The Urge to Demonize

One really unfortunate element of every election I can recall is the trashing of the opposing candidate. It’s easy to fall into the trap–I’ve found myself doing it on more than one occasion. I still recall, with some shame, expressing my low opinion of Larry Conrad during his run for Governor (youngsters reading this can google him). When I met Larry later, and worked on civic projects with him, I found him to be entirely admirable. Campaigns are notoriously bad at conveying the “real person,” and somehow, in the heat of battle, it’s not enough to disagree with a candidate’s policies or worldview. He or she must be a sub-optimal human as well.

I thought about this when I read a recent screed about President Obama, darkly suggesting–among other things–that his failure to release his Harvard grade transcript was probable evidence of substandard performance. (This is a pretty standard way of raising the issue of race–after all, aren’t all black people beneficiaries of affirmative action?)

I happened to attend an academic conference a few years ago where one of Obama’s professors shared his opinion that then-newly-minted Senator Obama was one of the best students he’d ever taught, and that he expected him to go far. Of course, it isn’t necessary to rely on a former instructor’s offhand comment–as any law school graduate knows, it takes superior grades to earn even a lowly position on a Law Review. Dummies simply don’t become Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Law Review. They also don’t hold adjunct professorships at the intellectually rigorous University of Chicago Law School.

The problem with these sorts of gratuitous slurs is that they debase political debate. The liberals who questioned Romney’s business accomplishments were similarly out of line. I opposed Romney and Ryan not because I thought their experience and talents were exaggerated, but because I believed they drew dramatically wrong lessons from those experiences, and that their policies would be very damaging to the country. I also opposed their views on women’s rights and gay rights.

I have friends who opposed Obama because they wanted him to wage war against Iran, or were opposed to the Affordable Care Act or to progressive taxation (aka “redistribution”).  I find their positions illogical and wrongheaded, but entirely legitimate. More important, those are the sort of disagreements we need to discuss, they are the contending prescriptions campaigns should debate and defend–the kinds of arguments that can be illuminated by history and empirical evidence.

Accusing an officeholder of doing a bad job is fair. Accusing him of being a bad or substandard person simply because we dislike his policies or the “team” he plays for is not.

Such ad hominem attacks are an admission by those who level them that they can’t argue the merits of the issues.

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Forget the Alamo…..

A friend who shares my concerns about Indiana’s governance for the next few years sent me a news link intended to cheer me up–sort of. His point was that it could be worse. We could live in Texas.

Over the years, when I have needed examples of truly bad policies as illustrations in my Law and Policy classes, Texas has often supplied those examples. I’d begun to think that the Texan fixation with secession may not be so misplaced; in fact, an amicable divorce was beginning to look pretty attractive. My friend’s link reinforced that  opinion.

Peter Morrison, treasurer of the Hardin County Republican Party in Texas, suggests in his newsletter that the state should have an “amicable divorce” from the “maggots” who re-elected Obama.

Morrison posted on his Facebook page his post-election thoughts: “We must contest every single inch of ground and delay the baby-murdering, tax-raising socialists at every opportunity. But in due time, the maggots will have eaten every morsel of flesh off of the rotting corpse of the Republic, and therein lies our opportunity.”

“Texas was once its own country, and many Texans already think in nationalist terms about their state,” Morrison continued. “We need to do everything possible to encourage a long-term shift in thinking on this issue. Why should Vermont and Texas live under the same government? Let each go her own way in peace, sign a free trade agreement among the states and we can avoid this gut-wrenching spectacle every four years.”

Reached for comment by Bud Kennedy at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Kent Batman, the chairman of the Hardin County Republican Party, said: “Wow.”

“OK, well — I guess I need to start taking a look at his newsletters,” Batman said.

This guy is an official of the Texas Republican Party. That’s bad enough. But even worse, the Chairman of the State Board of Education picked Morrison to screen the state’s public-school textbooks.

Explains a lot, doesn’t it?

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Pluribus, Working Toward Unum

There have always been dueling American “myths” about who we are as a nation, and those national self-images clashed mightily during this year’s election. On the one hand, we had the “Christian Nation” folks and their enablers, the pundits and politicians whose appeal for our votes could be summed up by the often-intoned promise to “take back” the country.

From whom? They never said, but the implication was clear: from those Others. The non-white, non-native-born, non-Jesus-loving, non “real” Americans.

On the other hand, there were the growing percentages of the electorate who fell into those categories. As Eugene Robinson described in his column this morning:

Nationwide, roughly three of every 10 voters Tuesday were minorities. African-Americans chose Obama by 93 percent, Latinos by 71 percent, and Asian-Americans, the nation’s fastest-growing minority, by 73 percent.

