What's the Matter in Kansas? Thoughts From the Heartland

Want to rant? Reach for humor

Back to school and now – after a week of resident assistant training and the first two days of classes – back to blogging.

It’s general election season and there’s little actual news that’s happened in the last 20 days since my last post. What I have found has been disappointing. (Cue the rant...)

On the Johnson County edition of the national blog Red County, there’s an attack on former presidential candidate and Senator Bob Dole for making a $1,000 contribution to the U.S. Senate campaign of Florida Governor Charlie Christ, who is running as an Independent after being strategically forced out of the Republican Party by the strong candidacy of former State Representative Marco Rubio. Sen. Dole deserves no such treatment: whether you wish him and his politics well or ill, his character is near universally well respected and what he chooses to do with his personal money is an action which should require no explanation. Why should Republicans always support Republicans? And Democrats, Democrats? Politics should be about the people we elect, not the ‘R’ or ‘D’ or ‘I’, ‘L’, ‘G’, etc. next to their name.

The blog Forward Kansas, meanwhile, seems to think that a candidate for U.S. Congress – in this case State Representative Kevin Yoder – will simply sign a pledge without having some time to look it over first. Yes, by all means, walk into a candidate’s campaign office with something they’ve never seen before and expect, in a relatively short period of time, for said pledge to be agreed to with Yoder’s “John Hancock”. Ads and guarantees such as these reduce the discourse and deny the nuance inherent in politics. Especially inflammatory for a moderately educated member of the public is the provision which suggests that Rep. Yoder, if elected, should not support any proposal which might see a rise in the age of eligibility for Social Security. Considering the program is financially insolvent long-term and people in the United States have much higher life expectancies today than they did 75 years ago, such a provision in the extension and reformation of the program is not an outlandish or inflammatory idea.

I have no intention of making this habit, but I must in this case due to the example: former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has often received criticism for talking about “gotcha” moments in interviews, what the Kansas Democratic Party has engaged in with this video is one such attempt.

On the other hand, I must give Colin Curtis, Forward Kansas’ primary writer, credit for reporting Mike Pompeo’s Twitter link to an inflammatory rant about his competitor for U.S. Congress in the Fourth District, State Representative Raj Goyle. (Concerning those remarks, the Wichita Eagle Editorial Blog has accepted Pompeo’s mea culpa for the whole thing, while also suggesting that this might still be a sign of things to come from those opposed to Rep. Goyle.)

In national news, much has been said with regard to the building of a mosque near the place where the World Trade Center towers once stood. (Check this Washington Post article for details) President Barack Obama has come out in support of the project moving forward, while many high profile politicians have ardently disagreed. The following segment from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart frames our country’s sad dialogue on the issue and offers solid constitutional conclusions.

What else can we do? This week, I had a discussion with a new friend, who was not registered to vote, about politics – and she expressed that the most difficult issue for her was the fact that the discussion centered around everyone’s own facts, that policies were not talked about, rather it had devolved into a grand, never-ending “he said-she said”. So I asked her, “You know what the solution is?”

She responded by saying that she understood – from her father’s reminders – that voting was that solution. And he’s right, but in a way you might not expect: in this case, its about voting for people who do not engage in this sort of demonization of opponents, of making generalizations about policy decisions, of contributing to the problem and not the solution.

Former U.S. Congressman from Kansas and Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman added another suggestion in The Wichita Eagle on August 8:

With events filtered through a partisan midterm election and a heat wave smothering the nation's capital, it seems the first thing to wilt is Washington's sense of humor.

...the ability of elected officials to indulge in a good collective laugh — not to make light of serious situations but to ease tensions — has become a too-rare civility in modern political life. It is not an overstatement to say that the country suffers for all of the endless indignation and offense.

...If I had my way, we'd carve the words of Hubert Humphrey into the Capitol dome. On Nov. 3, 1977, he was the first sitting senator to address the House in regular session. He was late in life and dying of cancer. Fight every battle as if the world depended on victory, he told the House. But after all is said and done, go over and shake your opponent's hand.Your enemy today may be your ally tomorrow, he said. Don't burn your bridges.

Bipartisanship seems to have become a four-letter word — the act of sellouts and betrayal of "the team" — rather than the fine art of compromise and the essential act of getting things done. That's a dangerous place for us to be as a country.

Defining victory as political points scored rather than real progress achieved makes our country weak and ineffectual. If we remain distracted by our differences, the world will pass us by.

There are, no doubt, deep and genuine divisions between the parties. And the notion of a loyal opposition is a healthy one in any democracy.

