Originally published November 6, 1992, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #990
First, an appreciation to Don and Maggie, who cut me some slack with the deadline on this column since I wanted to see Thursday’s presidential debate before I wrote it.
Second, an appreciation to the readers who tolerate my occasional semi-informed blathering on politics on the assumption that, well, I seem to think it’s important, and you can hope that I’ll write about something more entertaining next week. My feeling is that there’s no reason to assume that the readership of CBG is particularly immune from the statistics that report a relatively small percentage of citizens exercising their right to vote.
And if this column really does have any influence, as some claim, and I can influence anyone to get involved in the real world in general and elections in particular, then I’ll be satisfied.
Well, OK, not satisfied. I’m never satisfied. I’ll be off cranking about something else once the election is done–but this will be, at least, the last column on politics and/or world issues for a while.
I had been planning to write about the debate today, but as of this writing, I don’t see that there’s much to say. The way I see it, all three candidates won and none of them won. Because in these debates, there’s two ways you win: (A) You don’t screw up so badly that it costs you votes and (B) You are so clear-cut superior to the others that you either sway people over to you or get people to make up their minds in your favor.
As far as (A), none of them bungled badly. Indeed, Bush seems to have eliminated much of the mangled syntax that characterized him in the past (except for one or two slips I noticed). Clinton actually seemed more personable than previously. And Perot–well, it’s just personal, but to me, he’s folksy to the point of distraction. But nobody pulled a major gaffe.
In terms of (B), while I’m sure that everyone who was predisposed towards their candidate was happy with how their man did, it’s my pure gut feeling that undecided or committed-otherwise viewers would not have been struck with an “Ah-ha” bolt from the blue and made their decision based on the debate.
This was unlike the vice-presidential debate, which was entered into with Dan Quayle perceived as the underdog. This was either because he had “only” a public school education (he was joking, but public education officials weren’t laughing) or because, according to Al Gore’s representatives, the public had such low expectations of him that, if he remembered his own name and didn’t fall off the lectern, viewers would be saying, “Well, he didn’t do so bad.” Which is exactly what happened.
However, in this, my very last (swear to God) column about politics for a really long time, I thought I’d run the following just-received letter from Keith Howell, Creative Services Director of the Temple Daily Telegram. I’ve taken the liberty of lettering sections to make responding at the end easier:
Before I get into this letter, please let me preface by telling you that none of this is written with a mean-spirited attitude. I find your comics, your novels, and particularly to be exceptional in quality and content. Because of your past ability to present your thoughts effectively, coherently, and intelligently, I was somewhat dismayed by some of your apparently insufficiently researched statements in your Oct. 15, 1992, column concerning Dan Quayle and the current presidential administration. I will attempt to address each point as succinctly as I can and I ask that you please do not tune me out before you have even started. I believe my points to be valid and I would appreciate your attentive regard and possible consideration.
(A) “Unwilling to support something even so fundamental as the Family Leave Bill (a bill which would have guaranteed unpaid leave for people with newborn, newly adopted, or sick children, something which already is commonplace in many other countries), the Bush Administration is instead playing a game of misdirection.”
Look, the reason the Bush Administration does not support the Family Leave Bill is because it is bad law, plain and simple. Family Leave, sure, is a humane and desired benefit but it is not a right, it is a privilege, and the government has no business butting into business practices with a piece of legislation as inanely written as this.
And in response to the oft-heard argument that “over 70 countries already have Family Leave laws, why not us?” I must say “If everyone else jumped off a cliff into the rocks below, would you jump?” I don’t think so.
(B) “Members of the current administration find fault everywhere but in themselves.”
You bet; they are politicians. There is nothing wrong with that. Look at Clinton: he finds fault in the administration for everything. Both positions are ridiculous. Both positions are political. That is just part of the game.
(C) “It worked four years ago, when the pledge of allegiance and Willie Horton managed to draw attention away from the excesses of Reaganomics.”
The Democrats were the first to bring up Willie Horton during the primaries. He was mentioned in two ads broadcast just a couple of times and only then on the East Coast. He was barely mentioned again by the GOP, but the media kept old Willie in the public eye throughout the rest of the campaign and they have been trying to blame that whole fiasco on Bush all this time, when it was their own fault because they made him an issue.
(D) “The thing is, the morale of many families is, indeed, very low. So is the morale of the country. Any thinking person would be inclined to chalk that up to lack of leadership.”
