Tut-tut on the tit-for-tat

I knew it would happen. Some conservative Republicans would defend Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina, one of their finest, for heckling President Obama during the president's speech to Congress on Wednesday night. Wilson famously shouted "you lie."

They were going to do it, I knew, on this argument: Wilson presumably acted no worse than Obama had acted seconds before when he essentially called Sarah Palin a liar.

This prevailing and chronic tit-for-tat rationalization of boorish political behavior -- "it's no worse than what they did" -- is rampant these days. And it's bogus, better left on the grade school playground.

Sometimes there can be no tit-for-tat. Sometimes what one side says or does is way more wrong than what the other side says or does. Sometimes one side is flat right and the other is flat wrong.

Like now.

There are many basic and profound differences between what Obama said in an address and what Wilson shouted from the bleachers, starting with the most plain and the most elementary: Palin did lie; Obama did not.

Palin declared that Obama was proposing health care reform that would establish "death panels" to decide whether to go ahead and essentially euthanize handicapped children such as her own.

That's not so. It's not true in any remotely conceivable way. It's made up. There will be no panels. There will be no euthanasia imposed by this reform. A few doctors merely might collect a little Medicare reimbursement for telling seniors about living wills and end-of-life options.

So when Obama bellowed that such nonsense amounted to "lies," he was telling the truth.

Seconds later, Obama said it was similarly false for many of his critics to be bandying about this charge about how universal health care would extend new health care to illegal immigrants.

That's when Wilson shouted "you lie."

But, see, here's the thing -- the true thing: The House bill, in all three varying committee versions, contains a plain and unequivocal provision that its benefits and authorizations would in no way extend to illegal immigrants. Undocumented persons would expressly not be permitted to sign up for subsidized care through a proposed new health insurance exchange.

That is to say that the status quo would continue. Some illegal immigrants with decent to good jobs, more than 40 percent, a Pew study indicates, would continue to get the health insurance they now get through the usual employer-employee partnership. Medicaid, for the truest poor, would continue trying to verify citizenship before extending benefits.

Meantime, uninsured illegal immigrants getting swine flu or hurt in car wrecks would continue to go to emergency rooms or public clinics and cost us more than it would cost us to put them on a track to earned citizenship and let them get insurance.

But that's just me talking right there. Obama wants no part of that, at least for a while.

One thing the conservative Republicans want to do is wreck both health care reform and immigration reform by putting them on the same set of train tracks and putting them on a collision course. But they are separate issues. We must extend health coverage for our citizens. In a separate debate, we must figure out who the citizens are.

And now to get back to some of the differences between Obama and Wilson:

-- Obama had the floor. Wilson didn't.

-- Obama's comments were planned and carefully composed. Wilson lost his head, if he had it to lose.

They call the president "no-drama Obama." They probably shouldn't call Joe Wilson anything like that. They could call him some other things maybe, but here I will cling to decorum and common courtesy.

John Brummett is an award-winning columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock and the author of "High Wire." His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com.