Mistaking anger for Wisdom by risa
This from today’s Washington Post:
mistaking anger for political wisdom is a dangerous luxury in democracies. It can become an all-consuming fire that destroys rather than builds. For the power-hungry and opportunistic, anger is an especially attractive instrument of manipulation in the political toolbox.
The especially angry year of 1968 ended with the election of tricky Dick Nixon, not poet-philosopher Gene McCarthy. In 2002 in France, protest votes for racist candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen unexpectedly propelled him into a presidential runoff against incumbent Jacques Chirac. Chirac easily won the general election but then proved to be ineffectual in dealing with the ugly strain of national resentments that the campaign unleashed.
Protest votes are not consequence-free luxuries, in France or in Connecticut. The task for responsible politicians is to acknowledge the anger and to channel it into problem-solving rather than into pointless venting or an endless seeking of partisan advantage. Unfortunately, Bush and Rove show an inability or a lack of interest in the problem-solving approach. Increasingly, their critics do the same.
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