BEST OF THE WEB
BY JAMES TARANTO
Wednesday, June 9, 2004 3:52 p.m.
Best of the Tube Tomorrow
We're giving this column a rest tomorrow, because it's the official publication date of our new book, "Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House" (order it from the OpinionJournal bookstore), and our publisher has arranged for us to spend much of the day giving interviews about the book. Here's a corrected list of our national TV appearances tomorrow (all times Eastern, check your local listings, schedules are subject to change as news demands, and the time ranges below are as specific as we now have):
"Today," NBC, 9-10 a.m.
"Hannity & Colmes," Fox News Channel, 9-10 p.m.
Our e-mail subscribers will receive a special essay on presidential leadership.
Political Segregation--II
Josh Marshall offers a response to our item yesterday, in which (picking up on a blog entry of his) we raised the question of why black voters have become political outliers, voting overwhelmingly Democratic while the country has become more Republican since 1968. For his answer, he quotes a 1998 article he published in The American Prospect:
The Republican Party has not . . . ignored blacks and other minorities. In the last 30 years the Republican Party has increasingly relied on the support of constituencies that feel embittered and resentful toward minorities and the poor. The party's mounting strength in the 1970s and 1980s was based on making inroads among conservative southern whites and appealing to the resentments that Democratic northern, working-class ethnic voters felt against school busing and affirmative action. Thus, the GOP's problem with minorities isn't incidental; it's fundamental. Any genuine effort to aid minorities or the poor would instantly alienate a substantial portion of the Republican base. It's an electoral bind, inexorable and fixed. The Republicans can't be the party of both black opportunity and anti-black resentment, no matter how big the tent. The Democrats tried it; it didn't work.
There is truth to this analysis, but there are also some problems with it. For one thing, it's certainly not sufficient to explain Republicans' electoral strength since 1968. After all, when the Democrats were the party of antiblack resentment, they spent seven decades as the minority party (the 1860s through the 1920s) everywhere but in the South, where blacks were disfranchised.
It's also difficult to credit the idea that Republicans have increasingly relied on appeals to white prejudice since 1968. Marshall does concede in today's blog posting that "the racial edge in American politics . . . is somewhat less overt today than it was in the 1990s," when he wrote the words we quoted above. But we'd venture to say it's a heck of a lot less overt than in 1968, when George Wallace carried five states and pulled 13.5% of the nationwide popular vote. Republicans gained ground among nonblacks and lost it among blacks even as the salience of antiblack resentment was decreasing.
We argued in March, and we still think, that issues like crime, welfare, abortion, homosexuality and guns are more important today in attracting socially conservative voters than are strictly racial issues. The last three of these issues have little or nothing to do with race, and on abortion and homosexuality at least, blacks are reputed to be more conservative than whites. Crime and welfare do have racial overtones, but surely one can take right-leaning positions on them--as President Clinton did--without being guilty of antiblack resentment.
What about the racial issues Marshall cites? School busing has largely faded from the political scene, so let's concentrate on "affirmative action"--a euphemism for preferential treatment for blacks and other minorities in such areas as hiring, contracting and college admissions. No doubt antiblack bigots overwhelmingly oppose it, but not all opponents are bigots. One can oppose racial preferences on the ground that they are indistinguishable in principle from old-fashioned discrimination against blacks. (One must admit, however, that in practice they are highly distinguishable, for they are essentially benevolent in intent and less pernicious in effect.)
Even a white man who opposes racial preferences on self-interested grounds--because they put him and those like him at a disadvantage--doesn't necessarily come to that position out of racial animus. Blacks who sought equal rights half a century ago did so because they rightly believed that they were victims of an unjust system. Their moral claim was far more compelling than that of the white "victims" of racial preferences, but that doesn't mean those in the latter group act in bad faith when staking their claim to fairness.
There's no doubt that Republicans played to antiblack resentment in the 1960s, and Marshall may be right that they still do, at least to some extent--though it must be said that Republicans have been nowhere near as vigorous or unified in opposing racial preferences as Democrats have been in supporting them.
But there's a moral hazard here for Democrats as well. Their current electoral strategy depends on maintaining an overwhelming level of black support--90% in the most recent presidential election, in which Al Gore got a bare plurality of the nationwide popular vote. This means the Dems have a powerful incentive to exaggerate the degree to which Republican policies are driven by racism--an approach that can be every bit as divisive as Richard Nixon's "Southern strategy."