I don’t know. I consider myself to be a thinking person and I don’t find a correlation between the low morale of families and lack of leadership in the current administration. The decay of morale in the family can traced to an obvious starting point–the beginning of the welfare state as put forth by Franklin Roosevelt and furthered by each successive President, especially Lyndon Johnson. Nobody at that time could have realized how it was going to spiral out of control to the point it is now. Now we have created a societal “Catch-22” in which I and, I believe, both sides of government have not the foggiest idea how to fix. Lack of leadership is not exemplified by the declining morals and morale of this country. Lack of leadership would have been exemplified, if Bush had not been able to rally people behind him during the Gulf War. This was an example of true leadership, and the opinion-controllers (read media) have viciously torn into him ever since in a conscious effort to undermine the confidence the people had in Bush as a leader. And they are succeeding.
(E) “He (Quayle) had never even seen Murphy Brown before he attacked it.”
I’ve never seen Deep Throat, but I know the content and what it was trying to accomplish enough to use it as an example of the abuse of the Freedom of Speech Amendment to the Constitution.
(F) “This despite the fact that the most reasonable inference to be drawn from his remarks four months ago is that women who elect to have a child solo ought to have scarlet letters stitched on their clothes.”
“His claim now is that he was attacking absentee fathers–which is just dandy, except he never made any mention of the absentee father of Murphy’s son. He attacked Murph.”
Excuse me, but have you read Dan Quayle’s speech? I don’t think you have or you could not have written what I just quoted. Read this extensive excerpt; it speaks much better than anything I could say to try and defend Quayle’s position:
…right now, the failure of our families is hurting America deeply. When families fail, society fails. The anarchy and lack of structure in our inner cities are testament to how quickly civilization falls apart when the family foundation cracks. Children need love and discipline. They need mothers and fathers. A welfare check is not a husband. The state is not a father. It is from parents that children learn how to behave in society; it is from parents above all that children come to understand values and themselves as men and women, mothers and fathers.
And for those concerned about children growing up in poverty, we should know this: marriage is probably the best anti-poverty program of all. Among families headed by married couples today, there is a poverty rate of 5.7%. But 33.4% of families headed by a single mother are in poverty today.
Nature abhors a vacuum. Where there are no mature, responsible men around to teach boys how to be good men, gangs serve in their place. In fact; gangs have become a surrogate family for much of a generation of inner-city boys. I recently visited with some former gang members in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In a private meeting, they told me why they had joined gangs. These teenage boys said that gangs gave them a sense of security. They made them feel wanted, and useful. They got support from their friends. And, they said, “It was like having a family.” “Like family”–unfortunately, that says it all.
The system perpetuates itself as these young men father children’ whom they have no intention of caring for, by women whose welfare checks support them. Teenage girls, mired in the same hopelessness, lack sufficient motive to say no to this trap.
Answers to our problems won’t be easy.
We can start by dismantling a welfare system that encourages dependency and subsidizes broken families. We can attach conditions–such as school attendance, or work–to welfare. We can limit the time a recipient gets benefits. We can stop penalizing marriage for welfare mothers. We can enforce child support payments.
Ultimately, however, marriage is a moral issue that requires cultural consensus, and the use of social sanctions. Bearing babies irresponsibly is, simply, wrong. Failing to support children one has fathered is wrong. We must be unequivocal about this.
It doesn’t help matters when prime time TV has Murphy Brown–a character who supposedly epitomizes today’s intelligent, highly paid, professional women–mocking the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another “lifestyle choice.”
I know it is not fashionable to talk about moral values, but we need to do it. Even though our cultural leaders in Hollywood; network TV, the national newspapers routinely jeer at them, I think that most of us in , this room know that some things are good, and other things are wrong. Now it’s time to make the discussion public.
It’s time to talk again about family, hard work, integrity and personal responsibility. We cannot be embarrassed out of our belief that two parents, married to each other, are better in most cases for children than one. That honest work is better than hand-outs–or crime. That we are our brothers’ keepers. That it’s worth making an effort, even when the rewards aren’t immediate.
(G) “I think he (Quayle) believes women should have the right to choose abortion–Hëll, I know he believes that.”
I agree. Dan Quayle believes every woman has the right to choose to have an abortion or not. But that doesn’t mean he believes it should be legal or supported with government funds. When he said he would support his daughter if she chose to have an abortion, he said what any good, loving father should. Even if she underwent an illegal abortion and was being tried for breaking the law, he would support her but would never approve of her action. You see, the beauty of this country is that everyone has the right to choose to do anything they want to but they may have to suffer whatever consequences are the result, including incarceration. Let me illustrate: My daughter has the “right to choose” to shoot her boyfriend’s head off if she wants. If she follows through with that decision, I would still love her with all my heart and I would stand by her throughout it all. I would arrange the best defense my money could buy and I would try like Hëll to keep her out of prison. All because she is my daughter! Would I ever, ever approve of her decision? No. Would it tear my heart out that she did what she did? Yes. Would I ever feel good about what she did? No. But I would always be there for her–that is the unconditional love of a parent for his child. That is what Dan Quayle feels for his daughter.
