Blaming the Bitterness on Newt

THERE WAS A TIME, in the middle of the twentieth century, when there existed a tangible if somewhat precarious bipartisan moderate consensus within the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. Warmly recalls the image of President Ronald Wilson Reagan having a sandwich and beer with Democratic Speaker of the House Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neil. Although the nineteen eighties was the beginning of our current divided hate filled legislative branch, we had not yet become fully aware of it. Scholars and regular folks are now asking the question "when and why and by whose actions did the era of relative civility in American politics transform into our current era of bitter, angry conflict? One possible nominee for the credit is New Gingrich, of "Contract With America" fame, for those old enough to remember 1994. Gingrich was a right wing college history professor in the nineteen seventies at a small college in Georgia, then made the fateful decision to enter politics. He had grown tired of democratic control of congress and the congressional agenda, having never in his lifetime experienced any republican dominance, and himself being republican. He decided that politics is war, and that in order to win, one must turn political campaigns into battle zones, with ceaseless, unrelenting personal attacks on all political enemies. To this end he convinced some of his fellow republicans of the correctness of his philosophy, and the rest, as the cliche minded say, is history. The nineteen eighty presidential election was an easy target for the G.O.P., with the mild mannered Jimmy Carter having served one ineffectual term, amid nearly out of control inflation and economic stagnation. Reagan himself refrained from the embittered warpath, but he didn't have to participate in dirty politics; by this time, Newt and his brigades of hate spewing politicians did his dirty work for him. And it worked. So, it continued, to this very day Reagan's landslide victory emboldened him to pursue a distinctly non moderate very right wing agenda, replete with tax cuts for the very wealthy (supply side "Reaganomics"), aggressive foreign policy in fighting socialism in Central America, a project to build a system, which has never been built to this day, of lasers and computers to defend against incoming missiles from imaginary enemies (Star Wars), and the appointment of extreme right wing judges to federal courts. The process by which the nomination of Robert Bork was defeated was seminal in fueling partisan bitterness, which has never vanished, as witnessed by the Brett Kavanaugh debacle. The Star Wars scheme was a complete failure, but bitter, angry, uncivil, divisive politics is a winner in the United States of Acrimony, and unless and until somebody wins an election with tender loving kindness, we're in for the long haul.