Consider two scenes.

The first occurs during the Army-McCarthy Hearings in 1954, when Joseph Welch, an attorney for the for the U.S. Army asks Senator Joseph McCarthy to provide evidence to the attorney general of his accusations that there are communists working in U.S. defense plants. Instead, McCarthy names someone from Welch’s law office in Boston. The exchange leads to Welch’s now-famous retort to McCarthy:

“Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator…. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

Now shift to 55 years later. The President of the United States is delivering a speech on healthcare reform to a joint session of Congress. At one point in his speech, President Obama refutes recent reports that healthcare bill proposals would include so-called “death panels” that will decide the fate of elderly citizens. “It’s a lie, plain and simple” he says. As the president continues in his speech he says that there are no provisions to provide healthcare to illegal immigrants in any of the bills. South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson shouts out:

“You lie.”

Both Welch and Wilson called people out on what they viewed to be misrepresentations. Welch is widely heralded for being among the first to help bring down a Senator intent on a communist witch hunt. Wilson, however, is castigated by members of his own party.

Senator John McCain, Obama’s Republican opponent in the presidential election, calls Wilson’s outburst “totally disrespectful.”

The reaction to Wilson’s outburst begs the question of why it was so wrong for him to shout out what he believed to be “truth to power” when it was OK for Obama to sweepingly call out liars in his speech and admirable for Welch to confront McCarthy while the whole world was watching. (Well, maybe not the whole world, but certainly a good chunk of U.S. citizens watching the televised hearings.)

Welch’s act came after McCarthy raised a colleague’s name in an effort to divert attention from the request made to support his allegations. By confronting McCarthy, Welch effectively disarmed McCarthy and continued to focus on the issues at hand in the hearings. Welch and McCarthy were engaged in a hearing where each had the right to express their views, however abhorrent Welch may have found McCarthy’s comments.

Obama shone light on what he viewed to be the lie, rather than call out specific liars. Granted, his comments may still have irked those who had been talking about death panels, but he never singled out, say, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as being a liar for continuing to talk about death panels. “You, Governor Palin are a liar” rings far differently from “It’s a lie, plain and simple.”

Where Wilson stepped over the line was in the method and forum in which he chose to deliver his message. He and Obama were not engaged in a hearing. His was a direct assault on the character of the person speaking not the issue he raised.

The reason why some members of his own party joined in the criticism of his behavior was that Wilson breached the agreed-upon norms of how members of Congress should act. By doing this his actions were not only uncivil but struck many as unethical.

“Ethics is how we behave when we decide we belong together” write Margaret Wheatley and Myron Kellner Rogers, who wrote in A Simpler Way (Berrett-Koehler, 1999).

Wilson fell short of behaving in a way that he and his colleagues deemed appropriate when they work together on important issues facing the country.

Just as President Obama, during a speech about health care reform at a joint session of Congress Wednesday night, stated his new health care plan would not cover illegal immigrants, Joe Wilson did the unthinkable. “You lie!” he shouted at the President, anger spewing from his mouth and his gaze.

Honestly, it sounds fictional. It sounds like a bad political novel. Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina’s 2^nd district has managed to catapult himself into the international spotlight by, as VP Joe Biden put it so eloquently, “demeaning the institution.” And that he did.

It takes guts to call out the President, especially when you are watching him give a speech firsthand. But being courageous, at the wrong time, has its consequences. Loudmouth Joe was immediately booed by hundreds of Democrats. Republicans lambasted the 5^th term representative for being disrespectful and breaking Congress rules.

Wilson had to apologize immediately after, and though he didn’t get to say sorry face-to-face with the President, Obama accepted the apology. To me, these apologies mean little anyway. Anyone can say “sorry” after the fact, but it take someone of real integrity not to make the mistake in the first place. Or, in this case, someone with with half a brain.

Many of the more vocal republicans have been quite outspoken when it comes to the issue of the new health care plan giving benefits to illegal immigrants. Obama has said time and time again that it won’t, but, apparently for Loudmouth Joe and many others, that hasn’t been enough.

Sadly, because the health care document is more then 1,000 boring, boring pages, no one will ever read through it to find the truth. Or, we could just listen to the President.

Even if you choose not to, just don’t take a page out of Joe’s book. We don’t need another Joe in the spotlight. That plumber was enough.

Joe Wilson (R-SC) may have saved his political career by issuing a public apology for his outburst at President Obama last night, but I’m not holding my breath.

As a Republican working and living among the bluest of blues in Boston, I understand how frustrating it can be to listen to bleeding-heart liberals talk about their plans to save the world. But I also understand the importance of political give-and-take, and the first “give” has got to be respect. Publicly, in front of a joint session of Congress and a national television audience, calling anyone a liar, never mind the President of the United States, knocks Wilson, as well as the GOP as a whole, down a few notches in the give-and-take game.

It is not like Wilson does not have enough outlets to voice his disagreement with the president’s health care plan “" his Congressional website, Fox News, Facebook, a Twitter account he last updated on Labor Day, with no mention of the President’s health care plan. I support public disagreement with the President in the appropriate forums, but as a conservative (and also a political science major with a keen interest in the American Presidency), I believe the Presidential office should be sacred “" a symbol of America, like the flag. If you disagree with a national policy, you would not turn your flag upside down. Likewise, I don’t believe you should mock the president. Belittling him belittles everything we stand for as Americans, as he was freely elected by our fellow citizens.

Wilson’s childish outburst also undermined his party’s cause. The media is not asking Republican politicians what they think of the President’s health care plan; they are asking what they thought of Representative Wilson’s outburst. Was it justified? The potential for a deep and insightful national conversation about healthcare has been lost to some political name-calling. Media outlets like CNN are also noting the number of conservatives who are defending Wilson on Twitter. Health care was not the number one trending Twitter topic last night, Joe Wilson was.

Wilson’s public disagreement may be protected by the First Amendment, but is a diluted representation of the kind of disagreement that should be protected. Wilson should back up his position that he made so public with an intelligent op-ed in a major newspaper, citing reasons for his outburst. Maybe then he can protect the GOP from being mislabeled as a party of immature extremism, but rather as one of true ideas that are simply different from those being place on the table by the President.

Moments after the American public learned that South Carolina Republican Congressman Joe Wilson was the one that pointed a finger at the president and called him a liar on national television, the digital race was on to see who would flame Wilson the most, and how big the fire would spread.

The digital world came alive, and Wilson was quickly one of the most “trended topics” on Twitter.

Then Wilson’s website, http://www.joewilson.house.gov/ went down with a placeholder page that said: “This site is down for maintenance. Please check back soon.”

Then he became one of the most Googled terms of the day.

Some people even fired back. According to CNN, some new Twitter accounts were created, with their first and only Tweets being in support of Wilson.

But even other members of Congress went public and digital with their condemnation of Wilson: “Biggest disappointment of evening, the total lack of respect show by one member for the president,” Tweeted Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri. “Never acceptable to behave like a jerk.”

According to CNN, South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler capitalized: “Once again a South Carolina Republican has embarrassed our state,” Fowler’s office said, referring to S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford’s extramarital, international affair. “Never has any member of Congress shown such disrespect for the president during a speech. … Joe Wilson is a poor example of a statesman and an American.”

Wilson currently faces Democratic challenger Rob Miller in the mid-term election in 2010.