(H) “And someone somewhere said, “We gotta do something about this. We have to convince the American public that Dan Quayle can kick butt and take names.” Which is why the whole thing reminds me of Green Arrow–and I think that’s what we’re seeing now with Quayle.”
Bull. When you have time (which I doubt you do, so let me restate)–if you ever have the time to access some of his speeches from his time in the Senate, you will see that he was always a firebrand who could “kick butt” better than most. Your comparison with Green Arrow is a misfire on one level because Green Arrow was given a personality, but someone somewhere decided four years ago decided to remove Quayle’s personality. Why? I don’t know. But now someone has recently decided to take a hands-off approach to Dan Quayle and he is “kicking butt” and the media cannot stand it.
If I have made any erroneous points I welcome your response. I know But I Digress is your column and you have the right to say whatever you want, but I do not enjoy reading misrepresentations or misconceptions especially in regards to important individuals such as the President and Vice-President. You have the right to disagree with them on any issue, but I feel it is irresponsible to misrepresent anyone’s positions or statements to make a biased point. If your position cannot stand substantively against the contrary position, perhaps it is time to reevaluate your own position.
It’s possible.
While I very much appreciate the thought and effort you’ve put into your letter, it seems to me that–for the purpose of defending the administration–you’ve structured your logic to suit your immediate needs in each instance. Consequently, you contradict yourself. And your reading of motivations and actions are somewhat different than mine–although I will freely admit that that is doubtlessly shaped as a result of partisan lines. I’ll try my best to be succinct on each point so we don’t drag this out ad infinitum and screw up the page layout for the ever-tolerant Don and Maggie.
Responding item by item:
(A) The reason that the argument about other countries having Family Leave provisions is “oft heard” is because it’s a solid one. Saying it’s humane and desired but it is not a right is a circular argument: The reason it’s not a right is because it’s not a law. If it’s a law, then it will be a right.
As I recall, Bush stated he vetoed it not because it was “inane” but because it was a “hardship on small businesses.” Fine. But lack of such provisions is a hardship on parents. Given a choice of hardships, I’d opt for cutting the parents some slack.
(B) Now wait a minute, Keith. In (A) you stated that just because “everyone else” does something, that doesn’t make it acceptable. But now you’re stating that, in essence, passing the buck is standard politics and therefore “just part of the game”–i.e., everyone does it, so it’s to be excused. Can’t have it both ways.
(C) If you’re going to claim that no Bush commercials, no Bush reps, and no GOP flacks ever mentioned Willie Horton at any time, I don’t have anything at my fingertips to contradict you on it. But I am seriously skeptical. And none of that invalidates the Pledge of Allegiance non-issue or excuses the McCarthyesque nastiness that Bush has tried to pull this go-around.
(D) Trying to prove that the current administration displays solid leadership and pointing to the Gulf War to do it is a bad move–because the immediate aftermath of the war gives indisputable proof of lack of leadership. Look at the numbers. Bush had a spectacular 93% approval rating. A true leader could have used this to build a base of support like never before. Instead Bush allowed it to hemorrhage away faster than sales on a New Universe title (There. A comic tie-in. Happy?)
I attribute this downslide to Bush’s nonexistent follow-up to the war. After he beat the drums, stating that Saddam Hussein’s continued rule could not be tolerated, Hussein was then left in control. After exhorting Hussein’s people to turn against him, they did so–only to be left high and dry. And, most damaging of all, Americans started to realize that American money given to Iraq the previous decade was one of the things that helped empower Saddam Hussein in the first place.
You attribute this downslide to the media attempting to undermine his leadership–although you don’t give a reason why they’d want to. These would be the same media that you also blame for making Willie Horton into an issue for the purpose of (I presume) sticking it to Michael Dukakis.
It would seem to me we have two choices here, Keith: Either the media are out to destroy everyone of power or potential power in the presidential field. Or the media are convenient scapegoats. Since you’re the one who makes a living working for a newspaper, not me, I’ll leave that one to you to decide.
(E) No one should attack any movie or TV program if they haven’t seen it. This, to me, is self-evident. Dan Quayle was wrong to do it. And if you did it with Deep Throat, you were wrong, too. Two wrongs don’t make a right, although as we all know, two Wrights make an airplane.
(F) Thank you for giving me the longest excerpt from the Quayle speech I’ve seen to date.
