How to Debate Legislation

This entry was posted on Friday, August 14th, 2009 at 12:20 pm and is filed under Health Care, Politics, Politics and the English Language. You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

23 Responses to “How to Debate Legislation”

1. Tom Meyer says:
   

   I’ve no particular take on this specific issue — I haven’t been following it close enough — but I do note that this is the second time Apollo has acknowledged that Sarah Palin has made exaggerated, unsubstantiated claims, and then defended her for making those claims.

   Would it be fair to say that Professor Morgan is validating points?

   August 14th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
2. FormerSwingVoter says:
   

   To be fair, he doesn’t think that everyone has a valid point. He thinks that everyone on the right has a valid point.

   August 14th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
3. Apollo says:
   

   Ironic that I get accused of being a closed-minded partisan when I post something that actually changed my mind. I hadn’t liked what Palin did, but what others were saying about her post didn’t sit right with me either. Honestly, I didn’t think much of the matter until I read what Althouse wrote (if you don’t know much of her, I assure you that she is not a partisan right-winger). I thought Althouse said something important here; there’s a fundamental distinction between attacking legislation and attacking people. It rang true to me because it tied in a few important democratic notions: the burden of proof should always be on those advocating change; legislation should be clear and say neither more nor less than it is intended to say; and we should not let people pass legislation by arguing it says one thing, while in fact the legislation does something different.

   Palin said something about the legislation. I think it’s plain, from what Obama has said, that he wants to save money by denying medical procedures to those who are considered terminally ill; at the very least, it’s undeniable that he thinks it’s an option to pay for other priorities. It’s not much of a leap to go from his comments about granny not needing a new hip because she’s going to die soon, to the government paying doctors to consult with the elderly regarding their end of life treatment, to death panels.

   So Palin identified a fear from the new legislation, one that exposed some of the only-partially stated (and frequently denied) aims of some of the new legislation’s proponents. If that fear was wrong, the legislation’s proponents could have easily demonstrated it, or they could have altered the legislation to ensure that those fears would not come to fruition. Or (and this is an overlooked possibility) the bill’s proponents could have continued as it is without addressing the fears of death panels. That they did none of these things, but instead have removed that section of the bill, tells us that Palin hit on more truth than the legislation’s proponents wished to talk about.

   As for Palin’s prior “exaggerated, unsubstantiated” claims, I’ve a broad tolerance of how people respond to personal attacks, and the funnier the better. If someone says “Your daughter is a slut,” “That won’t help you get a hookup, you creepy old perv” strikes me as a fair response. I’m not sure I’m on the record anywhere complaining about how someone responded to a personal attack, unless it was to point out that a particular response was bad or ineffective. I didn’t even mind Clinton’s nuts-n-sluts defenses; I still thought he was wrong, and the “women’s” movement was unbelievably hypocritical in standing by him, but as a matter of principle, if the attack is, “He’s a sexual fiend,” “You’re a two-bit harlot” is a good comeback.

   August 14th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
4. FormerSwingVoter says:
   

   What? Someone managed to convince you that a Republican has a point? I’m shocked! Shocked I say! Shocked and amazed, both at the same time! Clearly, my accusations of you being a right-wing ideologue were completely unfounded.

   August 15th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
5. FormerSwingVoter says:
   

   Also, the argument that Democrats’ removal of this clause proves that the criticisms of it were correct is silly. If a minor part of a bill is risking the whole thing because a significant portion of the voting public is completely batshit crazy, is it worth losing the entire bill over it?

   Naturally, if the Dems had fought hard over this, someone would have written about how this was proof of their secret euthanization plan – why fight so hard for such a minor part of the bill, after all? And you would have linked to it while nodding approvingly, saying “See? Palin obviously had a point”.

   August 15th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
6. Apollo says:
   

   Aside from your insults of me, is it fair to summarize your point as, “Sarah Palin outsmarted the Democrats”?

