One thing that has frustrated me about the tone of the health care debate over the past month is that so many congressional delegates don’t know how to talk about health care policy. They have a tendency to oversimplify the complexities of the debate because they think their constituents want things presented in simple terms. But simplification, when it’s done clumsily, tends to come across as condescension. And nobody likes having someone else talk down to them.
Minnesota Senator Al Franken demonstrates that it is possible to discuss health care policy in grown-up terms, even when the audience consists mostly of right-wing. The video is interesting for a few reason. First, it shows that people are less likely to shout at you if you engage them in a respectful debate free of false sincerity and oneupmanship. Second, it seems that Franken closely read the great New Yorker article on health care costs by Atul Gawande. Third, a lot of these teaparty activists cannot let go of their obsession with illegal immigration.
Franken probably didn’t change many minds, but he did display a sense of civic decency that is all too absent from much of our public discourse.
