Obama: National dialogue “coarsening”

Barack Obama is concerned about the “coarsening” of our national debate:

President Barack Obama said in an interview to be aired Sunday night on “60 Minutes” that he sees “a coarsening of our political dialogue.”

“The truth of the matter is that there has been, I think, a coarsening of our political dialogue,” Obama told Steve Kroft in an interview taped at the White House on Friday evening.

“I will also say that in the era of 24-hour cable news cycles, that the loudest, shrillest voices get the most attention. And so one of the things that I’m trying to figure out is: How can we make sure that civility is interesting?”

Bob Schieffer, who played the clip on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” said Kroft had asked the president what he thought of all the anger that had erupted over the summer.

Coarse dialogue bothers the president? Is it safe to say he’s getting “all wee-wee’d up” over it?

Or, perhaps, it’s the scare tactics that bother him?

Or maybe when Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer called town-hall feedback “un-American”? Or perhaps this moment when John Dingell compared the protesters to the KKK?

I’d say “Physician, heal thyself,” but Obama would probably propose a new bureaucracy for that. Disdain, indeed.

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