled
stance that "A house divided against itself
cannot stand." And FDR condemned "economic
royalists" intent on defending their
privileged position to the detriment of the
"forgotten man."
As the newest
civic era begins, both Republican and
Democrats must, in President Obama's phrase,
"call out," those who engage in lies and
demagoguery or threaten physical violence
toward governmental institutions and
leaders. Both sides need to brand such
actions, not just wrong-headed, but a threat
to the nation's ability to successfully sail
through the troubled waters of our current
generational alignment. History suggests
that a true sense of national solidarity
will return when the nation successfully
confronts the major challenges it will
continue to face. But in the interim the
least that must be done is to denounce
actions and behavior that will make future
unity more difficult, if not impossible, to
achieve.
Obama Gets an A,
Dems an Incomplete
The election of Barack
Obama signaled the
beginning of a "civic"
realignment, produced by
the political emergence
of America's most recent
civic generation,
Millennials (born
1982-2003). Civic
generations, like the
Millennials, react
against the efforts of
divided idealist
generations, like the
Baby Boomers (born
1946-1964) to advance
their own moral causes.
Instead, civic
generations are unified,
focused on reenergizing
social, political, and
governmental
institutions and using
those institutions to
confront and solve
pressing national issues
left unattended and
unresolved during the
previous idealist era.
The goal of a transition
during such realignments
has to be to lessen the
ideological splits that
have divided America
during the preceding
idealist era and take
steps to unify the
country so that the new
Administration can more
effectively deal with
the major issues it
faces.
Reducing ideological
divisions and unifying
Americans to achieve
important common goals
has been a focus of
Barack Obama even before
he announced his
presidency. It is one of
the key reasons his
campaign had strong
appeal to the emerging
civic Millennial
Generation, which he
carried by a margin of
more than 2:1. When
CBS’s Steve Croft asked
the then-candidate in a
pre-election interview
what qualified him — a
junior senator with
limited governmental
experience — to be
president of the United
States, Obama led off
his reply by citing his
desire and ability to
bridge differences and
bring people together.
Through Your Actions
One way a civic era
president-elect can
demonstrate the
importance he places on
the need for national
unity is to name members
of the opposition party
to his cabinet. The
actions of Abraham
Lincoln and Franklin D.
Roosevelt, the only two
other Presidents to
preside over transitions
to civic eras,
demonstrate how this
game should be played.
For all the media
commentary on Lincoln's
first cabinet, deemed a
"Team of Rivals" by
Doris Kearns Goodwin, it
should be noted that it
contained no one from
the discredited
Democratic Party, even
though it did have
representatives that
spanned the breadth of
opinion within the
relatively new GOP.
However, Lincoln did add
a Democrat, Secretary of
War, Edwin M. Stanton,
to his cabinet less than
a year after taking
office. Stanton, a
strongly pro-Union
Northern Democrat, had
opposed Lincoln's
election and had served
as Attorney General in
the final months of the
Buchanan Administration.
However, Lincoln’s
selection of pro-Union
Democrat, Andrew
Johnson, as his
vice-presidential
running mate in his 1864
re-election campaign
demonstrates that it’s
sometimes possible to
take even a good idea
too far.
FDR appointed two
Republicans to his
initial
cabinet–industrialist:
William H. Woodin, who
as Treasury Secretary
helped FDR implement his
economic and fiscal
program at the outset of
the New Deal, and Harold
L. Ickes, who served as
Interior Secretary
throughout the entirety
of the Roosevelt
administration. Both
Woodin and Ickes were
progressives who had
supported FDR in the
1932 election. While
neither was a member of
the Republican Old
Guard, together they
demonstrated Roosevelt's
willingness to reach
beyond his own party to
enlist what today would
be called "moderate
Republicans" in a
unified effort to
overcome major national
problems.
Reflecting America's
changing demographics
and social mores, Barack
Obama has chosen the
most diverse cabinet and
set of top advisors of
any president in U.S.
history. Two members of
Obama's larger number of
appointees–Defense
Secretary Robert Gates
and Transportation
Secretary Ray LaHood–at
least lean to the
Republicans. This is the
same number of
Republicans for which
FDR found room. While
neither Gates nor LaHood
is affiliated with the
GOP's conservative wing,
their presence does
represent a greater
number of members of the
opposing party than were
present in the Cabinets
of any of Obama’s
idealist era
predecessors.
President-elect Obama’s
attempt to include a
wide range of political
opinion and backgrounds
in his Cabinet and White
House team has generated
criticism from the most
ideological members of
his party, just as FDR
and Lincoln faced such
criticism from the
extreme partisans of
their day. Obama's
appointment of many
"centrist" cabinet-level
officers who previously
served in Congress, the
Clinton Administration,
or as governors suggests
to his critics that he
is abandoning his pledge
to bring about
significant change in
economic, foreign, and
social policy. But as
political scientist Ross
Baker points out, "In
uncertain times,
Americans find it much
more comforting that the
people who are going to
be advising the
president are steeped in
experience. A Cabinet of
outsiders would have
been very disquieting."
