Commentary 10- Moran on the Race Card

From the New Jersey Star-Ledger 01/11/08

2007 July 2007 Tossing the race card from the deck
Posted by Tom Moran January 10, 2008 10:46PM
Categories: Politics

Cory Booker, like Barack Obama, is a young and super-educated black politician with a golden tongue.

But the two share much more than that. They have walked the same political path, one in Chicago and the other in Newark. They both fought against older men with roots in the civil rights era, and bring an entirely new style of politics to the African-American community.

And when they sat down one day and compared their political bruises, they found a nearly exact match.

"He got lambasted as a 'white boy,' too," says Booker. "We've both grown up in a more racially complex time."

Two things have happened in America that make it possible we would actually elect an African-American president. One is that white voters are casting more ballots for black candidates, all across the country. Racism lives, but it isn't what it used to be.

The other is this new generation of politicians like Obama, the senator from Illinois, and Booker, the mayor of Newark. They steer clear of ideological fights and confrontations. They focus on solving problems. They build coalitions with white and Latino politicians. And they rarely, if ever, appeal to black voters based on narrow racial interests.

"It's a co-evolution," says David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank focusing on black issues. "White voters have evolved. The other thing is, these black candidates are not your typical black candidates from the past. They have a broader message aimed at everyone. They tend to come from the best schools. And they are very nimble intellectually."

So Booker, with his law degree from Yale University, sat down last year with Obama, the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review, at the Hilton in Newark. The two didn't know each other -- it was a blind date arranged by Oprah Winfrey's best friend, Gayle King.

Booker began the breakfast as a skeptic, wondering how much substance was behind the star from Chicago. But by the time the dishes were cleared, he was converted.

"He complete disarmed me and made me an enthusiast," Booker said.

The two swapped stories that rang familiar. Obama recounted his bruising loss in a primary race against Congressman Bobby Rush, a former Black Panther who ridiculed Obama by saying Obama knew little of the black experience in America.

"Barack is a person who read about the civil rights protests and thinks he knows all about it," Rush said.

The tone had to sound familiar. During Booker's losing 2002 campaign, Mayor Sharpe James often ripped into Booker as some kind of racial heretic. "You have to learn to be African-American," James once said. "And we don't have time to train you all night."

Try to imagine Booker or Obama making that kind of ugly racial pitch, and you can see how much is changing.

Booker has mixed feelings about the older generation. He's grateful that they broke down the doors that people like Obama and him are now walking through. But the political thinking, he says, has to change with the times.

"There is no Bull Connor in our way anymore," Booker says. "But there is still child poverty. And essential to solving that kind of problem is to build broad-based coalitions. Having Barack Obama bring us all together is important for that."

Along with Booker and Obama, Bositis says, this club of newer generation of African-Americans includes people like Washington Mayor Adrien Fenty, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, former congressman Harold Ford, and Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.

"They are all very ambitious," Bositis says.

Obama perhaps the most. It is a bold act to run for president with as little experience as he has in national politics. And his soaring rhetoric is simply not matched by concrete achievements in his career.

But the point is that race is not the first concern. Yes, some white voters will reject any African-American. But Bositis, for one, thinks that will not decide the race.

And that says something important about American politics.

"Merit matters, regardless of race," Bositis says. "If you are somebody who excels at what you do, there is great potential for you to be successful."

The dinosaurs, meanwhile, are gradually giving way. When the Rev. Jesse Jackson was quoted saying that Obama needs to "stop acting like he's white," his congressman son wrote an op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times under the headline, "You're wrong on Obama, Dad."

Sharpe James, who stepped down as mayor rather than face a rematch with Booker, is now awaiting trial on corruption charges.

And Bobby Rush, who once ridiculed Obama as "an educated fool from Harvard," is now endorsing him.

Original Referenced Link

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 01/11/08 at 11:04PM
"But the point is that race is not the first concern. Yes, some white voters will reject any African-American."

