From the WSJ Opinion Archives
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Mrs.
Clinton Smears Ike
How desperate is Hillary Clinton in the face of the Obama juggernaut? So desperate
that she is smearing a genuine war hero. And we seem to be the first to notice
it.
The Politico's Ben Smith set off a bit of a kerfuffle yesterday when he noted that Mrs. Clinton, in an interview with Fox News's Major Garrett, seemed to be likening front-runner Barack Obama to Martin Luther King, and not in a good way:
[Mrs.] Clinton rejoined the running argument over hope and "false hope" in an interview in Dover this afternoon, reminding Fox's Major Garrett that while Martin Luther King Jr. spoke on behalf of civil rights, President Lyndon Johnson was the one who got the legislation passed. . . .
"Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act," Clinton said. "It took a president to get it done."
Josh Marshall weighed in with a halfhearted defense of Mrs. Clinton. He quotes her at length:
"I would, and I would point to the fact that that Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the President before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became real in people's lives because we had a president who said we are going to do it, and actually got it accomplished."
"It's an ambiguous statement," Marshall allows. "But her reference is to different presidents--Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, one of whom inspired but did relatively little legislatively and Johnson who did a lot legislatively, though he was rather less than inspiring. Quite apart from the merits of Obama and Clinton, it's not a bad point about Kennedy and LBJ."
Smith then defended his interpretation. What both of them missed was that passing mention about the Civil Rights Act being something "the president before had not even tried." In context, it is clear that this is a reference to the president before Kennedy--that is, Dwight Eisenhower--not to Kennedy himself, who did in fact propose civil rights legislation in 1963 but died before Congress could pass it.
This, however, is a smear against Ike, who was a much better civil-rights president than he typically gets credit for. As Bruce Bartlett explains in "Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past" (available from the OpinionJournal bookstore):
In his January 10, 1957, State of the Union Address, Eisenhower renewed his request for civil rights legislation, which had passed the House but died in the Senate in the previous Congress due to Southern Democratic delaying tactics. . . .
Everyone knew that the critical fight on the civil rights bill would be in the Senate. . . . In that body, the key figure was Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, who represented the [former] Confederate state of Texas and had been installed in his position by Southern Democrats precisely in order to block civil rights legislation. Until the 1950s, Johnson's record of opposition to all civil rights legislation was spotless. But he was ambitious and wanted to be president. . . .
After dragging his feet on the civil rights bill throughout much of 1957, Johnson finally came to the conclusion that the tide had turned in favor of civil rights and he needed to be on the right side of the issue if he hoped to become president. . . .
At the same time, the Senate's master tactician and principal opponent of the civil rights bill, Democrat Richard B. Russell of Georgia, saw the same handwriting on the wall but came to a different conclusion. He realized that the support was no longer there for an old-fashioned Democrat filibuster. . . . So Russell adopted a different strategy this time of trying to amend the civil rights bill so as to minimize its impact. Behind the scenes, Johnson went along with Russell's strategy of not killing the civil rights bill, but trying to neuter it as much as possible. . . .
Eisenhower was disappointed at not being able to produce a better piece of legislation. "I wanted a much stronger civil rights bill in '57 than I could get," he later lamented. "But the Democrats . . . wouldn't let me have it."
Liberals criticized Eisenhower for getting such a modest bill at the end of the day. But Johnson argued that it was historically important because it was the first civil rights bill to pass Congress since 1875. "Once you break virginity," he said, "it'll be easier next time."
To put it mildly, LBJ was not a consistent advocate of racial equality. Bartlett (both in his book and in this article) quotes LBJ's explanation of why he backed the Civil Rights Act of 1957:
"These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don't move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there'll be no way of stopping them, we'll lose the filibuster and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again."
You can see where Mrs. Clinton, with her finger-to-the-wind approach to some of today's most pressing issues, might feel a certain kinship with LBJ. On the other hand, it's not at all clear that LBJ's presidency was a necessary condition for the passage of the Civil Rights Act. If Richard Nixon, Eisenhower's vice president, had won the 1960 election and LBJ had remained in the Senate as majority leader, it's easy to imagine the latter--with an eye toward the presidency in 1964 or '68--shepherding the Civil Rights Act through the Senate and the former signing it.
LBJ was, after all, a very effective legislator. Can the same be said of New York's junior senator? Oddly, Mrs. Clinton has chosen to compare herself to a deeply flawed president. Odder still, the comparison ends up underscoring her failure to measure up.
