FOUDNERS' DREAM: A DOSE OF SANITY

KENNETT, Mo. -- It has always been difficult to understand why so many partisan proponents profess such enduring love for America's political-party system while devoting far greater energy to disparaging those who believe differently. I know the obvious answers to that conundrum, for they are offered as excuses every time some screaming partisan hack feverishly explains that we Americans thrive on debate, argument and strong beliefs, and they have a point. Up to a point.

But have you ever noticed how the patriotic sentiments of so many of us change when our party loses a presidential election or when opposition partisans gain control of the legislative branch? Talk about political schizophrenia.

Since his inauguration last January, President George W. Bush has been the target of Democratic critics, anxious to see him commit errors so egregious that a bona fide crisis is created. I somehow suspect the most partisan members of Thomas Jefferson's party pray every night that some national or international crisis will so discredit our new chief executive that he will be forced to resign in disgrace, or at least suffer the consequences of a slipping, sliding approval rating.

Moralistic excuses

The Republicans, of course, were no different when Bill Clinton was in the Oval Office, and indeed his sexual shenanigans handed his enemies with enough moralistic excuses for demanding an impeachment trial and, hopefully to them, his removal from office. It wasn't until a few of Clinton's harshest critics were found to be as guilty as he that some of the GOP chest-beating was mitigated even as the arguments contended infidelity was somehow different if the sinner occupied a lower political office. I doubt if St. Peter will buy that argument, although if he does it will undoubtedly require a revision of certain scriptural passages.

The tolerance extended to political intolerance has long been one of the most unrecognized difficulties of administering both federal and state governments in America. It's interesting to note that our country's greatest, and most dangerous, crisis divided our country both geographically and emotionally over an issue that was not political but intellectual, economic and moral. Americans declared war against their fellow citizens not because they were Whigs or Republicans or states' righters or Democrats but because they were confronted with an abiding and unresolved difference over how they envisioned the society of the future.

Americans have argued lengthily and contentiously over a great many other national challenges that had little or no relation to individual politics, including such historical issues as our new nation's early need for a central bank, the right to levy taxes for public programs, the disturbing debates over separate but equal facilities for minorities, the wisdom of U.S. participation in the old League of Nations, and even the efficacy of assisting our European cousins in their resistance to a totalitarian Germanic war machine. Our decision to resist the spread of communism was hardly a partisan issue and the decisions made were more moralistic, more pragmatic, more ideological than partisan. The country's reaction to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor was not made on the basis of whether we were Republicans or Democrats but Americans.

Celebrating defeat

Nothing seems to inspire our native gotcha reaction more than failed federal and state solutions, dating back as early as the Adams and Jefferson administrations and continuing right up to the more modern, nativistic examples of the Carter, Reagan, Clinton and the two Bush tenures. This anti-hegemonic tendency is so great that partisan majorities have actually celebrated at the defeat of such critically needed program reforms as health care, campaign and election standards, increased accountability of public officeholders and even attempts to lift millions of fellow citizens from the depths of poverty and their increased vulnerability to illness.

A Republican president is the victim of partisan scorn that takes delight in his failures while predicting far greater ones in the future; even his pronunciation is scored for its alleged lack of brain power. A Democratic governor is scorned when he must trim state programs to fit circumstances far beyond his control; his mistake in overspending for an inaugural event is not forgiven by those who presumably were never guilty of exceeding spending estimates.

The subject matter is of little importance to partisan critics since their real aim is to publicize the sins of the opposition and carry out their assignment in the most egregious manner, without regard to accuracy or equity. In the view of partisans the issue of good and evil matters little since the response has already been shaped by prejudice, parochialism and partisan rivalry. Example: campaign-election reform.

These shortcomings would be bad enough if they affected only the believers and fell short of impacting the public's welfare. I recall never being prouder of my father than when, serving as the chief of staff for a Democratic governor, was an energetic opponent of his party's efforts to steal the governorship from a legally elected Republican more than six decades ago. He was ostracized by many of the partisans he had earlier assisted but he refused to amend his beliefs, saying he had no reason to change his mind about the importance of decency and fair play in state government.

Myopic partisans seem to exist in equal number in both parties, and although it would be pleasant to assert their number is diminishing as a result of enlightenment, I question such validation. Partisan obsession is a word that belongs not only in Webster's but in the revised edition of the American Psychiatric Association's "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual."

Come on, readers, you're smart enough to make up your own minds.

~Jack Stapleton is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.