Sunday, June 5, 2011

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Real Political Courage

Katrina vanden Heuvel

Katrina vanden Heuvel

Opinion Writer and Editor of The Nation

Real political courage

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/real-political-courage/2011/05/30/AGnbNSFH_story.html

 

Real Political Courage

 

by Katrina vanden Heuvel (Editor, The Nation)

Washington Post June 1, 2011

 

 

In August of 1964, President Johnson went to Congress to ask

for sweeping authority to conduct military action in

Vietnam. The "Gulf of Tonkin Resolution," as this authority

was called, would give the president broad power to engage

in a war of any size, for any length of time, without the

need for a formal declaration of war from Congress. It was

popular within Congress and throughout the country, and

Johnson rightly expected it to pass without much opposition.

 

Out of that uncritical unity, Sen. Wayne Morse (D-Ore.) and

Ernest Gruening (D-Alaska) rose to give a scathing and

extraordinarily prescient critique of the resolution, and of

our involvement in Vietnam. "Mr. President," said Morse, on

the Senate floor, "criticism has not prevented, and will not

prevent, me from saying that, in my judgment, we cannot

justify the shedding of American blood in that kind of war

in southeast Asia. I do not believe that any number of

American conventional forces in South Vietnam .?.?. can win

a war, if the test of winning a war is establishing peace."

He called the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution "an undated

declaration of war" and urged his colleagues to join him in

opposing it.

 

They did not. Ninety-eight senators voted in support of the

resolution. Only Morse and Gruening (who had been a longtime

editor at the Nation) opposed it. Four years later, Morse's

opposition to the war would become the central issue in his

reelection campaign, a campaign he would lose by just half a

percent of the vote. Gruening was defeated that same year in

a Democratic primary.

 

There was a time when this is how we defined political

courage in America: a politician standing up for deeply held

principles, in opposition to his party and a popular

president, regardless of consequence. But today, we have

adopted a new and distorted definition of political courage,

one that rewards those who claim to be making hard choices,

when in truth there is nothing hard about what they've

chosen.

 

Case in point: Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). Ryan has been called

courageous, a hero of sorts, by members of his party, by

members of the media and even by some Democrats. And what is

it that Ryan so bravely did in order to receive the outsized

praise heaped upon him these past two months?

 

He proposed a federal budget that, in every respect,

articulated extremist Republican ideology. He balanced the

budget using faulty assumptions that no respected economist

outside the Heritage Foundation has called reasonable. And

he did it by slashing health-care benefits for the elderly

and the poor, for children and the disabled, all while

giving $4 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.

For this, he has become a hero within his own party (someone

Dick Cheney claims to "worship"), even though he made his

proposal from a perfectly safe congressional district, where

he has no reason to expect political consequences at the

ballot box. While his proposal may cost his party control of

Congress, it will cost him nothing.

 

Despite the pomp and circumstance, despite the laudatory

columns and glowing testimony from D.C. elites, what Ryan

did is not, nor will it ever be, a true measure of political

courage.

 

Real political courage means bucking party orthodoxy when

the leadership has strayed. It could be seen in Russ

Feingold's vocal opposition to the Patriot Act and the bank

bailouts, or in John McCain's scathing critique of those in

his party who advocate torture. It could be seen in Gary

Johnson's impassioned plea to end the war on drugs or in his

support for gay marriage, which he calls a "civil rights

issue." It can be seen in Dennis Kucinich's demands that

President Obama seek authorization for military efforts in

Libya. And it could be seen in Rep. Barbara Lee's brave

decision to stand alone, among both parties and both houses

of Congress, as the sole vote against the far-reaching

Authorization for Use of Military Force in the aftermath of

Sept. 11.

 

Real political courage also means standing up for those

whose voices carry least in Washington, not for those who

least need a voice. Such courage can be seen today in the

House Progressive Caucus's attempt to pass "The People's

Budget," a budget that will create jobs and economic growth

and will bring down deficits, not by stripping benefits from

the poor and middle class, but by making the wealthiest

Americans pay their fair share of taxes.

 

And political courage means a willingness to sacrifice for

the sake of principle, to put the obligations of office

ahead of reelection to office. That could be seen on full

display last March, when members of Congress such as Betsy

Markey (D-Colo.), Tim Bishop (D- N.Y.) and Tom Perriello (D-

Va.) voted to extend health- care access to 30 million

people, knowing that it would almost certainly lead to their

defeat (as it did) in the fall.

 

That is what true political courage looks like. But too

often, too much of the media fails to portray it that way.

John McCain is more likely to be called courageous for his

vote for the Ryan budget than for his stance against

torture. He's more likely to be called courageous for

standing with his party than for breaking with it. The

Progressive Caucus was not called brave for defending the

poorest among us; they were virtually ignored. Russ Feingold

was not called brave for being one of the few Democrats to

stand up to a popular president, in opposition to the

Patriot Act; he was called brazen.

 

If we applaud false courage, we'll only get more of it, and

less of the real thing, at a time when we need real courage

more than ever. Solving this problem, then, must be a shared

responsibility. It is the media's obligation, as much as it

is our own as citizens, to highlight genuine political

courage for what it is, and to reject Ryan-style courage for

what it isn't.

 

c The Washington Post Company

 

___________________________________________

 

Portside aims to provide material of interest to people

on the left that will help them to interpret the world

and to change it.

 

Submit via email: portside@portside.org

 

Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3

 

Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq

 

Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe

 

Search Portside archives: http://portside.org/archive

 

Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate

 

 

-----

No virus found in this message.

Checked by AVG - www.avg.com

Version: 10.0.1375 / Virus Database: 1509/3676 - Release Date: 06/02/11

No comments:

Post a Comment