I’ve written about this before but perhaps it bears repeating in light of recent events. Which recent events? I have some particular thoughts but it really doesn’t matter because whenever you read this, it is likely that something will be going on that fits the bill. I’m speaking about our partisan political hypocrisy.
I’m not talking about the hypocrisy of politicians; let’s just take that as a universal consequence of having politicians. I’m speaking of us, the constituents. Many of us have become so invested in our partisan positions that we no longer care what’s being done, just who’s doing it. We’ll take any opportunity to knock down the other guy, even if he’s doing a good thing, and we’ll double-down on our own guy even if he’s completely in the wrong.
Anyone who speaks in the public eye enough is going to get tongue-tied once in a while. Did you castigate President Bush and Sarah Palin for such misstatements as “misunderestimate” and “refudiate?” If so, you have no business praising President Obama as a brilliant wordsmith for coining “all wee-wee’d up.” Conversely, if you gave Bush and Palin a pass for their verbal gaffes, don’t you owe Obama a little slack?
Did you find Kellyanne Conway putting her feet on the Oval Office couch disrespectful to the black college presidents whose picture she was taking? If so, I hope you were at least as outraged when President Obama put his feet on the desk when speaking to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Or, conversely, that neither gesture bothered you very much.
Were you appalled when Democrats didn’t read the Affordable Care Act bill before passing it, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi famously saying, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it?” Then I hope you were equally horrified when Republicans passed last-minute amendments to their recent health-care legislation without reading them, Rep. Thomas Garrett (R-Va.) saying “I don’t think any individual has read the whole bill.” Conversely, if you accept Garrett’s very next sentence, that “That’s why we have staff,” then you have to accept that the other party has staff as well.
Everybody is righteously indignant about the other guy all the time but it’s really a double-edged sword. If it’s bad for your guy to have a sex scandal/a private server/links to the Russians or to withhold his tax returns/say something racist/take a dozen vacations, then I have to accept that it’s just as bad when my guy has a sex scandal/a private server/links to the Russians or withholds his tax returns/says something racist/takes a dozen vacations. For me to justify my guy’s actions while calling for your guy to be indicted is to demonstrate a lack of commitment to the truth. I no longer care what’s right or wrong, I only care about what’s expedient. That’s not a particularly good trait.
You know who was a master of this tactic? Korach, who staged a coup against Moshe’s leadership. According to the Midrash, Korach tried to undermine Moshe’s authority by challenging him with loaded questions. He would ask questions like, “Does a house filled with religious texts require a mezuzah?” When told that it does, Korach would mock, “A whole library won’t fulfill the obligation but a little scroll of parchment will? Ridiculous!” Of course, had the answer been the opposite, Korach would have been equally dismissive of Moshe. He didn’t really care about the mezuzah, he was only using it as a pretext to oppose Moshe politically.
We don’t have to kowtow blindly to our leaders. No leader in the history of mankind has enjoyed a 100% approval rating; in this, Jewish history is no different. Moshe had opponents. David had opponents. Shlomo had opponents. The question is why were they opponents? Korach opposed Moshe and Avshalom opposed David because they wanted the jobs for themselves. Their motives had nothing to do with the rulers’ merits; Korach and Avshalom were playing partisan politics and they’re the bad guys in their stories. But Yeravam was made king of the Ten Tribes specifically because he opposed Shlomo, even though Shlomo was a righteous king. In I Kings chapter 11, Yeravam stood up to Shlomo HaMelech at great personal risk for altruistic reasons because he honestly believed that the monarch was wrong. It’s possible to speak truth to power but it has to be truth, not pretext.
Remember Mordechai? Helped to save all the Jews from destruction? Well, the megillah we read on Purim ends, “For Mordechai the Jew was second to king Ahasuerus and great among the Jews, accepted by the majority of his brethren….” Rashi explains that Mordechai was accepted by the majority of his brethren but not all of them. Hero of the Great Shushan War or not, people were free to disagree with the way he carried out his political duties. You can dislike Mordechai’s tax plan but still praise his anti-Jew-killing position.
In 2012, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie thanked President Obama for “springing into action.” Many of his Republican party colleagues criticized this move, particularly as it was literally the eve of a presidential election. Governor Christie, in his usual fashion, took no guff. He insisted that thanking Obama was the right thing to do and doing the right thing trumps partisan game-playing (no pun intended). This is a sentiment I can get behind.
We should stop criticizing our political opponents for doing the things that we ourselves would do. Similarly, we should stop giving free passes to our political allies when they do things we don’t like just because it’s politically expedient to turn a blind eye. We don’t have to be 100% with our allies or 100% against our opponents. As Ronald Reagan said, “The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally – not a 20 percent traitor.” It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
English Statesman Lord Palmerston (d. 1865) once said that “Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.” That may be so in international politics but we seem to have forgotten that when it comes to domestic affairs. Who does a thing has now become more important than whether or not the thing was done. Let’s stop acting like Korach, trying to undercut all the right people whatever they do. Let us instead focus on whether a thing is objectively good or bad and then proceed accordingly.
The words of this author reflect his/her own opinions and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Orthodox Union.