October 4 at the National Liberty Museum, the Alumni Club of Philadelphia hosted a conversation on media, politics, and the state of civic engagement in America today. The discussion, Political Civil Discourse: Is It Still Possible?, featured CNN political commentator and former congressman Charlie Dent ’93G in a fireside chat with press secretary to the Pennsylvania Senate Democratic Leader, Brittany Crampsie ’13 ’14G.
On my ride down to Philadelphia, to moderate a civil political discourse discussion with former congressman Charlie Dent ’93G, I was arguing on Twitter about the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh.
I had tweeted some broad analysis that I thought was fair, and a lot of people agreed with me (69 likes and counting), but with anything political on Twitter, a lot of people disagreed with me too. I quickly received a handful of snide replies that implied I didn’t know anything and that I was a hypocrite, etc. I began furiously typing my replies with equally unkind and uncivil language before I remembered what I was on my way to do.
Backspace, backspace, backspace.
At the event, I sat down with Representative Dent who, to my knowledge, has never argued with anyone on Twitter or spoken uncivilly anywhere on the record. If you knew him while he was in office, that shouldn’t surprise you. He was a passionate civil servant, but he was never an ideologue, and he never stooped to demonizing groups of people. He kept up that reputation during our chat.
For about an hour, Representative Dent and I tried to navigate the cause of the political rancor we seem to see and hear everywhere — as a former member of Congress and current member of the media (as a regular commentator for CNN), Rep. Dent had great insights.
To some degree, he found that the two major political parties themselves were to blame. Each has moved further to the extreme of the spectrum; Bernie Sanders on the left, and the Tea Party Freedom Caucus on the right. He says that they each appeal to the baser elements of human political nature — nativism on the right and angry populism on the left. These tendencies tap into our anxieties, cultural and economic, and lead us to say things to our fellow citizens that we otherwise would not.
Willing to spread the blame around, we examined the problems with television news. FoxNews and MSNBC are preaching to their respective choirs — it boosts their ratings, it boosts their ad sales, it’s a commercial product, but it’s doing very little to keep people objectively informed.
One of the most important lessons that I think Representative Dent shared that evening was seemingly-obvious, but was missing in much of our debate — you are entitled to your own opinion, you are not entitled to your own facts. It’s very easy to get wrapped up in the analysis and finger pointing that your side is doing and assume your opponent is always wrong, but we can’t let the facts get lost.
We decided to end our heavy discussion on a positive note, and I shared with the audience what makes me hopeful for civil discourse — for the first time in my life, politics is cool. Politics has dominated our pop culture, our news, our conversations with our friends. It’s not a subject that feels nerdy or unapproachable anymore. In fact, it often feels like everyone cares more now than they ever have, and that amount of attention to issues will make us all better informed and more likely to participate in democracy.
Representative Dent also found reason to be hopeful and assured us that whatever is happening now that seems like the end of the world really isn’t, that American democracy is strong and durable and has weathered worse in its history (remember the Civil War?). He pointed out that other nations around the world still continually go to war within their own borders, but we are just yelling at each other right now, and that’s a lot better.
I was honored to moderate our interesting, timely discussion, and I didn’t return to my Twitter fight.