- The best thing John Kerry did at the Democratic convention
was to challenge the bullying. He talked of the flag belonging to all of
us, and how "standing up to speak our minds is not a challenge to
patriotism [but] the heart and soul of patriotism." By doing this,
he drew the line against the pattern of intimidation that the Bush administration
has used to wage war on democracy itself.
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- A former Air Force colonel I know described the administration's
attitude toward dissent as "shut up and color," as if we were
unruly eight-year-olds. Whatever we may think of Bush's particular policies,
the most dangerous thing he's done is to promote a culture that equates
questioning with treason. This threatens the very dialogue that's at the
core of our republic.
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- Think of the eve of the Iraq war, and the contempt heaped
on those generals who dared to suggest that the war might take far more
troops and money than the administration was suggesting. Think of the attacks
on the reputations and motives of longtime Republicans who've recently
dared to question, like national security advisor Richard Clarke, Ambassador
Joseph Wilson, weapons inspector Scott Ritter, and Bush's own former Treasury
Secretary, Paul O'Neill. Think of the Republican TV ads, the 2000 Georgia
Senate race"which paired Democratic Sen. Max Cleland with Osama bin
Laden and Saddam Hussein"asserting that because Cleland opposed President
Bush's Homeland Security bill, he lacked "the courage to lead."
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- In this last case, it didn't matter that Cleland had
lost two legs and an arm in Vietnam, while the Republican who eventually
defeated him had never worn a uniform. Nor that Republican strategists
nearly defeated South Dakota Sen. Tim Johnson in the same election, with
similar ads, although Johnson was the only person in Congress whose child
was actually serving with the U.S. military"and would see active duty
in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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- It's hard to talk about such intimidation without sounding
partisan or shrill, but we need to make it a central issue, because if
it succeeds, it becomes impossible to discuss any other issues. Remember
after the 9/11 attacks, when Attorney General John Ashcroft publicly declared
that anyone who disagreed with administration policy was an ally of terrorism.
We were still stunned and reeling at that point. Yet Democrats and honorable
Republicans should have had the courage to say that this definition was
unacceptable. Instead they capitulated to the tactics of Republican strategists
like Grover Norquist, who proudly quotes Lenin's motto, "Probe with
bayonets, looking for weakness." And a message of intimidation has
dominated since, amplified through the endless echo chamber of O'Reilly,
Rush, Hannity and Drudge.
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- Some who've embraced this approach believe they're on
a divinely sanctioned crusade. Others simply love the game" like Karl
Rove, who got his start by destroying the reputation of a fellow contender
to head the national Young Republicans, and helped Bush first take office
by spreading rumors that then-Texas governor Ann Richards was a lesbian.
My friend Egil Krogh"who worked in the Nixon administration, hired
G. Gordon Liddy, and went to prison for Watergate"did things he knew
were morally wrong, wanting to be loyal. He watched Nixon's administration
frame everything in terms of national security, then identify that security
as whatever consolidated their power, while branding those who challenged
them as traitors. Bush's administration, to Krogh, seems even more ruthless.
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- The resulting rule of intimidation and manipulation grinds
into the dust traditional conservative ethics of honesty and fair play.
In the 2000 election, while the Florida ballots were still being counted,
a mob of a couple hundred people, pounding on doors and windows, succeeded
in permanently stopping a count of 10,000 Miami-Dade County ballots that
were expected to favor Al Gore. As The Wall Street Journal reported, this
mob was made up largely of Republican Congressional aides, organized by
future House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and flown in by the Bush campaign.
In a tight 2002 race for the New Hampshire Senate seat that Republican
John Sununu eventually won, a Virginia-based campaign consultant group,
GOP Marketplace, hired an Idaho telemarketing firm to jam the phone lines
of Democratic "get- out-the-vote" call centers. More recently,
Michigan and Oregon Republicans have gone all out to get Ralph Nader on
the ballot, to siphon off votes from John Kerry.
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- The United States is an experiment, one whose outcome
can be in doubt on any given day. But when our leaders embrace the ethics
of Don Corleone, they undermine the very terms of our democracy. Go back
to Richard Nixon's "Southern strategy," where he deliberately
used racially polarizing language and images to lure white southerners
into the Republican Party. Or the Willie Horton ads overseen by Karl Rove's
mentor, Lee Atwater. Or the Iran-Contra scandal, when the first President
Bush and key members of the current president's administration, then working
for Reagan, crafted and enacted secret foreign policies that defied the
will of Congress"while collaborating with dictators and terrorists.
Or the illegitimate purging, in the 2000 election, of 94,000 largely poor
and minority voters from the Florida rolls. Recently, the same five Supreme
Court justices who installed Bush prevailed by a single vote in upholding
Tom DeLay's midnight redistricting in Texas and Pennsylvania"where
Republicans broke all conventional rules about redistricting only after
a census, and instead gerrymandered as many Congressional seats as they
could, just because they held the reins of power.
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- Whatever our party identifications or stands on particular
issues"which, of course, will vary"we should be profoundly troubled
by these developments. Since the United States was founded, neither major
political party has exercised a monopoly on deceit, venality or political
abuse. Dead people voted in Chicago. Lyndon Johnson closed an air base
in a Congressional district that dared to vote against him. No administration
since the World War I Palmer Raids, however, has so systematically attempted
to silence its critics.
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- But just as a culture of silence is contagious, so is
one of courage. And citizens are beginning to stand up and question"from
Republican conservationists questioning Bush's environmental policies,
to career foreign service officers decrying the rift our unilateral actions
are creating between us and the world, to cities across America challenging
the USA PATRIOT Act.
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- The challenge now is to make the issue of bullying the
central theme of the election, linking the intimidation of all questioners
with the blind insularity that leads to debacles like Iraq. If we can do
this, Bush will lose. As old-fashioned as it may sound, the demand that
our political leaders play fair still resonates. And in a democracy, we
should expect nothing less.
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- Copyright 2004 by PENN LLC. All rights reserved. Feel
free to forward this, in its entirety, to others.
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