LAST week John McCain cast his lot with those who are making some kind of effort at bridging our partisan rhetorical divide. In a Washington Postop-ed responding to Barack Obama's speech on the Arizona shootings, he wrote,





I disagree with many of the president's policies, but I believe he is a patriot sincerely intent on using his time in office to advance our country's cause. I reject accusations that his policies and beliefs make him unworthy to lead America or opposed to its founding ideals. And I reject accusations that Americans who vigorously oppose his policies are less intelligent, compassionate or just than those who support them.



Our political discourse should be more civil than it currently is, and we all, myself included, bear some responsibility for it not being so.

Which is fine. In addition to the substantive content, there's clearly a tactical angle here: Mr McCain is trying to regain some of his squandered "maverick" credentials. Slate's John Dickerson thinks gestures like this one, and Mr McCain's proposal to have members of Congress assigned to random seats during the president's state-of-the-union address so as to forestall pep-rally shenanigans by hostile right and left blocs, have some chance of winning back the former presidential candidate's reputation for bipartisanship. At worst, in a prior era, his op-ed might have been considered boilerplate post-national-tragedy pablum. But these days, this stuff just doesn't go down very well with a large portion of the conservative movement. The response to Mr McCain from Tea Party Nation (members only) is entitled "The Lunacy of John McCain".

John McCain represents everything that is wrong with the Republican Party. He acts more like a liberal democrat than a Republican....Barack Obama a patriot? Yes, and I am the Pope. Obama is intent on using his time in office to advance our country's cause? When? When he assaulted the rights of Americans? When his regime tried brand patriotic Americans as extremists? When his regime tried to take over the Internet? When they tried to impose a “fairness doctrine” on the only media conservatives dominate? When they tried to shove a socialist agenda down the throats of Americans, despite overwhelming proof that Americans did not want this? How about when he went out apologizing to every third world tyrant for America? How about when he bowed to foreign leaders? ...What we see from Obama is not an incompetent fool. He knows exactly what he is doing. From being raised by a mother who hated America, to associating with America hating communists in his youth, he gravitated to communist, America hating professors in College and associated with America hating political groups until it looked like he might actually go somewhere in his political career... Obama hates America and that is obvious.

The folks at Tea Party Nation apparently share Julian Assange's most unsettling trait: a fondness for double-spacing after periods. Anyway, I don't think there's any chance that the efforts of either Mr Obama or Mr McCain will have much effect on the kinds of people who publish this sort of spittle-flecked garbage. What they do instead is to create a counter-narrative of civility and respect that can be deployed in public discussions that threaten to get out of hand, and that may prove appealing to people who aren't temperamental bomb-throwers, or who haven't yet staked themselves to weird, inflammatory, and simply false propositions that are too cognitively embarrassing to retract. If you already strongly believe that Barack Obama is a communist who hates America, bows in obeisance to the king of Saudi Arabia and the prime minister of Japan (hard to square with an affection for communism, but never mind), and "tried to take over the Internet", then it may be difficult to backtrack. But hopefully most people's partisan convictions are a bit more reality-based, and for them calls to refrain from name-calling and wild accusations may be more effective.

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