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when he says he is a Christian and that he accepts the state of Hawaii’s declaration that Obama was born there, making him an American citizen, but he chose not to say that those who believe otherwise are wrong. As I watched, I wondered what the Speaker would say if a panel of voters told a moderator that Mitt Romney, a Mormon, is a member not of a real Christian faith but rather a cult, or that Ron Paul is a fascist. Would the Speaker not strongly challenge those erroneous beliefs?
    When confronted with similar allegations early in the 2008 campaign, Senator John McCain, running for the Republican presidential nomination, quickly corrected an Obama detractor. McCain said, “Obama is a decent person and a person you don’t have to be scared of to have as president.”
    Slashing rhetoric and outrageous characterizations have long been part of the American national political dialogue—Abraham Lincoln was portrayed as a subhuman ape in the highly partisan newspapers of his time—but modern means of communication are now so pervasive and penetrating they might as well be part of the air we breathe, and therefore they require tempered remarks from all sides. Otherwise, that air just becomes more and more toxic until it is suffocating.
    Personally, I’d like the partisan combatants on both sides of the aisle to explain their attitudes to a junior high civics class. Maybe their adolescent audience could teach them some manners and lessons in teamwork.
    These days anyone who enters the public arena is immediately cut from the herd and ear-tagged like a critter on a cattle ranch. Cable television anchors, radio talk-show hosts, and blogosphere commentators tag anyone who crosses their line of sight, and once on, the tag is tough to remove.
    On Fox News, the scarlet-letter tag is “liberal,” attached with a sneer. Keith Olbermann has special enmity for conservatives, for a while tagging a number of them as “the worst person in the world” during his popular run as an MSNBC commentator.
    I’ve found myself in both camps, especially in election years.
    In the closing days of the 2008 election I was attacked from the left when, on an episode of Meet the Press with guest John McCain, I reminded our viewers that it was the anniversary of his capture in Hanoi during the Vietnam War. Earlier in that campaign, the liberal blogosphere lit up when I reported on Meet the Press that the one area in which Barack Obama continued to trail McCain was the public’s confidence in his qualifications to be commander in chief.
    To my mind, those were two relevant, objective facts worth noting in a campaign, but to the ideologues on the left, they certified me as a conservative sympathizer. The right is even more vigilant for any perceived signs of liberalism, picking over every utterance, written phrase, or personal reflection.
    For a public person this comes with the territory, but sometimes the reach is exaggerated to the point of being amusing. On occasion, when asked about the place of racial issues in the campaigns, I’ve said that my perspective is helped by the personal realization that in the early, formative stages of my career I was aware that if my skin pigment had been one shade darker I would have been denied opportunities at every turn, in Omaha, Atlanta, and Los Angeles.
    Rush Limbaugh took to the airwaves to declare me a “self-hating liberal.” Rush, of all people, should know that those of us who make a very good living listening to the sound of our own voices are incapable of self-hate. We think we’re grand, and I include Rush in that fraternity.
    Rush is at least an original, and his power is indisputable. He relishes his influence and the financial rewards that come with it. However you regard his message or personal style, he has earned his fortune by creating an enormous audience of the faithful, or “ditto-heads,” as they like to be called.
    A ditto-head is someone who worships at the altar of Limbaugh’s