The Reactionary Left
The Village Voice has a dyslogy for Ronald Reagan written by Tom Carson, which is remarkable for this observation: "Starting with the way he broke the air-traffic controllers' strike in 1981, an augury of things to come from which the labor movement never recovered, Reagan certainly demolished the American left--what passes for the left, anyway. Since repeating 'what passes for the left' strikes me as tiresome, I'll abbreviate it: WPFL. As you may recall, under veteran station manager Jesse Jackson, WPFL switched to an oldies format soon after the Great Communicator took office, and has remained too much on the defensive to come up with a new songlist since. Instead, in one of the great through-the-looking-glass paradoxes of Reaganism, 'progressives' have become, in practical terms, reactionaries--cluckingly trying to protect this or that milestone (equal opportunity, Roe v. Wade), against a right wing that's singing 'If I Had a Hammer--Oh, Wait: I Do.' "
Hmm, does this sound familiar?
Kerry and Reagan, Then and Now
John Kerry has had nothing but praise for the late Ronald Reagan, but when Reagan was still alive, he sang a different tune. The Weekly Standard's Katherine Mangu-Ward has assembled a useful collection of Kerry comments on the Gipper:
In November 2002, U.S. News & World Report carried this Kerry assessment of Reagan's presidency: "You roll out the president one time a day. One exposure to all of you [the media]. No big in-depth inquiries. Put him in his brown jacket and his blue jeans, put him on a ranch, let him cock his head, give you a smile, and it looks like America's OK."
He repeated the same sentiments in an interview with Vogue last year, this time drawing a parallel to [George W.] Bush: ''They have managed him the same way they managed Ronald Reagan," Kerry contended. ''They send him out to the press for one event a day. They put him in a brown jacket and jeans and get him to move some hay or drive a truck, and all of a sudden, he's the Marlboro Man."
In 1992, Mangu-Ward informs us, Kerry said this: "Ronald Reagan certainly was never in combat. I mean, many of his movies depicted him there. And he may have believed he was, but he never was. And the fact is that he sent Americans off to die." Kerry, by contrast, served in Vietnam.
It's interesting how Bush's detractors have switched from disparaging him as another Reagan to disparaging him as someone who doesn't hold a candle to the Gipper.
Meanwhile, although Kerry has suspended his presidential campaign out of respect for Reagan, he missed a Senate vote today on a resolution honoring the late former president. It passed, 98-0; Montana Democrat Max Baucus also was absent.
Bringing Good Things to Life
Yesterday we noted that General Electric, which employed Ronald Reagan as a spokesman in the 1950s and '60s, did not have a word about his death on its Web site. Several GE employees e-mailed to let us know that there was a brief tribute to Reagan on GE's internal site, and the company has now posted it publicly, along with a statement by CEO Jeffrey Immelt and links to a 1980 Reagan speech at a GE plant and a longer MSNBC tribute.
Also, reader Kevin McGilly answers our rhetorical question whether anyone other than Reagan had the foresight to predict the Soviet Union's demise. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat, did so, as this Washington Post obituary for Moynihan, who died last year, notes.
You Don't Say
"Many Reagan Era Figures to Attend Funeral"--headline, Associated Press, June 9
But Is That Worth Dying For?
"When Presidents Die, They Can Define Their Era"--headline, Reuters, June 9
A Democratic Albatross
Further evidence that Jews don't control the world: Rep. Jim Moran, a Virginia Democrat, defeated challenger Andrew Rosenberg in yesterday's primary, 59% to 41%. Since the seat is safely Democratic (Al Gore's margin in the district was 20%), Moran is as good as re-elected. As we noted in March 2003, Moran blamed Jews for threatening Saddam Hussein's hold on power:
"If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq we would not be doing this," the Connection newspapers of northern Virginia quoted Rep. Jim Moran as saying last week. "The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going and I think they should."
In the past week, "Moran's longtime pollster, Alan Secrest, said he quit the campaign because of anti-Semitic remarks Moran made at a private campaign meeting," the Associated Press reports. Moran denies it.
The incumbent also accuses Rosenberg of trolling for Republican votes in the open primary. Rosenberg denies it, and as a former aide to Sen. Ted Kennedy, he wouldn't be the first choice of most GOP voters.
What Would We Find Without Surveys?
"Fewer Republicans Trust the News, Survey Finds"--headline, Washington Post, June 9
CNN's Selective Pedagogy
From a list of "Discussion Questions" on the Group of Eight summit prepared by CNN Student News:
Who are Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder? What are their views on the U.S.-led war on terrorism?
How come there's no question on Tony Blair, Silvio Berlusconi or Junichiro Koizumi and their views on the U.S.-led war on terrorism?