The looming question is, do we have the will — indeed, the capacity — to reach common ground where it is required?

One of the most underestimated tools in politics, leadership and life is a sense of humor — the ability to laugh not just at others but at ourselves. More than ever, we need humor's deflationary influence in the nation's capital. It's an essential release valve, a check on all the overheated rhetoric and a bridge to real dialogue.

Mark Twain got it right when he said, "against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."

Humor alone can't solve our problems. But it can open the door to greater civility, a little more humanity and some much-needed productivity in our nation's governance.

New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow built upon Glickman's thoughts in a recent column where he said he is willing to cast in his lot with kids – even the Canadian pop star Justin Bieber to run our nation:

Maybe we should just let the children run the country, at least until the recession is over. They appear to be the only people not bubbling over with anger, anxiety and frustration.

According to a Gallup poll released on Thursday, 70 percent of U.S. students in grades 5 through 12 say they are thriving, 63 percent say they feel engaged and 53 percent say they feel hopeful.

Adults are a bit more bitter.

A CNN poll also released on Thursday found that 70 percent of adults describe themselves as angry and 69 percent think things are going badly in the country. In a NBC News/Wall Street Journal Survey also released on Thursday, 58 percent of Americans said they think that things in this country are “off on the wrong track.”

Yes, I know, we parents have to pay for our children’s unlimited cellphone packages so they can text until their thumbs are bigger than their forearms. And we have to pay the mortgage so they can continue to hang out in that filthy room with the pizza box under the bed. Meeting those obligations has us racked with worry now that the recession has sucked out our happiness like one of Harry Potter’s Dementors.

But that’s the problem. The recession has made us all so crazy and consumed by insecurities that we can’t think straight. We’re misbehaving like we’re the children, and in many cases having to apologize for it.

…there’s the Democratic state representative, Timothy Horrigan, from New Hampshire. After Ted Stevens, the former Alaska senator, was killed in a plane crash this week, Keith David Halloran, a New Hampshire Democrat, posted this message on his Facebook page: “Just wish Sarah and Levy were on board,” clearly referring to Sarah Palin and Levi Johnston.

To that, Horrigan responded: “Well a dead Palin wd be even more dangerous than a live one ... she is all about her myth & if she was dead she cldn’t commit any more gaffes.”

Seriously guys? I’m the first to say that I want to keep Palin as close to Russia and as far away from Washington as humanly possible, but debating the merits of her demise in a plane crash is heinous. Horrigan has since resigned.

One of the few lawmakers who seems to be having fun by acting like a child is Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. He is scheduled to have a fund-raiser at Lady Gaga’s “Monster Ball” tour stop in Washington on Sept. 7. Lautenberg is 86 years old, but there is no resisting a woman who once wore a see-through plastic dress with a giant silver lobster as a headpiece. Everybody loves lobster.

Another is John McCain, who seems to be flirting with the über-tan “Jersey Shore” star Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi (after having bonded with each other over tanning salon taxes in June). Snooki was arrested for disorderly conduct last month. This week, McCain told a Phoenix radio station that “I kind of think she might be too good-looking to go to jail.” A wink, wink from the dashing 73-year-old with the wispy locks. One bit of advice to Snooki: Don’t go to McCain’s home base in Arizona. The state is hostile to people of your current complexion.

So, yes, I cast my lot with the actual children, and not because I think that they’re Obama-conformists, either. They’re not. In fact, they’re even more harsh on the president than adults. An April poll of high school students published by Hamilton College found that “70 percent of African-Americans in the survey give Obama a favorable rating, but the analogous number is only 21 [percent] for whites.” That’s far lower than their adult counterparts. A Quinnipiac University poll of adults also released in April found that 92 percent of blacks approved of the president’s handling of his job compared with just 35 percent of whites. (If I were Obama, this would keep me up at night. The next wave of his campaign army may not be so eager to enlist in 2012.)

Though Blow doesn't really bring his column to a conclusion, it fits well with the point trying to be made here: the general election promises to be a nasty fight to the finish - the only way to make change is to pay attention to the candidates who do and do not find ways to be civil, who can and cannot reach common ground with their opponents, who use humor - not to poke light in serious times - to defuse a stressed public and polarized political corps.

Example:

Or this, though it comes from a bit of a different angle, seeking interns:

We must not grow faint or weary, we must not lose faith in the power of our votes, our voices. If we educate ourselves, if we demand nuanced, caring leadership, we can get "change we believe in." (Though it might take a while.)