Calling out 'dickishness'

Steve Benen and Andrew Sullivan are discussing the dickishness of Republicans, and the value in calling out 'dickishness'. Sullivan notes:

What we've observed these past two years is a political party that knows nothing but scorched earth tactics, cannot begin to see any merits in the other party's arguments, refuses to compromise one inch on anything, and has sought from the very beginning to do nothing but destroy the Obama presidency. I see no other coherent message or strategy since 2008. Just opposition to everything, zero support for a president grappling with a recession their own party did much to precipitate, and facing a fiscal crisis the GOP alone made far worse with their spending in the Bush-Cheney years.

Benen replies:

The observations do have a certain taboo quality, don't they? In the world of serious discourse, it's entirely appropriate to say a major political party is wrong. It equally acceptable to accuse the party of having a misguided agenda, or being incompetent, or even having corrupt leaders.

But the point Andrew and Steve are emphasizing is qualitatively different. This is an observation predicated on the notion that a major political party is now operating less as a party and more as a nihilistic, borderline dangerous, gang.

When I saw Benen's headline, my first thought is that it was a revival of the dickishness wars that waged this summer on the scienceblogs. And it is, a little bit. But not really.

Part of the difference is that the behavior being called out by scientists and skeptics was the behavior of other random scientists and skeptics as part of an internal debate about the communication goals of scientists and skeptics, and how best to achieve those goals. Congressional Republicans (because that's who Sullivan is talking about here, not Republicans at large) are the elected representatives of one of two major political parties governing the world's only superpower. That's a non-trivial distinction, both in terms of the rank of the folks being called out, and in the potential harm done by the alleged dickishness.

More importantly, I think Congressional Republicans have moved well past dickishness. The discussion last summer was about how vigorous, aggressive, forceful, and impolite to be in confronting people whose ideas you think are wrong. The contention was that the degree of rancor in those confrontations can be counterproductive. People were saying mean things and thereby, it was argued, were turning off potential allies. It wasn't unconscionable behavior, it was just less than optimal, and unpleasant. Dickish.

Congressional Republicans aren't just being dickish. They aren't just being mean and aggressive and vigorous and impolite. They aren't locked in a disagreement about the best way to accomplish some shared goal. They have decided to take any means necessary to prevent President Obama's re-election, and they are willing to do whatever that requires. They will scuttle a nuclear arms treaty, thus strengthening the hands of would-be nuclear rivals to US hegemony like North Korea and Iran. They will block, weaken, and otherwise assail any economic policy that has a good chance of being seen as a success for the President, even if doing so keeps the national economy weak. They will undermine the President's diplomatic efforts, creating alternative diplomatic channels to weaken American foreign policy, including our ability to bring peace to the Middle East and find a successful end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is not dickish. It is not petty. It is not a good faith disagreement about objectives and tactics.

Dickish is the wrong word here.