SLOGGING THROUGH HEALTH CARE

2009-09-21T23:10:00.000-04:00

Listening to Republican pundits bash President Obama's whirlwind interviews on the Sunday talk shows, I'm reminded of the day I lost faith in honest political debate.

Product of a mixed political marriage, I lost my maiden head early. Political debate heated up our dinners, but the discussion was always civil.

My mother was raised a conservative old school Republican in a household where all right-minded people regarded FDR with utter disdain. He was "that man in the White House," a traitor to his class. My father grew up a bleeding heart liberal Democrat. His family adored FDR and all he stood for. Dad gritted his teeth through the Eisenhower administrations, reviling that "Boob in the White House." He adored JFK and positively loathed Richard Nixon. Mom smirked, until Watergate. My parents consistently cancelled out each other's votes.

We siblings split down the middle. I was Daddy's little girl and remained so until adolescence, during the summer I played mother's helper to a very Republican neighborhood family. Among this homogenous political family of summer people, my budding liberal views found constant rebuttal. I began to waiver. Again, the discussion was always civil. I'd spout my father's views, use his well-practiced refutations of my mother's arguments, and expect the neighbors to cave in—as Mom always did when confronted with Dad's Harvard-trained legal mind. But the neighbors remained steadfast. They presented facts and figures, clear evidence of my, and my father's, wrongheadedness.

Their thinking began to suffuse my side of the dinner table debate. I'd parrot the facts and figures presented to me, supposing them reliable, if conservative. One had to acknowledge facts and figures. Then Dad hit me with his ultimate weapon, the one he so often used to hammer Mom's opinions.

"Quote your source," he said.

"Mr. X," (who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty), I said.

"Insufficient. Hearsay. What's his source?"

I had to admit I didn't know. I supposed The Wall Street Journal or Barron's. "I'll find out."

I found out all right.

"Where did those figures come from," I asked Mr. X the next time I sat for his brood, preparing to load my political cannon against Dad's.

"Made 'em up," he said with a smirk of entitlement, without the least inkling of remorse. "You didn't call me on it."

"I didn't expect you to lie."

He just shrugged. "All's fair...," and he let that hang out there like a challenge.

Over the decades, as political rhetoric has devolved to shouting matches and name calling on the 24/7 news cycle, I can't get the image of Mr. X's privileged smirk out of my mind. I watch the President try to reign in the debate over health care and return it to a civil discourse of ideas and I can think only one thing as the lies and vitriol cascade from the Republican opposition: Call them on it, Mr. President. Don't let them shout you down. Don't let them get away with their lies.

Dory Crowes

SLOGGING THROUGH HEALTH CARE

Listening to Republican pundits bash President Obama's whirlwind interviews on the Sunday talk shows, I'm reminded of the day I lost faith in honest political debate.