It’s Hypocrisy All the Way Down

So says a wonderfully titled post on Prawfsblog by Matt Brodie. The point is that much of our political discourse is given over to charges of hypocrisy. We wrap ourselves into knots to be able to say that those we don’t agree with have been inconsistent. Anyone who even casually follows political blogs has read the hackneyed “pot, meet kettle” so often as to wish to never see or hear it ever again.

Why do we do this? My own view flows from  two observations. The first is that our society has altered the former balance between the perceived value of personal authenticity in the sense of following your own lights and the virtue of conforming to a set of standards that originates outside yourself. We have moved toward a greater appreciation of the former. This is not to argue that we have given ourselves over to a radical moral relativism, only that our discourse had shifted in a way that charges of hypocrisy have a particular salience.

This isn’t all bad. Intellectual consistency is a virtue and an important  discipline.

But our concern here is its emergence as a preferred form of political attack. I want to evaluate the implications of the observation that it’s “hypocrisy all the way down.” Is there anything about that which is troubling?

I think so. My sense is that charges of hypocrisy are popular because they do not require us to talk with one another about the real reasons for our disagreement. It is the invocation of a widely shared norm by those who have no intention of honestly debating what divides us. Rather than discuss the substantive differences between the tickets of Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin, we search for “gotchas”  – things that allow us to dismiss our opponents without ever engaging what they have to say. It’s a form of discourse for those who have no intention of engaging.

Other preferred political tactics offer the same opportunity including the closely related horror of “flip flopping” and our passion for scandal. Changing your mind in the face of the facts can be the sign of a good leader. It’s probably a topic for another post, but don’t we seem to struggle with the fact that good leaders may have human imperfections?

Cross posted at Shark and Shepherd.

This Post Has 5 Comments

  1. Michael M. O'Hear

    “My sense is that charges of hypocrisy are popular because they do not require us to talk with one another about the real reasons for our disagreement.” I agree with this–hypocrisy charges are a convenient way for our political system to avoid dealing with the fact that our pluralistic society lacks consensus on any consistent ordering of basic values that would permit coherent answers to the major public policy questions facing our nation. I think a similar dynamic helps to drive the “gotcha” game in litigation and the aggressiveness with which some judges find waiver of claims and arguments.

  2. Jim

    I agree with one exception:

    The charge of hypocrisy is essential when it exposes a lack of genuineness in professed positions. It’s a way of cutting through the discourse of those whose rhetoric is a charade designed to secure financial benefit or political power rather than to articulate genuine political arguments. (A pitch-perfect example of such an essential charge is here.)

  3. Mike McChrystal

    As Rick notes, in political campaigns, especially presidential political campaigns, charges of hypocrisy and flip-flop are thrown about freely and sometimes with little concern for accuracy or fairness. But honesty and coherence necessarily are important qualities in political candidates, and so some form of this discussion should occur.

    A change of position, expressly acknowledged and acceptably explained, may reflect neither dishonesty nor incoherence. It may reflect, for example, newly discovered facts or changed circumstances.

    So the disingenuous attacks that Rick deplores are deplorable, whether in politics (and the Karl Rove example to which Jim links seems dead-on) or in litigation (as Michael O’Hear notes). But every criticism is not disingenuous, and when a lawyer or political candidate is not coherent, honest or fair, it seems that we should take note of it.

    The lack of consensus on issues seems inadequate to me as an explanation for dishonesty and incoherence in politics. The explanation relates more, I think, to lax intellectual and ethical standards being applied. Those lax standards can be expressed as “they all do it” or they can be expressed as a claim of neutrality that treats all disagreement as a genuine controversy.

    One of Tim Russert’s most important inquisitive techniques was to quote a politician’s apparently inconsistent statements and ask, what gives? I agree that there is a problem in a system that hunts for facial inconsistencies and disingenuously asserts hypocrisy or flip-flop. On the other hand, I endorse a system that notes fundamental inconsistencies and asks, what gives?

  4. Richard M. Esenberg

    Mike McChrystal does a great job of explaining why hypocrisy can matter. Jim’s example from Jon Stewart’s show is, however, a perfect example of the pitfalls. I understand that Rove has a defense of his differing treatment of Kaine and Palin, although I don’t know that it is persuasive.

    But here’s the problem. Senator Obama and his supporters have been fighting against the inexperience charge (mostly advanced by Senator Clinton)for the past year or so. If I wanted to find starkly inconsistent video around defenses of his level of experience and attacks on Palin’s level of experience, I am quite confident I could do it.

    But Stewart didn’t try because that wouldn’t play to the sensibilities of his fans. He’s a hypocrite!

    Mike is so right to suggest that we ask “what gives.” We should. But here is where I think that question leads – and I am fairly confident (in fact, I think I know) – that Mike would heartily agree, even as he reaches different conclusions about policy.

    What seperates us has little to do with distinctions in honesty and morality and every thing to do with differing emphasis on what we all agree are values and differing perceptions about how those values are served. These are things about which reasonable and well intentioned persons will disagree and why liberals and conservatives can respect one another.

    What I want to see in our political discourse is a greater emphasis on those very real differences and a diminished emphasis on efforts to show that our opponents are amoral nut jobs. Trolling for hypocrisy doesn’t get us there.

    This isn’t to suggest that this is an issue that ought never to be raised. Far from it. It is to suggest that we ought to temper our devotion to it.

  5. Jim

    Rick reveals himself to be less than familiar with The Daily Show. But that’s beside the point.

    And he rephrases his thesis, which, again, I agree with:

    What I want to see in our political discourse is a greater emphasis on those very real differences and a diminished emphasis on efforts to show that our opponents are amoral nut jobs. Trolling for hypocrisy doesn’t get us there.

    Put differently, the political discourse of blogs should be more like the elite discourse of the academy: evidence based, fair to those with whom we disagree, grounded in reason. I wholly concur. Of course, much of it already is. One simply has to read different blogs.

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