The herd mentality

I received a very nice letter this week from U.S. Senator Ben Nelson in response to the "Through With Politics" column I wrote a few weeks ago.

I'm not going to say much about the contents of the letter because it was personal and private but the senator did make one point I would like to address today. He recalled an incident earlier this year that occurred during a speech he gave at the UNL Public Policy Center in which he was critical of some talk show hosts. He said he was careful to name an equal number from the left and the right who shape information to suit their agenda and often deliver it in an angry or offensive manner.

The speech was reported in the Lincoln Journal Star and picked up nationally. Eventually, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann declared Senator Nelson "The Worst Person in the World" on one of his nightly broadcasts which, the senator said, proved his point.

The problem with politics is that too many of us subscribe to "the one size fits all" mantra that doesn't make any sense and never has made any sense. Although I'm a lifelong Democrat and make no apologies about that to anyone, on some issues I'm to the left of center and on others I'm to the right. I take those stances because every issue is independent of the others and I try and think each one through objectively and analytically. In other words, I'm not a "knee-jerk" Democrat. I look at the merits and demerits of a position and then try and come to a rational decision.

Unfortunately, this isn't how politics is played by most people. Democrats AND Republicans seem to have a "litmus test" they apply to any and every topic and if it doesn't fit into their narrowly defined parameters, it's "bad" for the country.

Maybe this "litmus test" works on some things in the world but it doesn't work in politics. There are good things and bad things about every single issue, every single bill, every single suggestion a politician makes and it's up to us, as an informed citizenry, to make wise and meaningful decisions after we've looked at the issue from all sides.

Unfortunately, most of us don't do that. When Rush Limbaugh says he hopes the president fails because that will mean that his policies also fail, Rush is disrespecting what it means to be an American. Why would any person with the kind of influence he has want the president to fail, because if he fails, we all fail. Now some of us know that Rush is a media mogul only interested in self-promotion and adding on to his already prodigious bottom line, but many people don't. They call these people "ditto-heads" because they take everything Rush says as gospel and repeat his dire admonitions almost word-for-word to anyone they can get to listen.

They don't do the work themselves. They don't look anything up. They don't research both sides of the coin. They don't even look at the other side or pay any attention at all to a conflicting opinion. They just fall for what he says hook, line, and sinker because he touches some base emotion they have that makes them believe that their "truths" are the only truths and everyone who disagrees with them is out to lunch.

And it works on the other side of the aisle as well. Olberman and Madow and Matthews never had a good word to say about George W. Bush when he was in office although he wasn't quite the demon they said he was. He has proven that since he left office by keeping mostly quiet about the first year of Obama's administration, saying when asked that he needs to be given the chance to succeed.

More often than not, Sen. Nelson is described as a "fence-sitter" or a "waffler," trying to please all the people all the time but there's another way to look at his decision-making and that's the reason for this column. Nothing in life is cut-and dried. Nothing in life is one hundred percent one way and zero percent the other. We deserve to elect people who will look at ALL sides of every issue before making a judgment, rather than putting the blinders on and seeing something from one narrow perspective only.

Unfortunately, we don't have many of those folks on either side of the aisle. Chuck Hagel tried to do that was was roundly chastised by members of his own party as being a traitor. I met privately with him when he was here in McCook to give the college graduation address a few years back. At the time, he was considering a run for the presidency but I could see in his face and hear in his voice that politics, Washington style, was wearing on him.

That's why I predicted in this column a year ahead of his decision that not only would he not run for President, he wouldn't run for re-election as our senator either.

And he didn't.

When the body politic runs good people away from public service, we're doing something terribly wrong and I'm afraid it will one day come back to haunt us.