The recent dust up between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner over the date for Obama’s much anticipated “jobs” speech is the latest example of the how the media loves to frame such clashes. Their narrative usually becomes one of how the disagreement has devolved into a “tit for tat” exchange. They focus almost exclusively on the elements of the conflict that involve winning and losing and rarely step back to analyze why the conflict started in the first place.
It reminds me of the way that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been reported for years again as “tit for tat” attacks all part of an “escalating cycle of violence.” Reading these reports you would get the impression that these cycles are organic and appear out of nowhere. They ignore the rather obvious fact that there would be no cycle at all had there not been an incident that started it, say a rocket attack against Israeli civilians. An incident which, if one were so inclined, responsibility for the existence of the entire cycle and all the consequences that resulted from it could be assigned.
So if one were to deign to take such an approach to yesterday’s Obama-Boehner tussle it might look like this:
- The Republicans schedule a debate for the evening of September 7th
- President Obama sends a letter to Congressional leaders asking to appear before Congress on the evening of September 7th
- House Speaker Boehner says the 7th won’t work for the House and requests that the President’s “jobs” speech be delivered on September 8th
So where’s the incident that created the conflict in the first place? Was it the Republicans scheduling their debate for September 7th? Clearly no. Was it Boehner’s refusal to accede to the President’s request? Again no. Boehner’s action was merely a response to President Obama’s rather shameless attempt to play politics. The same President Obama who regularly hectors the country on the need to move “beyond politics” and whose election supposedly meant the beginning of a “post-partisan” era. If anyone in the media was earnest or honest enough to ask who was at fault for creating yesterday’s dustup, the obvious answer would be the President.
Did Boehner play hardball with the President? Absolutely. But as any parent will tell you, there are times when such rough retaliation is both necessary and appropriate. If I see one of my boys goading another enough to provoke a response, I’m often likely to look the other way when that response comes down. For example, while I might normally frown on one of my boys taking a jab at another, if that punch is being thrown as a retaliation for another incident and I deem the response to be appropriate to the initial attack, I’m going to allow it. If the instigator of this “cycle of violence” then comes to me whining about the outcome, I’m not going to have a lot of sympathy for him. And no one should feel any for the President either. If you want to start a scrap, don’t be surprised if you end being bruised.
