Michael Kinsley doesn’t think much of the Democrats’ mission to extract an apology from Rep. Joe Wilson. He writes of the effort to enforce the rule about not calling people liars on the House floor:
Umbrage is itself, generally, a lie. The ostensible victim of the offensive remark (call him or her the “umbragee”) is actually delighted at the opportunity, while the ostensible offense giver (call him or her the “umbragor”) is sorry to have wandered into this thicket, or is made to feel sorry as the umbrage game plays itself out. The rules of the game are perverse but simple: I scream with pain until you cry “uncle.”
The purpose of this rule is to attempt to enforce a level of civility in the political debate. The result, though, is just the opposite: It is simply another opportunity for a fusillade in the Umbrage Wars. No matter how important or otherwise the underlying issue may be, it seems that about three-quarters of American politics can now be distilled down to “How dare you say that!” Taking offense at someone else’s possibly over-vigorous exercise of free speech, demanding an apology and so on has replaced much serious discussion about, oh, health care, the financial crisis, Iraq, Afghanistan, stuff like that. Umbrage is so much easier: You can do it in your sleep, or on talk radio.
But there is another purpose, one consistent with the president’s health-care push: to paint the opposition to ObamaCare as unhinged—or, as the Democrats have described their fellow citizens, “silly” or “evil-mongers” or “un-American.” Only supporters of ObamaCare reside in the “mainstream,” and Democrats, the Obama team warns, are foolish to take all those unreal protesters too seriously.
But this is nothing new for the Left, which has transformed “projection” from a psychological phenomenon into a political strategy. Whether it is impugning the other side’s patriotism or engaging in vicious ad hominem attacks, the Left plays second fiddle to no one. Should we review the “Bush = Hitler” signage from the past eight years? Or the General “Betray-us” ad, which then Sen. Barack Obama could not bring himself to condemn?
Yet now, in the midst of a desperate effort to save Obama’s top legislative priority, the president and his spinners resort to the very tactics they accuse the opposition of employing. It’s remarkable that the president thinks the debate has been “coarsened.” Weren’t he and his staff the ones to announce they’d be running over the opposition, which is only composed of the uninformed and crackpots? Is he sending a “thou shall not coarsen” memo to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid?
On this one, the president and the Democrats would do well to get off the Joe Wilson inquisition. It simply confirms in many voters’ minds that this is the most viciously partisan administration in recent memory.
