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April 21, 2000



Attacking Elian's Fisherman?!?

Bush is right: The culture of attack politics is out of control.

A media grab bag from Mike Potemra, NR's deputy managing editor. National Review, 4/27/00 9:15 a.m.

One of the things I liked most about George W. Bush’s dad is that he always seemed to be a genuinely decent guy. The younger Bush demonstrated the same spirit in comments he made at a major GOP fundraising gala yesterday. A front-page article in today’s Washington Post reports that Bush called for an end to the dispiritingly mean attack culture of today’s politics.

Bush knocked Clinton and Gore as the chief culprits, but admitted that "sometimes some in [the GOP] have responded in kind. Americans have seen a cycle of bitterness: an arms race of anger. And both parties share some of the blame….It does not have to be this way….I will set a different tone. I will restore civility and respect to our national politics."

That Bush is willing to include his own party in this indictment is a sign that he has a certain amount of self-confidence and moral strength, which will be very reassuring to voters still undecided about whether he’s up to the job of being president. The message itself is timely and necessary: Even the charge of "lack of civility" has itself been tainted by the attack-politics culture, as people use it to demonize their opponents. If someone raises a politically inconvenient question, he or she might be attacked for practicing "the politics of personal destruction."

That this argument is abused in order to tarnish innocent people, however, doesn’t mean that "the politics of personal destruction" is just a chimera of political rhetoric. It really exists; look at another story on page one of today’s Post, and you’ll see what I mean. A long profile of the guy who fished Elian Gonzalez out of the water traps him in trivial lies about how many times he’s been married, airs rumors about his love life, and repeats attacks on him by a relative who calls him a "phony" and "a Kato Kaelin type."

Remember now: This is just an ordinary guy whose only claim to fame is saving a little kid, and becoming tangled up on one side of one political issue. Why on earth is any dirty laundry of his — whether it be true or false — a matter that deserves public airing? But this is what the attack machinery does: If some person gets involved in a political controversy, he or she becomes fair game for this vicious process; and this article about the fisherman shows how despicable the process can be.

I see so much of this kind of journalism that I have developed something of a reflex: Whenever I see an attack piece on somebody these days, I find myself automatically trying to make the case for the person being attacked. Are the charges really true? Is the evidence, perhaps, slanted? Why are people telling me about this person’s faults anyway? What’s in it for the attackers? And so on.

Governor Bush is on the right track; if he’s willing to stick to this approach — to take the high road — he might get the American people to feel just a little bit better about the process of self-government. If he could do that, he would probably win the election; even more importantly, he would prove himself to be a leader.

National Review 215 Lexington Avenue New York, New York 10016 212-679-7330 Customer Service: 815-734-1232. Contact Us.

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