Town Hall Debacle

Politico featured a story of late by Alex Isenstadt, aptly titled “Town Halls Gone Wild.” In it, he relates the endemic unraveling of civility taking place at popular town hall meetings across the nation. Here’s an excerpt from the story:

Screaming constituents, protesters dragged out by the cops, congressmen fearful for their safety — welcome to the new town-hall-style meeting, the once-staid forum that is rapidly turning into a house of horrors for members of Congress.

On the eve of the August recess, members are reporting meetings that have gone terribly awry, marked by angry, sign-carrying mobs and disruptive behavior. In at least one case, a congressman has stopped holding town hall events because the situation has spiraled so far out of control.

What are town halls? Typically, a congressmen makes regular visits to his district and plays host to his constituents at these time-honored small gatherings to field questions, to listen to various concerns and to outline his legislative agenda and accomplishments. Perhaps part of the town hall mise en scène is tinged with a little bit of contrived political theatre and show and tell, and people may be justified in asking whether town halls have any enduring impact or relevance. It’s a good question, but who can deny that the concept of a town hall is a good one? In the very least, it affords a rare chance for the public to remind those entrusted with power that they are on a tight electoral leash with a choke collar that can be ruthlessly employed, come next election. The more times an elected official has to face those he is representing to render an account, the better, right? That said, the efficacy of the town hall meeting hinges, I believe, on certain preconditions. So long as the public is well-informed on the issues, relatively well-educated and civilized, town halls can be quaint manifestations of the smoothly operating gears of the democratic process. But what happens when elected officials become arrogantly detached, drunk on their own power and a substantial portion of the public becomes pushy, boorish, ideological, and (perhaps justifiably) angry? What if basic manners get tossed aside in favor of shouting contests between hopelessly irreconcilable camps? What becomes of the town hall meeting once etiquette and civilized, informed debate are all given the boot? Enter the sad situation presented by Isenstadt.

The simultaneous breakdown in civility and liberal education (“liberal” in the antique sense of the word) is a contagion afflicting the left and the right, from moody scribblers like Arianna Huffington and Maureen Dowd to shrill braggadocios like Chris Matthews, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. Even as a rock-ribbed conservative, I cannot endure to watch either Hannity or Beck for any prolonged period. My, how times have changed! Compare the manner in which, back in the day, the unflappable William F. Buckley Jr. locked horns with the leading minds of the left like Arthur Schlesinger Jr., always self-possessed, brilliant and cool, to the hyper-active tit-for-tat shout fests that pass for serious debate in the contemporary agora of cable news. But Hannity and Beck, blaring their rehashed catch-phrase opinions on a nightly basis, have clearly tapped into something lucrative, as both men draw larger audiences and rake in more cash than the scholarly (yet telegenic) Buckley ever did on his show, Firing Line. But it is here where one sees the market forces at work. Buckley, Hannity and Beck are all described as conservative men, but these contemporary successors to Buckley’s far-reaching legacy have struck gold in a way that he never did, and perhaps never wished to. The simple truth is that the vast majority of Americans prefer the deafening clamor of a substance-less knockdown brawl to the calm flow of a substance-filled dialogue. And so, taking note, today’s liberal and conservative talking heads have responded accordingly, giving the people what they want to see and hear, just as in the days of the colosseum. Buckley wouldn’t lower himself to being shrill and loud. Barring one exception, when he responded angrily to an ad hominem inflicted by liberal doyen Gore Vidal during a televised debate in the 60’s (Gore repeatedly referred to Buckley as a "crypto-Nazi"), Buckley was incapable of raising his voice in order to make a point. He instead perfected a relentless one-two punch that combined logic and Socratic inquiry, politely pummeling his opponents into oblivion. Yet, in spite of the high intellectual voltage of the many debates spanning several decades, it was Buckley’s enduring charm and civility, even to his ideological polar opposites, that was most legendary. Fast forward to the current make up of the excruciatingly ear-piercing, cringe-worthy political debates put on by the cocksure banshees of Fox News, CNN and MSNBC and the sorry contrast will become readily apparent in a matter of minutes.

My thesis (hardly original) is that, across the political spectrum, people have lost touch with the sort of time-honored manners and deference to savoir faire that French political theorist Bertrand de Jouvenel stressed were essential elements for a civilized society to cultivate. This is not to say that the public discussion, in the pre-Maddow cable news world, was always refined and sunny. There was, after all, the tumultuous age of tarring and feathering and effigy burning in our own nation’s early history. (Although our mob scene never boiled over to the kind of uncontrolled Jacobin frenzy of mass executions and butchery seen in the heyday of the French Revolution, a movement which Edmund Burke chillingly described as having “hallowed violence.”) The point I’m trying to make, and I think Isenstadt’s telling article points to this, is that the high demand in America for televised political shouting matches, utterly devoid of civility and intellectual points of reference, has spilled over and contributed to the breakdown of, among other things, the traditional town hall meeting.

Professor Daniel Mahoney, an astute political theorist and authority on de Jouvenel’s thought observed that,

Manners are an essential instrument of civic comity, and the introduction of brutish mores is the surest way of destroying the affections that bind citizens together. A respect for decorum and civil conduct serve as a valuable reminder that political partisans on all sides are the members of the same civic community.These “brutish mores” have, in many respects, taken hold in our contemporary life, from our sub-par preferences in entertainment, to the way we pass our leisure time and, finally, to our hyper-combative approach to political discourse. In the process, we have lost a sense of solidarity and cohesion with our fellow citizens. Scanning the political mess in Washington, people have every reason to be outraged, and that understandable anger should without a doubt be constructively channeled to our representatives in congress. The point is not to dismiss the reality of legitimate anger over the superabundance of legislative and executive boondoggle, or to recommend its suppression altogether. Those in office must be able to read the pulse of the American people, especially when elected officials wander so grievously from their constitutional duties, as they have at the present moment. But when everyone is shouting, no one is heard and nothing gets done. And what happens to our civilization in the process?