This is true. I would add that some people would vote for a black candidate because he is black. I believe these two groups of voters are relatively small and would more or less cancel each other out. Most people, I believe, care more about ideas than they are given credit for. But it is ideas that are sorely lacking in American politics. By ideas, I mean discussion of broad philosophical principles that enable voters to look beyond the narrow concrete issues that a particular candidate may be advocating. Instead, mostly what we get is evasiveness, sound bites, and platitudes that mean different things (or nothing at all) to different people. The reason is hidden in the following quote from Mr. Moran's article:

"They steer clear of ideological fights and confrontations. They focus on solving problems."

"Ideological fights" are exactly what this country needs, and the voters deserve. Instead, we get pragmatic politicians who "focus on solving problems", one at a time, without considering how that problem came to be in the first place, what the long term consequences of the "solution" will be, how a particular issue relates to other issues, etc. It is only by reference to political philosophy (i.e., ideology) that one can begin to answer such broad questions.

Yet principles are what the pragmatist disdains. In order to get support for his pet program, the pragmatic politician (which most of them are) must keep the people focused narrowly on the "problem" at hand, isolated from all other considerations or related consequences. A good example of this is the current move in congress to give the Federal Communications Commission the power to regulate "obscene and violent" content in the media (Protecting Children From Indecent Programming Act). Opponents of the bill properly point out that this new FCC power is a step down the road toward the ultimate enemy of a free society, censorship. The proponents counter with charges that they are "ideologues" who support smut and violence rather than children ("children" are a favorite prop these days for power-seeking politicians). What the advocates fear, of course, is precisely what the "ideologue" stands for...a principled position that dares to focus on the "forest" (the broad picture, the consequences), not just the "tree" (the concrete issue).

Pragmatism, of course, is itself an ideology. Specifically, it is an anti-ideology ideology. Pragmatism holds that only the current facts matter, that there are no absolute principles from which one can predict the consequences of ones actions, that abstract thought is meaningless, that issues cannot be related to one another, that each concrete issue is an isolated occurrence requiring "practical" actions that "work" without regard for the broad picture. The pragmatist hates the "ideologue"...the person who holds a firm, consistent set of principles that he applies to all issues.

To see pragmatism's practical results, one need only look at the state of American health care. Today's crises (and yes, it is a crises) was a long time coming. For the past 75 years, "pragmatic" politicians piled one coercive government intrusion after another onto American medicine at the behest of pressure groups forever angling to impose one more mandate onto everyone else. It is a system where 16% of GDP ($7000 per capita!) is spent on health care, of which nearly 90% of that represents people spending other people's money. It is a system where middle class earners are forced to pay, through both direct and indirect taxation (ex., corporate taxes), for the ½ that represents government spending (that's $3500 per capita, or $14,000 for a family of 4), yet can't afford to buy his own health insurance. It is a system where many two-income families have double coverage, one from each employer, yet have virtually no say on the terms or coverage included in their policies, because those judgements have been usurped by the employer and government mandates and regulations. The name of this absurd monstrosity is our government-imposed "third party payer" system.

It is only with reference to ideology (political philosophy) that the consequences of the steady abandonment of a free market in health care over the decades could have been foreseen, and possibly avoided. Today, America is nearing the dead end...a final collapse into a government-run health care dictatorship. And most Americans have no clue how we got here, or that a free market in health care ceased to exist decades ago.

What is desperately needed today is precisely what we are unlikely to get this election year...a vigorous ideological debate on issues like the proper role of government, the nature of individual rights, and the ultimate direction each candidate wants to lead us. The choice is statism or individual freedom. It is a choice that should be presented openly to the American voter. Sadly, Americans won't get that clear choice debated by its political parties, courtesy of the "non-ideologues" on both sides of the isle. And the default drift toward statism will continue.

Other commentary:

Posted by hglindquist on 01/12/08 at 8:23AM
Well said (written?), Zemack!

While I don't think the choice is statism vs. individual freedom in starkly delineated poles ... I think it is more of a spectrum between limits ... I do believe we need the "ideological fights" based on how we define our principles.

And I hope NJ Voices continues to "grow" as a place where we can engage each other over the issues from positions of principle.

For example, I agree with blarneyboy that the family is our "societal node" (David Brooks' seedbed) for growing the new generations to maturity. But not only have we been instituting policies that are proving to be destructive of the family -- and we should be coming to grips with what constitutes a "family" if for no other reason than we should if we base society on "families" -- we are also removing MAJOR economic decision-making away from families and putting it in bureaucracies.

