What a difference a party label makes. When asked about the raging controversy over Karl Rove’s participation in outing an undercover CIA agent, “several Republican senators,” reported the New York Times, said “that they did not know enough or did not want to venture an opinion.”
In the political history racket, nailing down precise moments of party-wide change is usually an impossible task. There are too many variables in play, too many personalities involved, and too many transitions progressing at different rates. But when future generations look back and ask when, exactly, did Republican High Propriety on matters of executive-branch skullduggery kick in, they’ll have a precise answer: January 20, 2001.
I haven’t sunk a hundred grand into polling data on the correlation between the age-old scourge of political hypocrisy and electoral apathy, but I’d wager most people disdainful of politics and resigned from the process would tend to emphasize the same causation: “They’re all a bunch of crooks and hypocrites. It makes no difference who’s in office, so why bother voting?”
Admittedly some who say this are merely looking for a passable excuse to punt their civic duty. To say you’ve arrived at political apathy only after a long spell of philosophical indulgence takes on an almost noble, Thoureau-like detachment. But that’s often garbage. They just don’t want to take time away from the latest syndicated episode of Roseanne. But other political apostates do actually keep up and know what’s happening -- hence they also know the system stinks and they’d rather not play. It’s a passive-aggressive negation of democracy.
The Rove affair is one of those great moments in hypocrisy that drives this latter segment. And in the last decade the public has had good reason for growing despair and cynical withdrawal.
It was Republicans, remember, who were going to reverse “business as usual” in Washington. There were to be no more political games and no more hypocrisy hoedowns -- not from these guys. Full accountability. That was the key. They even signed a contract with the public saying so.
And for six years we did indeed see demands for accountability -- from the other side. If Hillary so much as forgot the details of a 10-year-old phone call, congressional Republicans hastily formed investigative committees and insisted on creating and then disseminating all the sordid facts. Or if Bill had a coffee-break date it amounted to a wrenching national crisis about which no Republican could withhold either comment, opinion or subpoena.
Once George was inaugurated, however … well, shucks, what’s an illegal war, for instance, compared to Oval Office jollies. As for Rove and Bush and McClellan and past White House absolutes on national security breaches and summary firings … well, shucks again, the same congressional Republicans just don’t know enough and don’t want to venture an opinion. Anything else would be improper.
When it comes to hypocrisy, it’s not that Democrats are amateurs; it’s just that Republicans are the world’s undefeated champions -- true pioneers in scaling new heights and dredging new lows. Democrats, though, should think twice about campaigning on the notion of “Vote for us: We’re not as bad as the other guys.” And although committed partisans tend to think that scandals like Rove’s will hurt only the opposition, the reality is they tend to suppress the overall vote. When voters say they’ve bowed out of the process because the parties are alike, they’re often speaking not of policy similarities, but of corruption and hypocrisy.
But who knows? It may be that the Bush administration in particular and its party in general have revealed themselves as so patently rotten, so utterly incompetent, so blatantly hypocritical that in the absence of any other message, Democrats could actually advance by default.
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