SIZING UP THE ODDS

         Although some conservative politicians and pundits are proclaiming this the “dirtiest” Presidential campaign in memory, I would suggest they have a selective memory.  What they don’t remember is Democratic candidates fighting back so ferociously, as Dana Milbank noted in his Washington Post column today.

Usually, the Democratic candidates go limp in the face of GOP charges, however outrageous, figuring that the electorate couldn’t possibly believe such outlandish claims.  The Swift Boating of John Kerry in 2004 comes to mind, as does the Willie Horton smears of Michael Dukakis in 1988.  The list is long and dirty and although Democrats also resort to negative campaign tactics they are pikers compared to the GOP.

         Like most people, I would like to see the campaigns take the high road and revolve around a discussion of serious national and international issues, but that is naïve.  So, I am glad to see the Democrats counterpunching and fighting fire with fire.  Elections, sad to say, are won in the trenches and they aren’t pretty.  If you want help to separate fact from fiction on the issues – practically a full time job, by the way – don’t listen to the campaign ads.  You need to regularly go to one or more of the independent on-line fact checking sites.  They are very revealing – and helpful.

         With the GOP’s sizeable lead in fund raising, I fear the Romney/Ryan team will be able to win the mudslinging contest, and that could make a decisive difference late in the campaign, but I am cautiously hopeful it won’t be enough to decide the election. 

There are three reasons for my optimism.

         For Romney to win, he has to capture the majority of undecided voters who for the most part are moderates.  And putting a radical like Ryan on the ticket doesn’t help there.  Governors Chris Christie or Bob McDonnell, or Bob Portman, or Mitch Daniels, maybe, but Ryan, no.  Ryan can recant on his Ayn Rand fixation all he wants, but his record is clear and unavoidable and he can’t expunge that record regardless of how much air brushing the GOP does between now and November.  Ryan will help solidify the Tea Party base, but the GOP had that locked up anyway.  So, the Ryan selection doesn’t make sense in terms of wooing the undecided.

         Besides the undecided/moderates, Romney and Ryan need to do very well among Jews and Catholics and that’s a tall order.  One of the main reasons Jews have traditionally voted Democratic is that they have had a strong belief in America’s social compact – to take care of the poor and the disadvantaged in our society. That is a belief rooted in Jewish Scripture and tradition.  And although the GOP thinks its unconditional support of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will dislodge a chunk of American Jews, it won’t make a significant difference despite the deep pockets of the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson.  Jewish American support of Netanyahu is spotty at best. 

         Likewise with Catholics, the GOP thinks it will reap a windfall of Catholic votes by repeating the charge that the Obama Administration has “waged a war” against the Catholic Church on the contraceptive provision in the health care law.  While this tactic may win some Catholic votes because a few American Catholic bishops are spouting the same nonsense, it won’t sway the majority of Catholics who understand that the core of the Catholic teaching and tradition is taking care of the poor and the disadvantaged among us.  And, to its credit, the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference has underscored that commitment. 

So, for Romney to pick a Catholic as his running mate shouldn’t make a decisive difference among Catholic voters.  Ryan is among the conservatives – despite his Catholic faith -- who believe that the only people who count in our society are those who pick themselves up by their own bootstraps, ignoring the fact that some people don’t have bootstraps to begin with. 

My hope and trust is that most of my fellow Catholics understand that crucial difference.

Gerald E. Lavey

CAN’T WE ALL GET ALONG

          Many of us can still recall that poignant appeal by Rodney King, the African American whose savage beating by four L.A. policemen 20 years ago was videotaped and shown over and over on television across the country and around the world.  King made the appeal after the policemen were acquitted, triggering riots that claimed the lives of 53 persons and massive destruction of property in L.A.

          Jonathan Haidt opens his thought-provoking book, THE RIGHTEOUS MIND: WHY GOOD PEOPLE ARE DIVIDED BY POLITICS AND RELIGION, with that phrase and King’s follow-up comment that is particularly pertinent to today’s bitterly divided political situation: “Please, we can get along here. We all can get along.  I mean, we’re all stuck here for a while.  Let’s try to work it out.”

          Lovely thought which I fully ascribe to.  Theoretically.

As I read the book, I began learning more about my own political self-righteousness – feeling a bit guilty in the process -- and hopefully gaining a better understanding and appreciation of conservatives and where they are coming from.

            But, then I put the book down and I am thrust back into the real world where my new found patience and understanding bump up against conservatives in daily life and I am back to square one.  A few examples to illustrate my point:

·        A week ago, I was getting my hair cut by a Vietnamese women in Fairfax.  She had a picture of her family on the mirror.  I asked about them and she proudly talked about her daughter who is in college and the life she and her husband have built in America.  A professed conservative Christian, she talked about how hard she and her husband have worked to achieve this dream.  But, then she went off on a tangent against African-Americans who, she says, don’t work hard enough and that’s why they haven’t done better.  Really?

·        A few days later I am listening to C-Span Radio’s coverage of a Claire Booth Luce Policy Institute meeting.  Conservative Christian Star Parker is talking about how Liberal programs are antithetical to the Bible. In the bottomless grab bag of Scripture, she “found” a citation that proved that even the Liberal backed minimum wage saps the moral strength of America and violates the Scripture.  Moreover, abortion is wrong even in the case of rape and incest.  And, of course, she has a Scriptural example to “prove” her point there, too.  Really?

