Ruminations, November 30, 2008

Thanksgiving

Conservatives, looking over the political landscape, may feel that that there is little for which to be thankful in 2008. Liberals have taken the presidency, the House, the Senate and two more governorships. Not much for which to be thankful.

But as optimists, there are some small favors for which we can be thankful.

• John Kerry is not secretary of state designate
• Charles Schumer is not secretary of treasury designate
• Barney Frank is not secretary of housing and urban affairs designate
• Carl Levin is not secretary of defense designate
• Chris Dodd is not a designate for anything

Every cloud has a silver lining.

Secretary of state

The word is that Hillary Clinton will be the next secretary of state. At least it’s not John Kerry.

Secretaries of state, like baseball’s utility infielders, perform useful functions. You need them and they usually do an adequate job as did utility infielder Phil Linz, a lifetime .235 hitter. Others show occasional flashes of brilliance like utility infielder Brian Doyle, who had a lifetime batting average of .161 but who hit .438 in the 1978 World Series. Except among trivia buffs, neither ball player was ever heard from again.

If you look over the past 100 years or so, most of the secretaries of state have been like utility infielders; we needed them and they did an adequate job. We have had only four Secretaries of State in that period that showed flashes of brilliance: Henry Kissinger, George Marshall, John Foster Dulles and Cordell Hull.

I suspect that Secretary of State Clinton will execute President Obama’s foreign policy with competence. That is, she will perform with all the skill and brilliance of a Phil Linz.

Wider than the Mississippi

The Mississippi River at its widest point near Alton, Illinois, is a mile wide. Metaphorically speaking, it’s as wide as the gulf between black voters and the Republican Party. But should it be? Ta-Nehisi Coates has an interesting observation.

Coates is a black liberal columnist who has written for The Village Voice, Time, The New York Times, and The Atlantic, among others. He recently wrote that, contrary to popular opinion, “Black people aren’t ‘left-leaning.’” Blacks tend to support some liberal issues such as increases in the minimum wage and an end to the war in Iraq but, Coates says, “There is a conservative streak running through black America wider than the Mississippi.” So why don’t blacks flock to the Republican Party? That’s easy. According to Coates, “They just think the GOP is racist.”

Note that Coates did not say that the GOP is racist. He says that blacks think Republicans are racist. Last week, I heard a young white Obama supporter say much the same thing.

There is nothing in the conservative or Republican tradition that hints at racism. Why would blacks believe that Republicans are racist?

Going back to its earliest days, the Republican Party was the party of Blacks. It began with President Abraham Lincoln and it stayed that way through President Ulysses Grant who, in the mold of Lincoln, was also strong on civil rights.

For political reasons, the next president, Republican Rutherford Hayes, stepped away from civil rights.

In fact, at that point the Republican Party did not want to be identified as the party for blacks. But that didn’t matter – the Democratic Party had the reputation of being the party of slavery and repression. So the GOP continued to have strong black support until Franklin Roosevelt. It was more Roosevelt’s rhetoric that began to swing black voters to the Democrats than his actions. For example, his agriculture program to reduce plantings had the effect of leaving black share-croppers without jobs. Moreover, Roosevelt strongly supported unions and few unions accepted blacks in their rank and file.

The big switch of party loyalties among blacks accelerated in the 1960s. President Kennedy talked a good civil rights game and, although Republican lawmakers voted for civil rights acts in higher percentages than did Democrats (82% to 69%), the focus was on Democratic President Lyndon Johnson ramming the legislation through a Democratic Congress. In truth, civil rights legislation could not have made it through Congress without the support of both parties and the personal leadership of Johnson but, there you go; the Democrats received all the credit.

And then, adding to the problem, 1964 Republican Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater opposed the 1964 Civil Rights bill. Often overlooked are the facts that Goldwater was involved with the integration of the Arizona National Guard, was a life member of the Arizona NAACP, voluntarily integrated his family business and supported the earlier civil rights acts. However, Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 on the grounds that he thought that some provisions overextended the government’s authority. It was that opposition coupled with support for Goldwater by unreformed segregationists, that got Goldwater and the Republicans, if not a bad name, at least the reputation of being a non-friend of blacks.

The situation continued to deteriorate in 1970. President Richard Nixon’s strategist, Kevin Phillips, annunciated Nixon’s southern strategy when he said: “The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans.” And, given the preponderance of white voters, coupled with the negative feelings segregationists had toward Lyndon Johnson, this was considered a political expedient.

How do Republicans end the black perception of Republicans as racists? It’s long been a problem, but as long as Republicans were winning, it seemed a minor problem. In 2008, one can understand a swelling of black support for the Democrat Obama – it’s a source of pride. And, barring any unforeseen events, Obama will capture the overwhelming support of blacks in 2012.

But what of the future? Is there any hope for conservatives and Republicans attracting a large number of black voters? Maybe not.

Since Obama’s election, I’ve received a number of emails making jokes at his expense. It’s typical to ridicule a president; there have been Clinton and Bush jokes in the past – some in good taste and some in not-so-good taste. But some of the Obama jokes, primarily from conservatives, have been at least borderline racist.

That is not to say that there are no liberal or Democrat racists – there are. But as long as conservatives and Republicans are thought of as racist, maybe we have to make the greater effort to avoid suspicion. There are conservative black votes out there that are looking for a home and, as Coates says, the “conservative streak running through black America [is] wider than the Mississippi.” Politically, as well as ethically and morally, racism must be expunged from the conservative movement.

Keeping old friends

In the past, we commented on President Harry Truman’s strength of character as he refused to abandon friends like Boss Pendergast and attended Pendergast’s funeral. We complained that Barack Obama did the opposite, when he abandoned his pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright after promising to never abandon him. Whereas Truman showed loyalty to his friends — even when if they were a political liability — Obama placed politics above personal loyalty.

Obama was not the only political candidate to abandon friends. John McCain did the same; he abandoned his party leader: President Bush. It probably wouldn’t have made much difference in the outcome. The Democrats tarred the McCain candidacy as Bush III anyway – and as far as tax policy and war strategy is concerned, they were right. By abandoning Bush, McCain helped the Democrats to demean the Republican President and, by implication, he helped them demean his own party and candidacy.

It probably didn’t make any difference in the final result, but if you are going to go down to defeat, it’s better to go with a modicum of class.

Robert J. Kulak

West Hartford, Connecticut