A good media report on bad politics

Usually, the media are complicit in perpetuating the mean-spirited rhetoric in politics these days. It makes for lively reporting, and some of them seem to think that’s what the people want. But in this good analysis, the Associated Press says that’s not what the people want.

Those lofty promises of cooperation between the Bush White House and the newly Democratic Congress have been drowned out by acrid bursts of name-calling.

Amid open confrontation between President Bush and Congress over Iraq, the White House is branding Democrats defeatists and accusing them of pursuing a surrender strategy.

To Democrats, Vice President Dick Cheney is an “attack dog” and President Bush is guilty of more political abuses than Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal.

Such heated rhetoric is fouling Washington’s already tense political atmosphere. It is undercutting the pledges for greater cooperation that both sides made shortly after Democrats’ victories last November that put them back in control of the House and Senate.

It also is becoming harder to do business – even on issues less contentious than Iraq and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales – now that the 2008 presidential campaign season has begun.

The unusually snarly level of political discourse shows the deep party divisions over Bush’s strategy to increase troop levels in Iraq. But it also echoes the harsher talk and invectives on Internet blogs, talk radio and some 24-hour cable television programs.

Those in both parties appeal regularly for a lowering of the wattage of political rhetoric. That seldom happens.

Polls traditionally show the public would like to see less name-calling, said pollster Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center.

But sometimes, when the same people are asked whether they would like to see elected officials who represent their position make compromises, “We get a fair amount of pushback,” Kohut said. “People say, `Well, actually, my position on this is pretty important to me.'”

Now why do they equate being polite with making compromises? You can be firm in principles, but charitable in debating the policies to carry them out.