Where have all the good pundits gone?

Don Wiechmann
The Edmond Sun

EDMOND June 16, 2009 11:34 pm

— The U. S. Constitution turned 220 years old in March, but few who enjoy its protections took notice. Our Constitution has, with only modest revisions, seen nine generations and survived, sometimes barely so, most of 44 presidents, 111 Congresses, and 110 Supreme Court justices. That long history also has witnessed a few misguided efforts to weigh it down with special interest amendments tailored for some, but not for the good of all.
The story of our country’s written roadmap, the Constitution, both awes and encourages us at the same time, especially given its rough journey to here. Though it survived all that it did, can it really beat back this latest adversity: Karl Rove and James Carville debating the interpretation and scope of the one document we all revere so highly? And in debating as they do in such an extremist fashion that no compromise is ever likely, or even possible? Please note: I have intentionally omitted Howard Dean, Lanny Davis, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Keith Olbermann and Sean Hannity from my frame of reference.
Discount for the sake of discussion Rove and Carville’s claims to fame, that they each jockeyed polar opposites into the White House. As a result of those feats, Karl and James now cast themselves as know-it-all politico/journalists to tell citizens how Karl and James think and, presumably, precisely how everyone else ought to. Is this what we deserve? Is such wisdom from the gods on high truly as good as we are going to get?
Merely thinking of the sad state of our political commentary and politicians makes one wince. Whatever happened to rational, solution-seeking Republican legislators exemplified by Everett Dirksen, Margaret Chase Smith, Barry Goldwater, Robert Taft, Bob Dole and the recently passed away Jack Kemp? Jump the Congressional aisle to the Democrats, and where are the likes of Adlai Stevenson, Edmund Muskie, Barbara Jordan, Carl Albert, Patrick Moynihan and Walter Mondale? Those who have passed on and lie in graves surely must be rolling to see what we see.
The political journalists who used to be also remind us of what we don’t have today. How much do we miss Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Howard K. Smith, David Brinkley, William F. Buckley, and, too soon, will we miss George Will? Determined chroniclers, but each willing to see another side and, God forbid, admit error when necessary.
For a land weaned on the writing of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, the modern analyst seems downright pitiful. The same country came of age in the 1800s, following the positions of Daniel Webster, Henry Clay and John Q. Adams and the educational give and take of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. The Lincoln-Douglas bouts are honored 150 years later by high school and college students engaged in the same form of issues presentation, if not so honored in the public sector.
Are we producing meaningful dialogue and clarifying public issues, then, or are the players only digging deeper sinkholes either side of a line in the quicksand? Is there a lifeline that can be thrown to the warriors, or the citizenry, or would anyone catch it if thrown? We clearly have risen, or more accurately fallen, to a shallow standard that has rarely, if ever, been equaled.
The party, and the respective political parties, will go on, the Karls and Jameses and other oracles will grow more animalistic, and our education as citizens of a great republic will be all the worse for it. The shame of it is that the Constitution and all who revere it and live as free men and women because of it, are entitled to so much more.

DON WIECHMANN, an Edmond resident, is a trust officer at Bank of Oklahoma, where he has been employed since 2005. He has been a licensed Oklahoma attorney since 1973. Wiechmann attended Oklahoma State University and the University of Texas School of Law. He and his wife Jenny have two adult children and three granddaughters.