As most of us know, politics is the art of pushing and shoving. And in recent weeks, Democrats were interrupted in the middle of their earnest exhortations to Sarah Palin (to stop her whining) because they needed to start whining about how pushing and shoving broke out in various congressional town hall meetings. This occurred when congressmen had to go back to the part of America that knows what a feed lot is in order to face the music on socialistic health care. And facing the music turns out to be something they don’t like.
The complaints amount to a deep desire to keep politics out of politics. This movement began centuries ago with the push to keep religion out of politics, which is of course impossible, and moved on to the desire to keep politics out of politics, which is even more impossible, if that were possible. Wanting to keep the rough and tumble out of this kind of process is simply another way of saying that you want the elites to be able to govern without getting their hair messed up. You want them to be able to govern by means of the sweet deal, the understanding nod, and adroit manipulations of the levers under the mahogany desks of Washington. When you have had a generation or more of this, it is disconcerting for a poor sap of a congressman to see, in the back of a community hall somewhere in the rural portion of Wombat County, somebody heating up a vat of tar, and somebody else emptying out feather pillows.
One of the talking heads on television had it right. All this means is that the conservatives are better organized on this one, and at the end of the day that is hardly a complaint that is likely to capture anyone’s imagination. But the fact that the argument is even advanced shows how deeply the myth of spontaneity has take root among us — or how deeply some would like it to have taken root. It is thought that in order for this to represent true democracy, the same thought would have had to occur to hundreds of people independently and simultaneously, they would all have to slap their foreheads and say, “My congressman! Of course!” and head down to the town hall, where they were astonished to find everybody else.
But of course there is a double standard in this. This expectation that the will of the people must flash-mob all by its own self is an expectation that is only applied to the other guy’s organization efforts. Your own organizing is a clear demonstration of public spiritedness.
So let us consider all this as simply an example of conservatives giving Obama his due. We are not churlish; we are willing to acknowledge those areas in which he has shown us a better way. We have been inspired, and have decided to take up the crucial task of community organizing.