Your ideological opponents aren’t all bad. Sometimes they might even have an idea or two.
It must have been June or July 1972. On a beautiful summer’s evening in Iowa, I was playing shortstop for the local high school team. In those days, small-town summer baseball was big, and we were taking on our arch-rivals.
I was a 16-year-old with barely a clue, but the world of politics had already begun to intrigue me — even as I crouched in the on-deck circle. So when I looked in the stands and spotted my chemistry teacher, I blurted out, “Are you getting ready to vote for McGovern?”
A wry smile came over his face, and he quickly responded, “Not until fall.” It must have been that guaranteed annual income ‘ol George was peddling.
Mr. Botton provided my first encounter with such a political enigma. I was already a “righty.” He was a “lefty.” But we shared passions for baseball and coffee. He’d bring his thermos to the lab. I’d find it (usually by the radio if a game was on) and pour myself a cup.
I liked him.
But how could he possibly vote for George McGovern?
As it turned out, Mr. Botton (and a few other members of the NEA), were about the only ones who pulled the lever for the South Dakota liberal. McGovern managed only 17 electoral votes in 1972, losing in a landslide to Richard Nixon. Decades later, the senator and I would share some laughs about the craziness of the campaign (actor Warren Beatty purportedly took over at one point) during several interviews on my radio program.
It was during one of these conversations — with the faded memory of that chemistry teacher lodged somewhere in the back of my mind — that it dawned on me:
Not all liberals are bad people.
This sort of an epiphany might seem odd to the casual reader, but the blind tribalism that has consumed both political parties has taken a toll. The high-tech lynching, as Peggy Noonan puts it, of Shirley Sherrod is merely the latest example of a relentless rush to judgment by those who view politics through the priam of party.
Perhaps I’m going a bit wobbly with age, but demonizing every aspect of the opposition (right down to their personal habits) makes it nearly impossible to agree with them should they happen to be right on an issue or two.
Don’t get me wrong. I happen to believe that most of what liberalism stands for is bad for America. No doubt there are a few left-wingers out there so utterly lacking in decency that they deserve as much opprobrium as talk radio can muster (I’ve read their blogs and received their hate mail).
But George McGovern, especially in the twilight of his years, reminds me once again of the open-minded liberal. He and others like him also remind me why it’s foolish for dogmatic conservatives to dismiss them.
In fact, they actually call to mind the unconventional conservatism of the late William F. Buckley Jr. Buckley once famously sailed into international waters to see what all the fuss was about marijuana; he would later conclude the war on drugs wasn’t worth the cost.
Granted, by the early 1970s it didn’t take a lot of courage to criticize the Vietnam War, but pressure from the likes of McGovern, as well as Eugene McCarthy, would eventually allow Nixon to withdraw from Vietnam. And make no mistake, that’s what “Peace with Honor” was. Saigon in April 1975 proved that.
My heart still says Barry Goldwater was right about Southeast Asia, but as long as we were still in the throes of McNamara’s War, McGovern’s call to “Come Home, America” was equally as farsighted. Today, McGovern’s apostasies include taking on his party’s economic orthodoxy. After the struggles of a failed business venture, he now routinely chides Democrats for their unrelenting loyalty to government regulations, big labor and the trial bar.
Good thing George isn’t running for anything, because failing to tow the party line — either party line — can be downright dangerous these days. Just ask Michael Steele. The RNC chairman got into some hot water not long ago for stating the obvious. At a fundraiser in Connecticut, Steele asserted that Afghanistan was a “war of Obama’s choosing” — that it was something the United States had not “actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in,” because the last thing you want is a “land war in Afghanistan.”
In a flash of predictable hypocrisy, Democrats quickly came to the defense of the man they elected to end such wars — apparently forgetting why Afghanistan is called the “graveyard of empires.” But it was the remarkable reaction from Republicans, including calls for Steele’s head, that has put the RNC chairman’s job in jeopardy.
Why is it that conservatives, most of whom don’t trust government, simply discard that healthy skepticism when it comes to war and foreign policy? The same bureaucratic incompetence so evident in the failed stimulus plan may also be planning the next war front. There’s no innate reason to believe that Washington’s foreign policy is any better than its economic policy.
Yet far too many Republicans check their limited-government credentials at the door when it comes to the war on terror. They would rather blast President Obama for using a teleprompter (Reagan had 3-by-5 cards) than criticize those in their own party who may be turning American foreign policy into a recruiting tool for our enemies.
Notable conservatives such as Noonan, George Will and the late Bob Novak have all questioned the wisdom of this military adventurism. I doubt whether George McGovern would stand for it either.
Silencing Steele not only lets Obama (and Al Franken) off the hook, but also tells the independent voter that the GOP can be just as intolerant of independent thought as the Democrats.
Published in the Star Tribune, July 29, 2010
