I Gotcha Politics Right Here [gestures]

Have you noticed how people keep using this phrase "play gotcha"? (You may have noticed it here, here, here, here, or here, for example.) Sometimes it's even varied as "gotcha journalism". Using this term is basically a defensive tactic for when you believe your side is not getting a fair shake. For example, you could accuse Tim Russert of playing gotcha when he asks deceptive and irrelevant questions that he knows Howard Dean won't have an answer for. In this sense, it expresses the frustration of being marginalized by someone who isn't playing fair but controls the discourse anyway.

However, there is a much more insidious use of the term. And wouldn't you know it, our old friend Joe Lieberman is at the forefront. Lieberman recently used the term in response to a heckler. Seems this gentleman was disappointed that Lieberman promised so earnestly to investigate the Administration's response to Katrina during his campaign, only to refuse to do anything about once he had won. GOP Joe, I mean 'independent Democrat' Joe, seems to think Congress has no role in placing blame. Quoth the slimeball,

"We don't want to play `gotcha' anymore," Lieberman said. "We want to get the aid and assistance to the people of the region who need it."

Now, no one is here to say that aid and assistance should not go to the people of the region who need it (sic). But decrying gotcha politics when you're Joe Lieberman is like decrying the need to know how the nation was misled into war when you're Tony Snow. The Administration has been pretty consistent in wanting to talk about how we're going to win in Iraq instead of talking about why we're there, which makes sense because they look really bad when the conversation shifts that direction.

Gotcha politics, focusing on the present, looking forward. Whatever you want to call them, these terms all denote the tactics of people who wouldn't look so good if we focused on the past. But, as Josh Eidelson points out, gotcha politics is a pretty good thing for Washington because of one simple virtue: accountability.

If no one ever played gotcha politics, no one would ever be calling anyone on their mistakes. Entrenched beltway insiders like Lieberman would be free to make mistakes all the time, constantly undermine the fellow members of their party, and generally behave in the most selfish ways possible without ever having to answer for it. W would be within reason when he asks us to trust him on Iraq. I hope I don't need to flesh out this nightmare scenario any further.

This is where politics starts to seem like a mutual fund. Past performance is no guarantee of future results, we are constantly told. And while technically that is true, it's also pretty much the only thing we have to go on when choosing mutual funds, unless we have inside (and idiosyncratic) information on how some of the stocks in the fund will be performing. So, Joe and George, I'd love to not bother assigning blame, but you guys just keep screwing up. I personally don't have any reason to think your future results will differ greatly from your past performance.

I agree that it would be nice not to have to play gotcha politics all the time, but the solution to the problem is to stop people from screwing up. Running around whining about how much we dislike it is a deceptive, ad hominem, disingenuous tactic that ends up hurting productive political discourse more than it helps. Therefore, here here for gotcha politics.