And civic realignments
like the present one
have come at the most
uncertain and stressful
times in America's
history.
Through Your Words
Lincoln and FDR are also
renowned for their
ability to use their
words to rally Americans
to a common cause. Both
did so at the very
outset of their terms.
Both great civic
presidents’ first
inaugural addresses
addressed the fears of a
nation in crisis with
rhetoric that has
continued to ring
through the ages.
Lincoln, in another
last-ditch effort to
forestall secession,
told the South that
neither he nor the
Republican Party would
make any attempt to undo
slavery in states where
it already existed. But
he also reminded the
South that, while only
its actions could
ultimately provoke civil
war, his "solemn oath to
preserve, protect, and
defend" the Constitution
would require him to
prosecute that war if it
came.
Lincoln concluded his
address with an appeal
to the secessionists to
rejoin the Union:
We are not
enemies, but
friends…Though
passion may have
strained, it
must not break,
our bonds of
affection. The
mystic chords of
memory,
stretching from
every
battlefield and
patriot grave to
every living
heart and
hearthstone all
over this broad
land, will yet
swell the chorus
of the Union,
when again
touched, as
surely they will
be, by the
better angels of
our nature.
Roosevelt used his
inaugural speech to
rally the country to the
task ahead by telling
it, "the only thing we
have to fear is fear
itself." He reminded his
listeners that at
previous dark moments in
our national history,
vigorous leadership
joined with a supportive
public to win ultimate
victory in the nation's
trials. Perhaps most
important, FDR gave
clear recognition that
the United States and
its people had moved
from what we have called
an "idealist" era of
unrestrained
individualism to a
"civic" era of unity and
common purpose:
If I read the
temper of our
people
correctly, we
now realize as
we have never
realized before
our
interdependence
on each other;
that we can not
merely take but
we must give as
well; that if we
are to go
forward, we must
move as a
trained and
loyal army
willing to
sacrifice for
the good of a
common
discipline,
because without
such discipline
no progress is
made, no
leadership
becomes
effective.
Even before
President-elect Obama
had a chance to utter
similarly comforting and
inspiring rhetoric, his
inaugural plans came
under fire for inviting
Pastor Rick Warren, a
fundamentalist minister
and activist in the
passage of California's
Proposition 8 outlawing
gay marriage, to give
the invocation at his
inauguration. But the
selection of Warren
should not have been
surprising to careful
observers. In his
acceptance speech at the
Democratic National
Convention, Obama
signaled his desire to
find common ground on
divisive social issues
such as abortion, gay
marriage, and gun
control.
By bookending his
inaugural with a
benediction from Joseph
Lowrey, a minister who
favors legalizing gay
marriage among other
liberal causes, Obama
has signaled his
determination to put an
end to the debates over
social issues from an
idealist era that is
ending and enlist all
those willing to join
his cause to rebuild
America’s civic
institutions.
For in the end, it is
the American people that
Barack Obama must rally
to his side. It is they
who will ultimately
decide the effectiveness
of his transition as a
springboard to a civic
era administration. So
far their judgment is
overwhelmingly positive.
A late December 2008 CNN
national survey
describes "a love affair
between Barack Obama and
the American people."
That survey indicated
that more than eight in
10 Americans (82%)
approved of the way
Obama was handling his
transition, a figure
that was up by three
percentage points since
the beginning of the
month. Obama's approval
is well above that of
either Bill Clinton
(67%) or George W. Bush
(65%) at that point in
their transitions.
More specifically, the
poll suggests that the
public approves of
Obama's Cabinet
nominees, with 56
percent saying his
appointments have been
outstanding or above
average. That number is
18 percentage points
higher than that given
to Bush's appointments
and 26 points above that
of Clinton's nominees.
To quote CNN polling
director Keating
Holland: "Barack Obama
is having a better
honeymoon with the
American public than any
incoming president in
the past three decades.
He's putting up better
numbers, usually by
double digits, than Bill
Clinton, Ronald Reagan,
or either George Bush on
every item traditionally
measured in transition
polls."
Of course, the final
judgment of the Obama
presidency by the
American people and
history will be based on
his performance in
office starting on
January 20. Still, these
polling results clearly
suggest that Barack
Obama has internalized
and put into operation
the historical
transition lessons
provided by Abraham
Lincoln and Franklin D.
Roosevelt, the
presidents who led
America's two previous
civic realignments. If
his inaugural address
comes close to matching
their first inaugural
speeches,
President-elect Obama
will begin one of the
most important
Administrations in the
nation’s history with an
enormous reservoir of
political and public
support that will serve
him well in the crucial
early days of his
Administration.