   August 15th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
7. FormerSwingVoter says:
   

   If her ultimate goal was the removal of end-of-life consultations from the bill, then that would be a pretty fair assessment. However, that appears unlikely.

   Way to play the victim card, by the way. You stay classy, Apollo.

   August 16th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
8. Apollo says:
   

   And if her goals were to wound the overall Obamacare effort, and to bring attention to the fact that the president has explicitly said that he wants to save money by denying care to people near the end of their lives? Wouldn’t she also have outsmarted the Democrats then?

   Also, I’m not sure I played a victim card; I’m pretty obviously not much of a victim here. I just didn’t feel like addressing your thesis that I’m some sort of partisan hack – if it’s true, I plainly wouldn’t care, and if it’s not, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t dissuade you of it. I will say, though, after a closer reading of your post, that I’ve never denied being a right-wing ideologue. I have denied, though, that there’s anything wrong with being an ideologue, and have said several times that it’s considerably better to be an ideologue than to be a rudderless pragmatist who gets swept away in whatever currents he happens to cross.

   August 17th, 2009 at 1:33 am
9. FormerSwingVoter says:
   

   Eliminating the more questionable parts of your argument, I’ll focus on the main point:

   “And if her goals were to wound the overall Obamacare effort… Wouldn’t she also have outsmarted the Democrats then?”

   Sure, I’ll buy that. Despite my concerns about her policy knowledge, calling her “politically savvy” would be an understatement.

   August 17th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
10. FormerSwingVoter says:
    

    As for the theory that ideology trumps pragmatism, however, I simply could not disagree more. This is really the main core of my opposition to the current Republican party – the idea that using information to make decisions is somehow a form of weakness. Results matter. The insistence that logical consistency somehow trumps empirical evidence is patently absurd and completely indefensible. In a total informational vacuum, it might make sense to judge the two sides of an issue purely on ideological grounds. But in the real world, we can examine the opinions of those with first-hand knowledge and expertise in the fields in question or the organizations that represent them. When we are skeptical (as we often should be), we can examine the data for ourselves and judge how applicable and/or effective previously tested solutions may be. And then we can use this “information” and “data” to come up with a solution to a looming crisis that, if you cared half as much about your stated ideological beliefs as you do about defeating the Evil Liberals, you might actually give a shit about.

    But hey, your way is probably good too.

    August 17th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
11. Apollo says:
    

    Well I guess you’re right. HB3200 is indeed a non-ideological approach that is based purely on evidence. It is, objectively, as correct an answer to this crisis as 4 is the answer to 2+2. I feel quite silly, having once wanted to insert ideals into a number crunching debate. It’s probably because I didn’t really care and was merely trying to score political points. North to Canuckistan!

    August 18th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
12. Tom says:
    

    Megan McArdle points out that Palin’s death panels crap was as dishonest, poisonous and (possibly) successful as the democrats’ lie that President Bush was going to cancel their social security checks four years ago. Anybody spot a difference I’m missing?

    Also,

    If someone says “Your daughter is a slut,” “That won’t help you get a hookup, you creepy old perv” strikes me as a fair response.

    I wouldn’t have a problem with that, either. However, the abbots of the Blessed Madonna of the North Palin’s spokespeople said that David Letterman is likely a child rapist.

    August 20th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
13. Apollo says:
    

    I haven’t read anything at The Atlantic since around last September, and I refuse to do so as long as they employ a staff Ob/Gyn. However, I will say that I don’t remember a single Republican talking about reducing Social Security benefits for those on Social Security in 2005, but President Obama has spent quite a bit of time talking about how we can save money by skimping on care for the elderly and terminally ill; he’s been distressingly explicit about that, between the time when he said that instead of a pacemaker an old woman should have just gotten a pill (!?!!??!) and the time he said that Medicare shouldn’t have replaced his granny’s hip. Also, HB 3200 calls for cutting Medicare spending. If I had a serious disease or was elderly, I’d have gone ape shit calling Congressmen, writing letters, and doing every damned thing I could to let people know that I wanted to be guaranteed the treatment I’d earned by spending my whole life paying into Medicare. The “death panels” comment didn’t alarm anyone who wasn’t going to be affected (almost certainly detrimentally) by the bill.

