Have you ever gotten into a serious conversation with someone and then the moment they feel uncomfortable, they change the subject? I have noticed the unsettling trend in politics today that anytime the current administration is faced with a difficult question with regards to domestic or ethical issues they change the subject. I have many issues with Republicans in general, but this is not about policy; it's about tactics. In the debate over torture in the military, headed rather fittingly by Republican senator and former prisoner of war John McCain, the Bush administration has attacked the Senate for turning on the war effort. During the last election President Bush pushed his leadership in the Iraqi and Afghani wars, ignoring numerous domestic issues. Normally I, like many liberals, tend to assume that Republicans are just obsessed with war. Yet, the more I see the Bush administration doing it, the more I am convinced that it is a deliberate tactic to swing discourse into areas where they have the advantage. No doubt the wars are important issues; however, the scale of war is not so great that domestic and inter-governmental affairs should be ignored.

The vice president's top aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, has been indicted for deliberately revealing the identity of a covert CIA operative. This leak has also been linked to Karl Rove, the President's top advisor. This is serious Machiavellian stuff tantamount to high crimes, and yet, the subject of political debate remains the war in Iraq. One thing that the Hurricane Katrina crisis revealed is the real presence of poverty within this country while the government has insisted on tax cuts for the upper echelon and that the benefits of those tax cuts are non-apparent. After Katrina a main question of debate was how the war had depleted the number of available National Guard troops. Any time the current administration is faced with hard truths they claim that the attacks on them are just politically motivated maneuvers by liberals. The Democrats, certainly not historically innocent of hypocrisy either, are left with few options to proceed in.

The war is such a divisive issue that its entrance into conversation instantly puts up a wall. The GOP today seems fairly content to polarize Americans in this fashion and reap the benefits. What all this has done is cut off any real political discourse between groups and individuals. When was the last time a democrat and a republican were able to have a political conversation on a wide variety of topics in which both sides actually listened to the other? The Republicans exploited this during the last election. The problem is that it's also destroying the secret to stability and success in American politics, discussion and the freedom of open debate, and essentially the freedom to steal someone else's political ideas. My only hope is that a conservative person reading this will see that I am not just some limp-wrist liberal, but another responsible citizen concerned about his political freedoms.