For example -- and as you point out on healthcare -- If we have a family of four living in, say, an Abbott school district with 2 adults and 2 public school-age children then we have $14,000 in healthcare + 2 X $17,000 or $34,000 in public education for a total of $48,000 spent on that family as dependents of government bureaucracy.

Shouldn't we at least be talking about how that affects the political process around here? I'm not even making a judgment other than to say ... shouldn't we be asking? ... like who was it that told us that democracies self-destruct when folks start voting themselves goodies from the public purse?


My commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 01/13/08 at 1:37PM
"Well said (written?), Zemack!"

Thank you, Hglindquist, for the kind words.

"And I hope NJ Voices continues to 'grow' as a place where we can engage each other over the issues from positions of principle."

This is my hope, too. And we can start with:

"...and we should be coming to grips with what constitutes a "family" if for no other reason than we should if we base society on 'families'..."

With "family" and "family values" all the rage in the political arena these days, you bring up a very important consideration. Is the family the proper base or foundation of a society? There is no doubt that it is an important institution that provides the structure for proper child rearing. But it most definitely must not be a culture's fundamental unit of value.

The proper foundation, the "base", of any society must be the individual. America was founded on this principle, the primary Enlightenment idea, which is laid out in the Declaration of Independence. There is a crucial distinction here that should be understood.

The "family", like any group (the public, race, class, etc.), is not a separate entity but merely a collection of autonomous individuals each with his own capacity for self-generated action based on his own thinking and judgement. The particular structure of a family is not inherently good or bad, but is determined by the ideas and consequent actions and interactions of its individual members, especially of the parent(s).

Is a child raised in an environment where he is taught "its so, because I said so", or "God said so", with no further explanation? Is he told to act and behave according to what is "expected" of him by the "family", or "society", or "others"? Is the child forbidden to "go away to college" because he shouldn't leave the family? Is the child pressured to pursue a career, not of his choosing, but of his father's so as to "follow in his footsteps"? Is the child expected to conform to his family's traditions and customs rather than develop his own independent thought and course? Is a child to be shunned or disowned for independent actions that "dishonor" the family? In short, is the "family" a ball-and-chain around the developing character of the child, strangling his sense of self-esteem and self-worth in its crib and thus handicapping his ability to become a productive and happy adult?

If the family were considered the basic societal unit of value (which means that its individual members are subordinate to it), then the proper answer to the above questions (and others like it) would have to be yes. If one accepts the belief in the individual as the supreme unit of value, then the answers would be a resounding no. Instead, a different family environment emerges.

The child is taught to think for himself. He is encouraged to develop and use his innate mental tools of logic. For him, the words "why", "how", and "what for" are ingrained into his mental character. Mutual respect between parent and child is encouraged, rather than blind obedience. The parent seeks to advise and steer his growing child in the right direction, to the best of his knowledge and experience, but never loses sight of the fundamental fact that he is an autonomous individual. Rules, discipline, and other parental prerogatives are ever cognizant of this. The child begins adulthood with confidence and restless anticipation for the independent course that he will pursue.

The first example is likely to produce an adult full of self-doubt, fearful of acting on his own judgement, more apt to subordinate his thinking and goals to others while simultaneously resenting and envying independent, self-confident people he may encounter. The second example is likely to result in an independent adult who regularly acts on his own judgement, who neither sees others as a threat nor uses others for his own ends...i.e. one who respects and treats others as individuals.

The value-of-the-individual principle is the guiding philosophy of my wife and I. The result is a close family (despite a distance of up to hundreds of miles between us). We have two grown independent daughters and son's-in-law, six grandchildren, and a family relationship based on mutual love and respect for each other as individuals.

There is no doubt that a complete family unit with both parents at home is an ideal situation. But that is no guarantee of good child rearing. The idea that the family is the standard of value and the base of society is a form of collectivism, which is a throwback to a primitive tribal view of man and a denial of each person's independent mind, and will produce an authoritarian family environment unconducive to proper child rearing.

It is a matter of cause and effect. A culture whose dominant ideas recognize the individual and his rights as the standard of value will produce the proper type of family environment, and consequently a just and civil society.