Editorial: Health care’s real issues obscured by argument

Whom do Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer think they’re kidding? In a column for USA Today on Monday, the House speaker and majority floor leader described recent disruptions at numerous town hall meetings as “un-American.”

Actually, unruly public conduct is so ritualistically American that communications expert Deborah Tannen wrote a whole book about it: “The Argument Culture.” Argument, not discourse, has become the American default strategy for dealing with controversy, Tannen wrote.

That’s a shame, because the urgent and growing debate over health care reform desperately needs things that raucous public shouting matches undermine – clarity, explanation, understanding.

The misuse of free speech as a bullhorn to drown out conflicting viewpoints is regrettably familiar. One recent example among many: advocates of a single-payer national health insurance plan chanting over witnesses at an earlier Senate Finance Committee hearing on reform.

In an issue mired in complexity, extremists on both sides want to distill the health care conversation to either/or simplicity. Thus, after many members of Congress were persuaded to hold town hall meetings on the overriding issue that will await them after their summer recess, some opponents, primarily rallied by Republican interests, turned those sessions into verbal melees. Democrats reacted by categorizing all disagreement as disruption, dismissing legitimate citizens as mere shills.

Thus, an opportunity for meaningful conversation about a vital national concern, is being squandered. Instead of talking about doctor shortages, reimbursement levels, small business concerns, catastrophic care and the like, political leaders are pointing fingers and calling names.

Real town hall meetings allow citizens to be players. Instead, they are being ushered back to the bleachers as spectators. And, as in most spectator sports, they must choose one side or the other. Concepts such as compromise, middle ground and shared interest have no place.

In “The Argument Culture,” Tannen offers a set of rules that allow members of the same community to confront their political conflicts constructively. Don’t demonize the opponent, she urges, but at the same time, don’t abandon your convictions. Be passionate about defending your core beliefs but don’t attack the other side’s deepest moral values.

With Tannen’s guidelines to follow, there is plenty of room for Americans to grapple with earnest civility over the difficult challenges that demand effective solutions. If we persist in our polarization, the future is bleak.