The downward spiral in the quality of the national political dialogue continues to accelerate. The rhetoric is more insipid than inspiring.
Comments by many of our presidential aspirants and public officials (not to mention some of the pundit class) don't instill confidence that they are prepared to deal effectively and realistically with the challenges we face.
Political pot shots prevail over serious analysis and informed discussion of the critical issues facing the nation. Frustration runs deep, and no doubt there are those who are content with the exaggerated claims, insults and bombastic attacks that characterize the current political climate.
You know it isn't a normal political season when one of the poll-leading candidate refers to the voters in Iowa and the American public as "stupid."
"How stupid are the people of Iowa? How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?" Donald Trump yelled at a recent rally. He was particularly aiming at those who support Ben Carson, who has set something of a low-water mark for his Sarah Palin-like lack of knowledge on foreign policy. At a time when international relations have taken on new resonance, Carson has had trouble answering questions about responding to the terrorist attacks in Paris and elsewhere.
Trump tells us, on the other hand, "I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me," before proceeding to describe in graphic terms how he would bomb ISIS. That caused Sen. John McCain, considered by many to be one of the stronger congressional voices on security issues, and himself a target of Trump earlier in the campaign season, to say, "I think the voters deserve more specifics rather than these kind of platitudes that make for great sound bites" that don't have anything to do with seriously addressing the challenge.
Conservative commentator Ann Coulter, who opposes any more Muslim immigration, had to say on the night of the Paris attacks: "They can wait if they like until next November for the actual balloting, but Donald Trump was elected president tonight."
In recent days it is the refugee issue that has brought some of the more outlandish and uninformed comments with many politicos intent on jumping on the anti-Syrian-immigrant bandwagon. Caution is certainly called for these days, but facts and humanitarian concerns are too often ignored.
We've heard talk about refugees as rabid dogs. Carson, Trump and Carly Fiorina have all falsely claimed that President Obama wants to bring tens of thousands Syrian refugees to the U.S. It's 250,000, according to Trump, for whom exaggeration is second nature. The actual number proposed by Obama is 10,000. Of the roughly 2,000 Syrian refugees coming to the U.S. in the last four years, more than half are children. And those applying for entry face a lengthy and intensive vetting process.
Some Democratic officials and many state governors have not been immune from the rabies over refugees.
Responding to critics of his position on refugees and on confronting ISIS, a clearly frustrated Obama took a mocking tone when a more tempered reaction, rather than what the Washington Post described as petulant, would have been better.
Republican hopeful Ted Cruz, who has called Obama's positions "lunacy," apparently assumed the president was speaking directly to him, and took sandbox politics to a new level, challenging the president, who was involved in a series of high-level meetings in Asia, to "come back and insult me to my face."
Meanwhile, Trump, whose campaign has threatened to "blacklist" reporters who left a designated media "pen" during rallies, continues to favor a database system for registering and tracking Muslims in this country -- and systems beyond databases, regardless of our Constitution. But Cruz said, "I'm not a fan of government registries of American citizens."
Hillary Clinton draws some criticism not for what she said but what she doesn't say on this subject. She has refused to use the term "radical Islam," making the point that we are by no means at war with all Muslims. For example, we are not at war with Indonesia, the world's largest Islamic nation. However, there is clearly a force of "radical Islam" that is undeniably a serious factor to contend with in today's world and they claim to be Islamists.
Ponder all this, if you will, and what passes for a national dialogue on critical issues. It leads us to ask, "They said what?" as inflamed rhetoric reverberates through social media in the form of affirmation, reinforcing previously existing and often biased views or demonization, attacking those with differing views, frequently based on misinformation.
Commentary on 11/25/2015