The Mouth of the South

When will the Democratic leadership do us all a favor and rein in Alan Grayson, the uncouth Florida Congressman whose crude outbursts are an ever-increasing source of embarrassment to the Democratic Party?

The self-promoting windbag from Orlando famously rose from political obscurity with a speech (before an empty House chamber) in which he characterized the Republican plan for health care reform as "Die Quickly". The predictable Republican outcry was a monumental exercise in hypocrisy given the Right's own fear-mongering about "death panels", but the argument over Grayson's overblown rhetoric overshadowed the more substantive point in his speech, namely that 44,000 people die annually because they lack adequate health insurance. As a result,  Grayson's speech did nothing to advance the interests of health care reform.

But it did much to advance the interests of Grayson himself. The hitherto unknown first-term Congressman quickly established himself as a fixture on the liberal talk show circuit and moved adroitly to cash in on his new found fame. He created a narcissistically titled fund-raising website, "CongressmanWithGuts.com", and watched as the dollars began rolling in. But he wasn't one to rest on his "Die Quickly" laurels.  More inflammatory comments soon followed. He offended House Repubicans en masse by calling them "knuckle dragging neanderthals". He offended women (and most men) by referring to Linda Robertson, a senior adviser to Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernancke and former lobbyist, as a "K Street whore".  Next in his sights was former Vice President Dick Cheney.  Grayson called him a "blood sucking vampire" and, this past week, asked on MSNBC's Hardball program how he would respond to Dick Cheney's criticism of the Obama Administration's foreign policy, he referred to a popular texting acronym - "STFU" - helpfully adding (for the benefit of those not accustomed to communicating in such manner) that the "S" stood for "shut".  Once again, the Republican response was immediate and predictable. An official statement noted that his constituents wanted "jobs, not nut-jobs".  Personally, I couldn't agree more.

People like Grayson bring nothing of value to the table.  His comments, and the Democratic Party's failure to distance itself from them, drag Democrats down to the same debased moral level that had (at least in the context of the health care debate) formerly been the exclusive preserve of Congressional Republicans and their industry paymasters.  The way to counter  a bad argument is not by childish name-calling, abuse or profanity, but simply by making a better argument.  And in this case, that shouldn't be hard to do.  But people like Grayson lack either the self-discipline, integrity, or maybe simply the intellectual capacity, to do that.  Sadly, so do many in the liberal media, who not only give this man the air-time he craves but continue to stroke his immense ego by using terms like "plain speaking", "no-nonsense", "gutsy" or - worst of all - "refreshing" and "honest" to describe his crude, calculating and abrasive persona.

And don't think for a moment, as he might like to have us believe, that his outrageous outbursts reveal a man who believes so passionately in his cause du jour that his emotions sometimes get the better of him. Far from it. He comes to his media interviews with his offensive one-liners ready prepared; if they don't work for one audience he recylces them for the next.  He has learned not only that publicity translates into Dollars, but also that attack politics generates bigger headlines than thoughtful policy proposals, especially on our lowest-common-denominator cable news networks.  It is a sad reflection on what we value in politicians that - according to his website - Grayson has already raked in over $500,000 in cold campaign cash since his "Die Quickly" speech. Talk about cash for trash.

I am absolutely confident that Grayson's carefully scripted diatribes haven't won even a single convert to the cause of health care reform or swayed a single wavering vote in the Congress.  I am equally confident that they have turned many away from the cause, and from the Democratic party as a whole.  So why have the so-called liberal media, and apparently numerous contributors, embraced him?  I think the answer is twofold.

First, there is a symbiotic relationship between people like Grayson and the cable news networks, which increasingly are the outlets people turn to for political news and analysis.  For the media, Grayson is good value for money because he can usually be counted on to say something outrageous (or "refreshingly honest" depending on your point of view), providing fodder for the analysts and pundits to pontificate about for days or even weeks afterwards.  All of which creates more publicity (and hence more campaign cash) for Grayson than would a thoughtful interview about substantive policy issues.  Unfortunately, the losers in this cynical exercise are the viewers.

But (and I return here to a depressingly familiar theme) Grayson's popularity also reflects a lack of  genuine leadership within the Democratic party, particularly on the issue of health care reform.  Progressive Democrats - who were key to  Obama's election victory and who bought into all of that talk about "change we can believe in" - are disillusioned with the President.  Disillusioned that he didn't roll up his sleeves and get to work on writing a health care bill on Day One but instead passed the buck to a dysfunctional Congress while he continued to jet around the country with his White House entourage making what were essentially meaningless campaign speeches; disillusioned that he appeared to buy into the naive notion that bipartisan legislation was possible, even though Republicans were manifestly opposed to any form of health care reform;  disillusioned that he allowed Republicans to set the tone of the debate with a campaign of lies and fear-mongering about "death panels" and "pulling the plug on Grandma";  disillusioned that he took off on a summer vacation while corporate interests and wealthy extremists on the Right bankrolled and organized the disruption of town hall meetings held by Democratic congressmen;  disillusioned that that he preferred to cut back-room deals with Big Pharma and pander to the likes of Joe Lieberman rather than "bang heads" with reluctant Democrats to ensure passage of the reform legislation he had promised and that Americans desperately need.  Given this abject display of political pusillanimity from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, it perhaps isn't hard to understand why some people were happy to see Grayson publicly lowering himself to the Republican level and turning their own tactics of smear and abuse against them.

But that is not the answer.  At the end of the day, vulgarians like Grayson don't help the Democratic Party or the causes it purports to espouse.  Nancy Pelosi and other members of the House leadership needs to take Grayson to the woodshed and let him no in no uncertain terms that further outbursts won't be tolerated - regardless how much they benefit his campaign coffers.