Columns

Civility no substitute for courage

By PHILIP GAILEY
Published January 28, 2007

WASHINGTON - On my first visit to the nation's capital since the Nov. 7 elections, I saw a city suffering from climate change. Republicans are feeling the heat despite all the talk about civility and bipartisanship. Democrats are surging in Congress, setting the agenda and holding hearings on Iraq. Moderate Republicans are breaking ranks with the president on the war, and the White House has signaled retreat on some judicial nominations and warrantless eavesdropping.

Meanwhile, Vice President Dick Cheney is growing more delusional and nastier by the day.

While his former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, on trial for perjury in the CIA leak case, was accusing the White House of making him a scapegoat to save Karl Rove's hide, Cheney sat for a snarling interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. He snapped, complained and growled.

Despite some "problems," Cheney insisted that the administration had achieved "enormous successes" in Iraq. But the news media and critics of the war are "so eager to write off this effort or declare it a failure," he charged, they are undermining U.S. troop morale in Iraq. He said Congress can pass antisurge resolutions to its heart's content but added defiantly, "It won't stop us."

Cheney clearly is in no mood for civility and bipartisanship, which is nothing new.

"Of the three men who think they were elected president on November 7, Dick Cheney acts like the real winner," the late Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory wrote after the disputed 2000 presidential election. "While George W. Bush, modestly asking to be addressed still as 'governor,' is being nice in Austin, Cheney is being nasty in Washington and demonstrating, by his insults and other activities, that he is in charge."

I'm all for civility, and bipartisanship is nice. But I'm not sure a change in the atmospherics in Washington is going to solve the nation's most pressing problems, as some politicians suggest. If Democrats and Republicans were to suddenly put aside their political differences and blend in perfect philosophical harmony, it wouldn't change much unless they had the courage to speak the truth to Americans and then act on it. And the truth is this: Whether the issue is energy policy or federal entitlement spending, global warming or health care, the solutions are going to require pain and sacrifice.

You're not likely to hear either the White House or congressional Democrats level with the people about what it will take to break our dependence on foreign oil. The Bush-Cheney preference is clearly for more drilling, with a nod toward alternative energy sources and some improvement in fuel efficiency standards down the road.

Democrats, meanwhile, hold hearings on climate change and suggest that ethanol is the way forward. Ethanol is a fraud. It is a farm policy, not an energy policy. Do they have the courage to impose tough fuel efficiency standards, especially at a time Detroit carmakers are reeling, or to raise the federal gasoline tax to promote conservation? Remember, the Democrats campaigned last year on lowering gas prices at the pump.

Bush has come up with some fatally flawed proposals for keeping Medicare and Social Security solvent, but that is more than the Democrats have done. Everyone knows that to gain control of entitlement spending we're going to have to raise taxes or limit benefits or both. Are Democrats prepared to go there?

So what good is bipartisan cooperation if the result is that both sides agree to avoid taking politically unpopular actions to address the nation's problems? What is needed in Washington is leadership, not politically safe bipartisanship. Don't expect to see the 2008 presidential candidates treading where this Congress and White House fear to go. Most of them can be counted on not to stray too far from the polls and focus groups.

[Last modified January 27, 2007, 17:53:13]