Saturday, October 6, 2018

Quote of the Day (Ambrose Bierce, on Partisan Strife)


“The partisan strife in which the people of the country are permitted to periodically engage does not tend to the development of ugly traits of character, but merely discloses those that preexist.”— American short story writer and journalist Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), on election campaigns, in his “Prattle” column, Nov. 8, 1884

No truer demonstration of Bierce’s observation exists than the controversy over the Brett Kavanaugh nomination to the Supreme Court. The only thing that both sides seem to agree on is that his confirmation today by the Senate has opened a new vein of ugliness in American politics.

Each side might insist that it did what it had to do, but neither really covered itself in glory. It will be impossible for the Democrats to escape the suspicion that it waited until the last minute to introduce Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation against him, after they saw taking his nomination apart on the basis of ideology, as with Robert Bork, was gaining no traction. At the same time, the GOP showed, by not even bringing to a vote the nomination of Merrick Garland, that it had no scruples at all when it came to power politics—quite simply, they blocked any action at all on him because they could.

For the foreseeable future, I think we are going to see confirmation votes almost as razor-thin as this one. The whole process has become consumed by “partisan strife”—and strife over single issues, at that. I’m afraid that it will take a disaster for the two sides in Congress to talk to each other again.

We are not a better nation after all of this.

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