·        Next, my wife and I are staying at a B&B in Front Royal, Va., and my German born wife and the owner start discussing Germany.  In no time, he states that he is worried that this Administration is leading us into the same kind of political situation that led to Hitler in the 1930s.  Really?

·        We return home, I open Facebook, and a dear former colleague posts an item that invokes the same old tired conservative slogan: “Let’s take back America.”  Take it back to what and where?  The good old days?  Really?

   ·        Then, just today, I have lunch with a wonderful neighbor friend who was a nose gunner on B24s in World War II.  And he reminds me that he listens to Rush Limbaugh regularly.  Really?  I have a tough time reconciling those two: my highly intelligent neighbor and Rush Limbaugh who, in my opinion, is one of the all-time world class idiots.

  To be fair, we are all shaped by our moral intuitions and childhood upbringing, and conservatives find my political philosophy as repugnant as I find theirs.  I know because I hear from them pretty regularly.  Fair enough.  That’s what makes for political discussions and political campaigns.  But, it’s what also makes for political stalemate and deadlocked government.

So, back to my original point, the question still remains:  Can we all get along politically, as Rodney King implored us to do in a racial context?  Can we find enough common ground on key issues to move this country forward?

             I would like to think so – and there are periods of American history when we did, despite our political differences.  But, judging from my own strong feelings as a typical voter on the Left and from the political intransigence I sense from the Right -- plus the bitterly divided Congress which supposedly represents this great divide -- I am not sure that’s possible anytime soon, certainly not until after the November election.

But, then hope springs eternal.  Stay tuned.

Gerald E. Lavey

THE SOUND AND THE FURY

       Brigitte and I have been on the road off and on for the better part of three weeks so we didn’t give the news as much attention as we normally do, except to catch the headlines.  It was a rather nice break from all that noise:  “Fast and Furious,” the Administration’s ill-advised gun operation in Mexico; Bain Capital: did he or didn’t he?  Washington Mayor Gray’s crumbling administration.  And on and on.

           What we couldn’t help but follow, even on the road, was the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act.  It didn’t take the Tea Party long to turn one of its heroes, Chief Justice John Roberts, into an unpatriotic villain and a turncoat who should be impeached.
 

It’s understandable, of course, why some conservatives might disagree with the Affordable Care Act -- although to date I have not seen any reasoned alternative from that quarter, just vague promises about the need to repeal Obamacare and start all over.  What’s hard to understand is the rabid fury on the right, as if the Affordable Care Act (ACA) were tantamount to high treason and Chief Justice Roberts a Benedict Arnold.

          The Obama Administration is partly to blame for allowing the Tea Party and other right wing conservatives to define the health care law and let the worst misimpressions become settled fact.  It’s no wonder people are frightened by that caricature of the ACA as a massive Government takeover that will bankrupt the country and turn this country into a socialist welfare state like France and all those other European countries across the pond.   Meantime, instead of pumping out information on what ACA really is designed to accomplish -- as well its current benefits already in effect -- the Administration remains strangely passive. I don’t get it.

          Meanwhile, the House of Representatives, responding to its base, is so busy voting to repeal the ACA it doesn’t have time for much else.  In fact, just to make sure everyone understands its opposition to ACA, the House has voted 33 times to repeal it.  No exaggeration; 33 times.  You can’t make up stories like this, leading Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein to observe:  “Holding that vote once makes sense. Republicans had promised that much during the 2010 campaign.  But 33 times?  If doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result makes you insane, what does doing the same thing 33 times and expecting a different result make you?  Well, it makes you the 112th Congress,” he quipped.

              What puzzles me that the goal of the health care law is no longer part of this acrimonious debate.   It’s all about the alleged cost – and some of the GOP cost estimates being trotted out on the campaign trail are fictitious, to put it kindly.  The fact that 50 million Americans (the health care law would cover only 30 million) are uninsured doesn’t seem to bother the opponents of health care.  Or that people with pre-existing conditions can be denied health insurance.  These beneficiaries are our fellow citizens, aren’t they?

Which brings me to my last point.  You often hear opponents of health care putting the issue into the context of welfare, a code word if I ever heard on.  And I hadn’t heard the word “moochers” for years recently until I heard it in the context of those who would allegedly most benefit from the Affordable Care Act, in the eyes of its critics.  And, now, just to make sure people don’t miss that point, Mitt Romney goes before the NAACP and gets booed when he pledges to repeal Obamacare.  As Washington Post columnist Melinda Henneberger rightly observes: Romney got just what he came for.  Now, he can let his friends in the Hamptons know he stood up to the welfare folks -- he the same guy whose Massachusetts health care law served as the model for the ACA.   Go figure.

The irony of this is that there are more whites on welfare than African Americans.  A greater percentage of African Americans, sure, but that’s not surprising considering the social and economic obstacles they have had to face and still face in many sectors.

The point is that the GOP can’t resist the racist slant when it comes to an election so they resort to the old bugaboos to get their base riled up. From Nixon’s Southern Strategy and Reagan’s “welfare queens” and the Willie Horton charge leveled against Michael Dukakis in the 1988  campaign, to Newt Gingrich’s clumsy attempts during the Southern primaries, the beat goes on. 

This too shall pass, but it’s going to be a long summer and fall. 

          Gerald E. Lavey