Here's a low information paper... the Austin American-Statesman:
statesman.com
<<If one wonders to what he is referring, the post includes a photo of a young U.S. Rep. George H.W. Bush in front of the U.S. Capitol, and a quote: "I voted ... because of a feeling deep down in my heart that this was the right thing for me to do. That this was the right thing for America."
What he knew in his heart was right is not explained. It must refer to his vote for open housing legislation in 1968, because, when he was running for the Senate seat held by Ralph Yarborough in 1964, Bush was very much opposed to the Civil Rights Act the summit was commemorating.
Here from a 1992 story on Bush's shifting positions on civil rights by Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post:
When he ran for the Senate in 1964, he declared his opposition to the civil rights bill before Congress.
Bush was campaigning as a Barry Goldwater Republican in a state where support of the civil rights bill would have automatically doomed any shot he had at winning election. He inveighed against the civil rights bill of which his father's proposal had been a forerunner, saying its provisions opening hotels, restaurants and other public places to all races were unconstitutional.
"We all deplore the hatemongers of this world," he said in an April 1964 speech quoted by Jefferson Morley in an article this year in the New York Review of Books. "The only thing I hate to see is our Constitution trampled in the process of trying to solve civil rights problems."
Several months later, after President Lyndon B. Johnson had signed the landmark legislation, Bush said, "the new civil rights act was passed to protect 14 percent of the people. I'm also worried about the other 86 percent."
After the election, Bush expressed misgivings to a friend and political opponent. "He just said, 'You know, John, in that election I took some of the far right positions that I thought I needed to get elected and I regret it and I hope I'll never do it again," the Rev. John Stevens, an Episcopal minister, recalled in a 1988 "Frontline" documentary on PBS television.
Four years later, Bush was finishing his first term in the House, in a seat so safe that in the end he did not even have a Democratic challenger. Then, in what he described as one of his proudest moments in public office, Bush voted for the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which for the first time prohibited discrimination in the selling or rental of real estate.
Bush was inundated with complaints and hate mail from constituents and flew home to face down his critics at a hostile rally. "Somehow, it seems fundamental that a man should not have a door slammed in his face because he is a Negro or speaks with a Latin-American accent," he told the group.
According to a Houston Chronicle report of the speech, Bush also assured his constituents that there was no reason to worry because the open housingprovision would have little effect on their lives. "Look at the 20 states with even stronger measures," he said, "and you will find there have been no drastic changes in their living patterns."
In the end, Bush won a standing ovation from the once angry audience. In his autobiography, he wrote of that event: "More than twenty years later, I can truthfully say that nothing I've experienced in public life, before or since, has measured up to the feeling I had when I went home that night."
Omitted from that account are two key facts. First, Bush had opposed open housing legislation when he was running for the seat in 1966, saying there were "wonderful alternatives in the field of housing that will help all persons attain home ownership."
Second, the critical vote for the fair housing bill was not on final passage, when Bush voted with civil rights forces, but on a procedural question: whether to send it back to conference, a move that likely would have killed the measure. On that issue, Bush voted on the opposite side of the civil rights proponents, expressing his concern that the bill discriminated against real estate agents because it exempted individuals selling their own homes while covering Realtors.
A longtime Bush friend, asked how to reconcile the George Bushof 1964 and 1966, against the civil rights and housing bills, with the George Bush of 1968, for fair housing, offered a succinct explanation: "pure politics."
{snip- there is more}
DAK |