These are astounding margins, and I think they have less to do with specific policies than with broader issues of identity and privilege. I think that when black Americans saw Republicans treat President Obama with open disrespect and try their best to undermine his legitimacy, they were offended. When Latinos heard Republicans insist there should be no compassion for undocumented immigrants, I believe they were angered. When Asian-Americans heard Republicans speak of China in almost “Yellow Peril” terms, I imagine they were insulted.

On Tuesday, the America of today asserted itself. Four years ago, the presidential election was about Barack Obama and history. This time, it was about us — who we are as a nation — and a multihued, multicultural future.

Power doesn’t pass easily. Very few people yield privilege willingly. Change of any sort is disruptive and unsettling. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised at the ugliness that has emerged during this period of social and political evolution, but it’s hard not to wish for a more graceful, even enthusiastic, acceptance of change. After all, our diversity–and our professed willingness to forge the “many” into “one”–has been a constant point of American pride.

However reluctantly, the nation is in the process of living up to that motto. We’ve chosen our myth.

There are plenty of Americans who aren’t happy with our multi-cultural reality.  They’ll need to get over it.

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About Those Referenda….

Lots of encouraging things happened Tuesday.

Elections are always dicey propositions. People’s votes are affected by so many imponderables—I’d love to think, as someone who teaches public policy, that voters make their decisions after considering contending positions and evaluating them, but we all know better. Especially when measures affecting the lives of GLBT people are at issue, fear and homophobia and religious fanaticism have historically made a noxious—and effective—brew.

But not this year.

On Tuesday, same-sex marriage referenda were on the ballots in four states. In Washington, Maine and Maryland, voters endorsed marriage equality. In Minnesota, for the first time ever, they defeated an anti-marriage amendment.

Voters also reelected the first President who ever publicly supported the freedom to marry, along with a number of gay and gay-friendly legislators. In Wisconsin, they elected the first “out” United States Senator in American history. In a victory that particularly pleased me, Iowa voters rejected an effort to retire another of the Supreme Court justices who voted with the majority in that state’s freedom to marry case.

Now, let me be clear about one thing: fundamental rights should never be put to a vote of the electorate in the first place.  No one got to vote on whether the government should recognize my marriage, and it is constitutionally improper to give me the power to vote on anyone else’s. But since, as usual, no one listens to me and my “ilk,” those decisions were put to a vote. They had to be dealt with.

Before November 6th, I think it is fair to say that most GLBT activists would have been happy to see a win of just one of these four ballot measures. The advance of marriage rights has thus far depended primarily upon the courts and occasionally legislatures—before now, every time the issue has been put to a popular vote, the gay community has lost. Winning one of these measures would have been hailed as real progress, a break in the drumbeat of constant popular defeat. Two would have been real cause for celebration. I think it is accurate to say that no one expected to win all four.

So there was a lot to cheer about in this year’s election. Bigotry lost across the board, not just anti-gay bigotry. Despite a distressing amount of racism directed toward the President, he won handily. Latinos flexed their electoral muscles. Women refused to be sent barefoot and pregnant back to the kitchen.

As elated as many of us are, however, it is well to remember that elections are just signals of change, not change agents. A lot of people who thought that Obama’s 2008 election would usher in a new era were disappointed because they failed to understand the way the system (not to mention reality) works. We don’t elect monarchs in the United States. Checks and balances mean that no matter what the intentions of the people we put in office, in order to implement the policies they champion, they must work through systems that were intended to force negotiation and compromise—systems that aren’t working very well right now. Voting was just the beginning. Changing the world takes time—and more effort than most of us realize.

But right now, we’re entitled to take some time to savor the results of this election. We’re entitled to entertain the possibility—indeed, the probability—that America has turned an important corner, and that genuine equality for gays and lesbians is closer than it has ever been.

Right now, it’s time for high fives.

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A Lot to Cheer About

Indiana proved to be an outlier. Except for the (predicted) victory by Mike Pence–and the fact that Republican extremists will have pretty much total control of Indiana government for at least the next two years–last night was satisfying. And even here, there were bright spots: Mourdock proved that even in Indiana, crazy doesn’t sell. (He should have taken a page from Pence’s book and refused to talk until after the election). Glenda Ritz defeated Tony Bennett, who never learned to play nice with other children. IPS got three new Commissioners who are likely to take the job of improving the schools seriously–and who are unlikely to rubber-stamp Eugene White’s decisions.

The best news was national. I’m still sifting through results, but I’m no longer waiting to exhale. The President won comfortably–a blowout in the electoral vote and a comfortable margin in the popular vote. The Democrats actually increased their margin in the Senate–something that really shouldn’t have happened, given the seats that were in play. And for the first time ever, marriage equality measures won at the ballot box.

It will be a few days until all the details are available, but Republican strategists should have listened to whoever it was who said “demography is destiny.” Or as Lindsay Graham put it a couple of months ago, there aren’t enough old white men to keep the Republican party afloat.

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