    In contrast, the Social Security reform pressed in 2005 was quite explicit that it wouldn’t affect anyone on Social Security or within 10 years of Social Security. By alarming those who would not have been affected (neither helped nor hurt) by the bill, it seems to me that the Democrats in 2005 were dishonest in a different (and worse) way. Though it was a serious failing on the part of Republicans that they could not disprove the dishonesty, nor did they have the gumption to just go forward with their plans. If you can’t do one of those things, you’ve failed to carry the burden of governing and don’t deserve to get your way.

    As for Letterman, he called her daughter a slut, she called him a child rapist. She brought a rhetorical gun to a rhetorical knife fight, so perhaps people will think a little longer before gratuitously talking about her daughters. There’s nothing wrong with that; if Letterman can’t handle people firing back in over-the-top ways, perhaps he shouldn’t make his living by making jokes about other people’s families.

    August 20th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
14. Jamie says:
    

    Apollo,

    Sarah Palin’s statement was about her child, not an elderly patient in a hospice with a fatal disease. She specifically said she and Trig would have to appear before a panel to justify his right to live under the Obama plan. That is a bald faced lie.

    And did you just establish equivalence between being called a slut (which Bristol apparently is) and being called a child rapist (which Letterman most certainly is not)? You’re better than that.

    August 20th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
15. Tom says:
    

    For the record, Palin’s Facebook post that got this whole thing started. Money quote:

    And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

    August 20th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
16. Jamie says:
    

    Bah, so I was only partially right. Oh well. My point still stands.

    August 20th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
17. Apollo says:
    

    And did you just establish equivalence between being called a slut (which Bristol apparently is) and being called a child rapist (which Letterman most certainly is not)? You’re better than that.

    Bristol Palin had sex with her high school boyfriend. If every teenager who did that deserves to be called a slut, I’d reckon the majority of American women are sluts.

    She had sex with her high school boyfriend, and then she had the temerity not to kill her baby. Because of this, and the fact that her mother was nominated to be vice president, she deserves to spend years as the punchline of jokes, included in the same category as serial adulterer Alex Rodriguez? No sir, she does not. And if it takes calling Dave Letterman a child rapist to get him to stop making such jokes – let us remember that he makes millions of dollars making fun of people; embarrassing people is his livelihood – then fine. Either Letterman’s a big boy who can take like he gets, or he’s a whiny girly man who ought to enter a different line of work. But if you can’t handle people making baseless, offensive comments about you, you shouldn’t make your living making baseless, offensive comments about others.

    August 20th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
18. Tom says:
    

    Bristol Palin had sex with her high school boyfriend. If every teenager who did that deserves to be called a slut, I’d reckon the majority of American women are sluts.

    She had sex with her high school boyfriend, and then she had the temerity not to kill her baby. Because of this, and the fact that her mother was nominated to be vice president, she deserves to spend years as the punchline of jokes, included in the same category as serial adulterer Alex Rodriguez? No sir, she does not.

    Though I am in 100% agreement with Apollo on that point, I don’t think it excuses Palin for implying that Letterman is a child rapist.

    August 20th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
19. Jamie says:
    

    Apollo,

    I’m all for leaving the children of politicians out of public discourse with one exception – when the parents of said children make them the center piece of their qualifications for office. This is clearly the case with Palin.

    August 20th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
20. Apollo says:
    

    Actually, if we get in the way back machine and travel back to September 2008, Sarah Palin was quite content to let Bristol hang out well in the background, and the rest of her family wasn’t that much of an issue for her. Trig became a news story because of how unusual he was; someone running for major office with a Down Syndrome infant – you can’t say with a straight face she could have gotten away without talking about Trig.