Media Coverup?
This troubling announcement came from the U.S. military Central Command last week:
MOSUL, Iraq--Coalition soldiers questioned two news media cameramen and a reporter after a roadside bomb exploded near a Coalition convoy two kilometers north of Mosul June 3.
The media, who were at the scene prior to the attack, told soldiers at the scene they had received a tip to be at that location prior to the attack and they had witnessed the explosion.
The explosion didn't cause any serious injuries, but it could have. Journalistic independence is all well and good, but when lives are at stake, isn't it incumbent on reporters to pass along such a tip to the authorities? And how come we learned this news from Centcom rather than from any news outlet?
Weasel Watch
The U.N. Security Council yesterday approved a resolution endorsing the transfer of Iraqi sovereignty to a new government in preparation for elections in a few months. The Associated Press quotes France's Foreign Minister Michel Barnier that although his country wasn't entirely happy with the resolution, "that doesn't stop us from a positive vote in New York to help in a constructive way find a positive exit to this tragedy." Which "tragedy" would that be, exactly?
What Would Victims Do Without Experts?
"A defense expert for Fawaz Damra says the indicted imam did not try to incite violence in the early 1990s when he screamed at fund-raisers to destroy Jews," the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports. The paper quotes the "expert," Scott Alexander, "a Chicago researcher in Mideast studies":
"The rhetoric is principally used by political and religious leaders to galvanize resistance to what Palestinian Arabs consider to be the patent persecution of their people by Jewish immigrants to the Middle East," Alexander said in a report filed in federal court.
"As unquestionably hate-filled and thus morally reprehensible as such language is, when Palestinians refer to Jews as 'descended from apes and swine' or encourage support for those who 'kill Jews,' they do so with the reasonably justifiable self-image of victim and persecuted, not of victimizer and persecutor."
Isn't this contemporary liberalism reduced to its essence? Achieve "victim" status, and you have a license to depart from all civilized norms.
Rogue Library
The "General Information" page of the California State Library carries this disclaimer at the bottom:
The content found herein may not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the Schwarzenegger Administration.
But a cached copy of the page at Archive.com, apparently generated in February 2003, before Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor, has no such disclaimer, only this copyright notice: "© 2000 State of California. Gray Davis, Governor." The new governor's name doesn't appear in the current copyright notice. We wonder whose decision this was: Is the library trying to distance itself from a Republican governor, or the other way around?
Was There Some Doubt?
"Ex-NASA Chief Richard Truly Retiring"--headline, Associated Press, June 8
Drug Your Kid or Else
Here's a rather chilling story from ABC News: Chad Taylor of Rio Rancho, N.M., suspected that his son Daniel was suffering side effects from Ritalin, a drug he was taking for attention deficit disorder:
"He was losing weight, wasn't sleeping, wasn't eating," Taylor told ABC News affiliate KOAT-TV in New Mexico. "[He] just wasn't Daniel."
So Taylor took Daniel off Ritalin, against his doctor's wishes. And though Taylor noticed Daniel was sleeping better and his appetite had returned, his teachers complained about the return of his disruptive behavior. Daniel seemed unable to sit still and was inattentive. His teachers ultimately learned that he was no longer taking Ritalin.
School officials reported Daniel's parents to New Mexico's Department of Children, Youth and Families. Then a detective and social worker made a home visit.
"The detective told me if I did not medicate my son, I would be arrested for child abuse and neglect," Taylor said.
A spokesman for New Mexico's Department of Children, Youth and Families told KOAT-TV that they could not comment on the case because of state confidentiality laws. John Francis, a detective for the Rio Rancho Department of Public Safety, said that Taylor was not threatened but told KOAT-TV that parents could be charged in situations like his.
The Rio Rancho schools have frequently appeared in our "Zero-Tolerance Watch" series:
May 2001: A 16-year-old freshman at Rio Rancho High was kicked out of school for possessing a tiny penknife.
May 2001: A senior at the same school was jailed for five days after a security guard found a hunting knife in his brother's car, which he had driven to school.
November 2003: A 12-year-old Rio Rancho student got an "in-school suspension" because a vending machine gave him two drinks when he paid for only one.
January 2004: A teenager at Rio Rancho Mid-High School was suspended for five days for bringing Gas-X, an over-the-counter drug, to school.
Threatening to jail a father for refusing to give his child behavior-modification drugs, though, seems particularly outrageous--a far bigger threat to the average American's liberty than anything in the Patriot Act. |
