Actions Speak Louder

A column on SFGate today by Harley Sorensen got me thinking about what it is that we who identify as liberals or progressives or even just Democrats stand for, and what we expect from our leaders, regardless of what party they belong to. The column is about the inauguration, and what puffery and lack of substance it exemplified, but this particular passage really caught my eye and sent me off on a bit of a tangent:

"Today's conservatives think that liberals dislike Bush simply because Bush is a conservative. That's utter nonsense. During the Vietnam War, President Lyndon Johnson was vilified by the Left, by liberals, by Democrats far more than Bush is vilified by that same crew today.

"It's not the label, folks. It's what they do."

That's exactly right. I vividly recall marching in the late '60s and hearing the chant "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" Johnson was Enemy Number One to the anti-war protesters back then, so much so that he refused to run for another term in 1968. Indeed, one could argue that the vilification of Johnson by the left helped lead directly to the election of Richard Nixon that year. What stands out to me now is that political activism then was more about what politicians actually did, rather than which party's hat they wore. Those of us who were against the Vietnam War had no problem condemning politicians who supported it, be they Democrat, Republican or Whig. It didn't matter -- if you were for the war, we were against you. I remember, in fact, that there were a number of principled Republican politicians in those days (yes, yes, I know that's an oxymoron today, but trust me, they did exist at one time) who opposed the war, and they were embraced by the protesters. If I recall correctly, they included Mark O. Hatfield, Jacob Javits, George Romney and Nelson Rockefeller, to name a few. They had the courage to stand up to their party and to the hawks of the time who wanted to nuke Vietnam back to the Stone Age and say no, this is not right.

Just try finding men and women like that today. Just try to find a politician who speaks from principle and who exhibits courage and honesty and gumption. (Hello Barbaras Lee and Boxer!)

Imagine, then, if you will, what the reaction today of people who grew up believing in principle and courage and honesty -- regardless of party affiliation -- must be to a president who shows absolutely no trace of any of these characteristics. Now think of the hypocrisy, the partisanship, the ideological extremism and the pure cognitive dissonance it must take for people who claim to be principled and courageous and honest to put up with the actions of the man in the White House today. A man who has lied repeatedly, who has sacrificed the lives of thousands of young men and women for nothing, who has shown himself to be singularly unqualified to lead this country or any other. One wonders how these people sleep at night, knowing that they are responsible for Abu Ghraib, for Fallujah and Guantanamo, for the many, many scandals that have been uncovered and the extremist policies being pursued even now, thanks to their blind, unquestioning loyalty to the Republican Party. To these people, it isn't about what a politician does, it's all about who he or she says s/he is, and what party he or she represents.

There is something to this in regards to political and judicial appointees like Little Elian Alberto VO5 Gonzales, Janice Brown and Condi Rice as well. So many wingers accuse those who oppose these extremist nominations of racism, of not wanting Hispanic or African-American candidates to succeed unless they toe a liberal party line, but what they fail to see is that it's all about the actions, the records, the paper trail that these ideologues bring with them. We oppose the nominations of these folks, and many like them, not because of the color of their skin, but because of the content of their character. Because, for us, it isn't about what party or ideology they identify with, it's all about what they do.