    But Sarah seemed quite content to leave Bristol in the background until certain soulless scumbags started spread the dumbest and most offensive rumors in the last half century of American politics. What, at the time, I called “crap on top of lies covered in garbage sauce“.

    So let’s lay out the options for the Palins: 1. Not talk about Bristol’s pregnancy, but the vile rumors were gaining circulation in the mainstream media, so this wasn’t tenable for long; 2. Talk about Bristol’s pregnancy, at which point people like you will justify calling Bristol a slut for years to come, because, hey, her mother talked about her during a campaign; or 3. Not accept the nomination, at which point our nation is a lot worse off because they only people who can run for office are power-hungry weirdos who have spent their whole life prepping to run for office, or those willing to force their daughters into abortions because obviously any teenage girl who’s not pregnant can’t be the butt of Dave Letterman’s jokes.

    Unfortunately for our republic, Palin opted for 2, and the subsequent reaction has given us the same effect as 3. It’s the worst of all worlds. There’s a serious consequence to all this: the more overwhelming are the stupid, gossipy aspects of public service, the fewer ordinary people will serve their country. We’ve already seen that the noxious state of judicial confirmation politics cause a large number of excellent candidates to turn down judicial appointments. After what has happened to the Palins, excellent public servants will think much longer and harder about running for office, and many may prudently choose to just stay out of it.

    August 20th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
21. Tom says:
    

    Apollo,

    This whole health care reform scares me for all the reasons it scares you. I’m certain this public option is just a Trojan Horse for single payer (how one cannot see that is beyond me); I don’t like the idea of government imposing rationing instead of prices; I detest any attempt to expand government’s scope; and as little as I like the idea of insurance companies exerting their powerful influence our private decisions, I’m scared to death of the government using it’s far-greater power.

    But that said, there are no frickin’ death panels of disembodied voices in metallic rooms eager to pronounce Trig Palin ‘not worthy’ so the Cylon Centurions can drag him off. There’s a hint of truth to the whole thing in that some kind of government imposed rationing is likely, but it’s still a dishonest, fear mongering claim. I don’t see why you can’t see that.

    August 21st, 2009 at 9:29 am
22. Jamie says:
    

    I’m sorry Apollo, but that is just horseshit. Sarah Palin put her family front and center at the convention – she used them like props to prove how down to earth she is. The campaign used her family, and children, as a main selling point and large qualification for her potential job. It was the McCain Campaign and the Palin’s who first used the children for political gain.

    August 21st, 2009 at 10:11 am
23. Apollo says:
    

    Jamie,

    You should refresh your memory – Dr. Sullivan et al. forced the Palins to discuss Bristol’s pregnancy before the convention. That’s why Bristol’s appearance there, next to her then-fiance, was such a big deal.

    Tom,

    I can see that. But I won’t get worked up when there’s truth-blurring fear-mongering going on to defeat a plan that is itself nothing more than truth-blurring fear-mongering. The dishonest way that the administration is discussing its bill, combined with the administration’s attempt to get its bill passed before the August break completely without debate, and the administration’s tactic of labeling all criticism as nothing more than dishonest shilling for the insurance industry has led me to conclude that this fight should be bare knuckles. To the degree bill proponents refuse to respect basic democratic norms, I’m not going to hold my side to a higher standard on a fight this important. This is a transformation of a large part of the American economy, and a fundamental shift in the relationship between the government and governed; it should not be passed dishonestly, and if defeating it requires an equal measure of dishonesty, I’m fine with that.

    I’ll reconsider when Democrats stop disrespecting and insulting their constituents, are honest about the aims of their legislation, and start defending the merits of the bill instead of just calling bill opponents names. Until then, it’s too big of a fight to lose because my side has more scruples.

    August 21st, 2009 at 4:22 pm

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