Nothing
to Fear but Fear Itself?
"Barack Obama is black, and it doesn't matter," we wrote
Friday, after the Illinois senator won the Iowa caucuses. Cynthia Tucker,
the liberal editorial page editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, echoes
the point, calling Obama "a presidential candidate who happens to be black--not
a black presidential candidate." She observes: "For those of
us eager for America to grow into a mature accommodation with its racial diversity,
that's refreshing, hopeful, reinvigorating."
But then she writes this:
For their part, white voters contend they are willing to consider a "qualified" black candidate for president. According to Pew Center researchers, a review of exit polls and electoral outcomes in recent elections featuring black candidates running against whites "suggests that fewer people are making judgments about candidates based solely, or even mostly, on race." Perhaps so. But even as white voters profess themselves colorblind to pollsters, they whisper a worrisome fear that neighbors or people they know still harbor prejudices that might preclude voting for a black presidential candidate. Hmmm.
Tucker is certainly right to observe that some whites think that other whites would not vote for a black candidate on account of his race. We cited a comment to that effect from one of our own friends in that Friday item. But is it true? Obama's success in Iowa--and, we're guessing, in New Hampshire--suggests not.
What Tucker is describing here is actually a liberal stereotype of white Americans--one that, by the way, is flattering to white liberals, who fancy themselves more enlightened than the typical person of pallor. Although we have our misgivings about Obama, his success will be a blessing inasmuch as it shows that this stereotype is about 40 years out of date.
The
Audacity of Hype
The disinhibiting effect of online communications is, as has often been noted,
far from an unmixed blessing. It promotes vicious expressions of rage and hate--and,
as it turns out, it also promotes the opposite: expressions of over-the-top,
emetic enthusiasm. This is one of the downsides of Barack Obama's success.
Here's a much-remarked-upon passage from left-liberal youngster Ezra Klein of The American Prospect:
Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I've heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.
National Review's Andrew Stuttaford gets a hat tip for spotlighting this, and blogger Jon Henke for noting what Klein wrote about an earlier political speech:
Stunning. He did it. I didn't think he could, not after Obama and Clinton and Edwards and Cleland. But he did it. He gave the perfect speech for this moment, for this race, for this crowd. He couldn't rely on his charisma and so he instead told the country where it needed to go. He couldn't do flash so he did substance . . . and he did it. There's nothing I can say beyond that. . . . I'm sorry . . . I just don't have the words for it. I'm inspired. I'd forgot what this felt like.
Believe it or not, that what what Klein said about John Kerry's 2004 convention speech! So he's a cheap date.
But then there's this, from Salon's Gary Kamiya:
Obama's Iowa victory was one of those rare moments when an abstraction becomes real. In "Areopagitica," John Milton wrote, "Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks." In Iowa, we witnessed the shaking of those locks. Like one of those miraculous reversals in one of Shakespeare's late plays, when a statue suddenly comes to life after standing motionless for years, Obama's victory seemed almost otherworldly--as if the laws of space and time had been suspended, and a quality as evanescent and fragile as hope had suddenly become real.
I am not a religious person, but it was hard not to feel that his triumph vindicated the essence of what I think of as the secular essence of religion, something even nonbelievers can believe in: the possibility of inner transformation. A transformation at once personal and national.
Hoo boy. Maybe if Kamiya were a religious person, he would be a little more skeptical.
Curb Your Enthusiasm
- "I want to make change, but I've already made change. I will continue to
make change. I'm not just running on a promise of change. I'm running on 35
years of change. I'm running on having taken on the drug companies and the
health insurance companies, taking on the oil companies. So, you know, I think
it is clear that what we need is somebody who can deliver change. And we don't
need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered.
The best way to know what change I will produce is to look at the changes
that I've already made."--Hillary
Clinton, Jan. 5, 2008
- Woody: "I believe I was elected to the city council as an agent
of change, and I fully intend to live up to that pledge. I will make change."
Frasier: "No, change 'change' to 'a change.' " Woody:
"What?" Frasier: "No, see in here, you make change.
