Just in time for April Fool's Day, the geniuses at FactCheck.org have promulgated what may be the most enlightened rule of democratic political argument ever: It's unfair to advocate a position without simultaneously advocating for the opposing position.

Actually, the FactCheck Principle is more enlightened even than that, if their illustration of it today is any indication. Fairness doesn't just require you to advocate for your opponents: it requires you to create arguments for them that they haven't made themselves, whether or not those arguments are relevant to the debate, if that would help your opponents throw dirt on your own position.

What other principle could possibly be extracted from FactCheck's critique of a new ad ("Save the Filibuster") produced by People for the American Way? (Link via Atrios.) The ad uses clips from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to illustrate its point that the filibuster rule offers a Senate minority the opportunity to "be heard" in the service of "what's right and fair." This may seem a fairly uncontroversial, if idealistic, way of arguing the utility of the rule, but the scolds at FactCheck are having none of it.

This ad uses a persuasion technique that might be called "innocence by association." It associates the filibuster with one of America's favorite movie heroes ["associates" by, er, showing him conducting a filibuster—but "associates" sounds so much more liberal-tricksier] while ignoring the sometimes dark purposes for which the filibuster has been used.  ...

In reality, the filibuster is simply and by definition the use of obstructionist tactics to delay legislative action. The legislation being blocked can be good, bad, or indifferent, depending on one's point of view. The historical reality is that the filibuster was the means by which the segregationist South blocked federal civil rights legislation for many decades after a majority favored it.

Now perhaps I just haven't been paying attention: but where, exactly, have proponents of the so-called "nuclear option" been insisting that we have to do away with the filibuster because they've (belatedly) realized that it bears the historic taint of segregationism? In what sense can you be accused of "ignoring" a critique of your position that none of your opponents has yet offered? Although, with water-carriers like FactCheck.org helpfully pointing the way, we can no doubt expect them to begin to now.

The fact that the filibuster has been used in the past for ugly purposes in no way precludes its future use for noble ones—past performance not an indicator of future returns, and all. Nor does it vitiate, or even touch, the argument from principle which PFAW and other opponents of the nuclear option are making: an argument on the necessity of the structural protection of minority rights in a republic, which, to anyone who remembers the Federalist Papers or has read the Constitution, has its own historical resonances. Willful obtuseness to such distinctions wouldn't seem the best way to establish your impartiality as a referee of political debate: but then, what do I know? I'm not one of them sophistimacated readers what they got at FactCheck.

Of course, establishing the organization's impartiality may be rather beside the point at this stage of the game. The FactCheck report winds up its little history lesson with a decorous, impartial belly flop right in the middle of the sleaze pool:

Filibusters continued to block serious civil rights legislation right up until 1964, when the Senate was finally able to muster the two-thirds majority that was then required to end debate. The last to filibuster against the landmark 1964 legislation was Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who spoke for 14 hours and 13 minutes, finishing the morning of June 10 – the 57th day of debate on the measure.

It is one of the ironies of US politics that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which lobbied so long for the 1964 civil rights bill, is currently lobbying to save the filibuster.

Byrd, of course, has for some time now been the most eloquent and prominent spokesman against the arrogance of the current Republican majority. And "it is one of the ironies," in this usage, means, "Hah! The NAACP is in bed with that old Klansman! Gotcha, hypocrites!" Guilt by association, anyone? It's another irony altogether that an organization called "FactCheck" should be deploying its "facts" for the purposes of making a stupid and irrelevant political smear: but I'll leave it to you to decide which irony is more corrosive.

posted by michael  11:28:14 AM  
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