Politicization and public discourse

I very quickly grow bored with the standard argument about hypocrisy in politics. I definitely think that people ought to make judgments about abstract notions of the good in politics (my Rawlsian influence shining through), but I am certainly not shocked or appalled when this is not perfectly reflected in our real politics. Look, Democrats are going to argue that the filibuster is bad policy and unconstitutional when it is blocking their agenda, and then defend the rights of minorities when it blocks the conservative agenda. And Republicans will do the same. Pretending that we are shocked about this is just silly.

The reason I bring this up is the recent hand-wringing by the right about Obama ‘politicizing’ the Bin Laden killing. This strikes me as something very different from the boilerplate stupid political hypocrisy. I mean, yes, obviously if the shoe was on the other foot Republicans would castigate anyone who challenged the right of their candidate to trumpet such a success. And similarly, if this raid had gone poorly you can be absolutely positive that Romney would run ads about Obama’s catastrophic foreign policy choices. This is obvious.

The thing that really gets my goat, though, is the notion that there are certain things which it is offensive to ‘politicize.’ Paul Waldman has a good post about this, arguing that we need to shine a political light on foreign policy decision-making, and ‘politicizing’ things is the best way to do this. I agree with that. But I want to go even further. I completely reject the notion that there are sacred cows, where it is categorically offensive to reference them in the pursuit of political gains.

If Romney wants to argue that he would have achieved the same results, he is free to do so. There is a lot on the record to make this a difficult argument, but it is obviously a hypothetical so he just needs to persuade people to trust him. But it is crucially important that we actually impose that burden on our potential political actors.

I want to stress the difference between this sort of ‘politicization’ and the inane noun-verb-9/11 style of comments we heard a lot of from the Giulianis and Bushes of the world. But it’s not because those comments were ‘offensive’ – it’s because they were inane.

If the Obama characterization is unfair, then THAT might be worth challenging as a particularly odious form of politicization. I don’t agree with that argument, but you could at least try to make it. But the notion that anything tied to 9/11 is structurally beyond the pale is absolutely offensive to the very nature of meaningful political life.