There you make a change, so just make the change--change 'make change' to
'make a change'--OH, JUST CHANGE IT!!" [storms out of the bar] Woody:
"I think I see why Dr. Crane never cures anybody."--dialogue from
"Cheers,"
May 20, 1993
- "Aren't you tired of the old? Don't you want to put on some clean clothes? Voting for Hillary would be like doing 'Frasier' again on TV. Don't you want something fresh, new and creative?"--"Seinfeld" Creator Larry David, quoted by Puffington Host postess Arianna Huffington, Jan. 8
Life Imitates the Onion
- "No One Notices Area Man's Marginal Attempts to Change"--headline,
Onion,
June 16, 2004
- "Christensen Promises 'Big Change' "--headline, Paris (Texas) News, Jan. 7, 2008
We
Blame Global Warming
"Justices Chilly to Bid to Alter Death Penalty"--headline, New York
Times, Jan. 8
The
Mullahs Are Stoners in More Ways Than One
"Iran High on Bush Mideast Trip"--headline, Associated Press, Jan. 7
Too
Much Information
"Critics Have a Thing for Old Men"--headline, E! News, Jan. 7
Someone
Set Up Us the Bomb
"Trojans Arrive at Meet Part of Schedule"--headline, Los Angeles Times,
Jan. 7
Breaking
News From 1861
"Jeff Davis Appoints Supervisor"--headline, Hattiesburg (Miss.) American,
Jan. 7
Breaking
News From 1979
"Georgian Leader Wants Better Ties With Russia"--headline, Reuters,
Jan. 7
News You Can Use
- "Girls Who Feel Unpopular May Gain Weight"--headline, Associated
Press, Jan. 7
- "Dearly Departed Encouraged to Do Their Bit on Global Warming"--headline,
Times
(London), Jan. 8
- "Drinking and Cursing at Cops Doesn't Mix"--headline, Journal News (White Plains, N.Y.), Jan. 8
Bottom Stories of the Day
- "Letterman Loses Strike-Inspired Beard"--headline, Associated
Press, Jan. 8
- "Jet Hits Coyote at Oregon Airport; Coyote Dies"--headline, Associated
Press, Jan. 8
- "AP Exclusive: Allen Says He Won't Run for VA Governor"--headline,
Associated
Press, Jan. 8
- "Huckabee Woos Voter With Coffee"--headline, Associated Press, Jan. 8
Red
Alert
Ron Paul may be a fringe candidate in the U.S., but he's very popular in at
least one foreign locale, reports the Tiraspol (Moldova) Times:
If Transdniestria could vote in the U.S. Presidential election, Ron Paul would win. So says local journalist Roman Konoplev, editor-in-chief of news agency Lenta PMR, after polling voters and publishing a comparative analysis of the candidate's foreign policy positions.
Paul, a ten-term Congressman from Texas, is seeking the Republican Party's nomination for the U.S. Presidency on a platform of a non-interventionist foreign policy which respects democracy and the right to self-determination.
"What this means, for us, is that he will not make it U.S. policy to oppose our freedom and independence," says Roman Konoplev. "Instead, the issue will be decided strictly on the basis of legal principles. And according to international law, we have the same right to independent statehood as our two neighbors, Moldova and Ukraine, and as a number of other countries which also declared independence in the breakup of the Soviet Union nearly twenty years ago."
Transdniestria, also spelled Transnistria, is part of Moldova but exercises de facto independence. In a 1997 news article, The Wall Street Journal described the place:
Here Lenin is venerated, journalists are muzzled, dissidents are jailed and history is invented. Run by a crowd of unrepentant Communists led by Lenin-look-alike Igor Smirnov, Transnistria is a haven for arms smugglers, money launderers and outlaws on the lam. It has only 750,000 people, but has become an outsized irritant to international efforts to pacify and rebuild its troubled region. . . .
"It's as if a tiny terrorist group took over part of the U.S.," says Charles King, a political scientist at Georgetown University.
Maybe Paul should move there and run for office. Sounds as though he'd be an improvement.
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Adam Phillips, Steve Karass, Joel Goldberg, Boze Herrington, Charlie Banks, Aaron Cummins, George Struve, David Kimmelman, Michael Segal, Mordecai Bobrowsky, Alan Utter, Chris Leonard, Lewis Sckolnick, John Williamson, John Hoh, Paul Wicht, Lou Nihoul, Bill Schweber and Aaron Ammerman. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: Democrats in denial: The presidential candidates won't admit any Iraq surge success.
- Bret Stephens: Barack Obama shows why foreigners consider us naive.
- Fouad Ajami: This U.S. president is the most consequential the Middle East has ever seen.