He makes some very valid points about welfare. However, I found much of the excerpt to be some of the most alarmingly patronizing rhetoric I’ve ever seen.
Who could possibly state that the unit of Father/Mother/Child is not the ideal one? That’s easy: Women married to alcoholic and abusive husbands. Men married to drug addict wives. Children who have suffered at the hands of either, and are living a better life with a single parent than they possibly could, if both parents were there.
In Quayle’s world, as exemplified by this speech, it’s a simple formula: Father knows best. If a father is actively involved, then everything will be OK. And mothers? Either they’re too stupid or too desperate to avoid getting pregnant or–even better–they’re incredibly arrogant. Where does even the fictional Murphy Brown get off deciding that she can have a child and deal with it without a father present? Foolish woman.
I’m sorry. I just don’t see why any President or Vice-President should go around passing moral judgments on anyone’s lifestyle, be that lifestyle single mother, single father, gay man, gay woman, Jew, Gentile, or whatever.
I do agree with him that bearing children irresponsibly is wrong. Certainly keeping abortion safe and legal will help cut down on that.
(G) I’m sorry, Keith, but your argument here is pure sophistry. A woman does have a right to choose to have an abortion, because it’s legal. A woman does not have a “right to choose” to shoot her boyfriend’s head off, because that is illegal. Furthermore, Dan Quayle is not “any” good, loving father. He is a father who has it within his power to try and keep abortions safe and legal. If he’s truly concerned about his daughter’s safety and right to choose, he’d be working towards that end.
(H) You’re trying to tell me that, three and a half years ago, Dan Quayle permitted an unnamed “someone somewhere” to come in, perform a firebrand personalityectomy and replace it with a personality that makes constant misstatements, speaks before it thinks, is widely perceived as having the IQ of a salad bar, and is regarded as Bush’s major liability? I’m sorry, Keith–somehow that doesn’t make me feel more kindly disposed towards him.
David Letterman stated that Dan Quayle is the first politician ever to do battle with a fictional character–and lose.
I agree.
(Peter David, writer of stuff, hopes that he timed this column right and that it comes out shortly before the election. If it does, get out there and vote. If it doesn’t, then I hope you did vote—and I also hope that much of this column is now moot.)
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“If you’re going to claim that no Bush commercials, no Bush reps, and no GOP flacks ever mentioned Willie Horton at any time, I don’t have anything at my fingertips to contradict you on it. But I am seriously skeptical.”
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Well, sure they mentioned Willie Horton. He was the perfect symbol that Dukakis was weak on crime – and people reacted to this piece of scum being allowed free from prison despite a life sentence and a previous grisly murder with as much disgust and horror as if it had been white scum like Tim McVeigh or Jeffrey Dahmer.
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Funny thing is, years later Democrats and the media seemed to forget that it was racist to mention Willie Horton. After all, Al Gore was the first politician to mention Horton, calling him by name in a debate with Dukakis. Amazingly, this not result in stories or a push to keep him off the ticket with Bill Clinton in 1992 or 1996. Even more amazing, when Bill Bradley tried to remind the nation that Gore was the one who injected Willie Horton into our national political debate, suddenly liberals decided it wasn’t racist after all and chose Gore as their presidential candidate.
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“Funny thing is, years later Democrats and the media seemed to forget that it was racist to mention Willie Horton. After all, Al Gore was the first politician to mention Horton, calling him by name in a debate with Dukakis. “
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Common urban legend in politics, but not actually true. Find a video, audio or transcript of the debate and look at it. There’s a reason that the talking heads in TV and radio say that Gore did that but never play the video or audio. It never happened.
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The furlough issue had been brewing locally for Dukakis before. Al Gore brought up just the furlough program as evidence that Dukakis was weak on crime, but he never mentioned Horton by name, never mentioned the incident where he broke into a house in Maryland, raped a woman and beat her husband, never mentioned Horton’s race and never ran any ads on the topic.
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It was George H. W. Bush who first mentioned Horton by name in a speech in June 1988 and his campaign brought up the Horton case. It was then a conservative PAC backing Bush that ran the first Willie Horton ads. Bush refused to publicly distance himself from them and ran ads similar to them. Bush’s campaign manager, Lee Atwater, even brought Horton up in a speech he gave to southern Republicans. The Republicans then went on to sponsor a series of television ads with picutres of Horton and the crime scenes claiming that it was Dukakis who had let that happen.
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Another interesting fact is that the furlough program was instituted by Dukakis’s Republican predecessor and while Reagan had been governor of California a remarkably similar program had been instituted there under Reagan as well. Dukakis was an idiot for vetoing the proposed bill to kill the provision to allow furloughs for first-degree murderers though.
I find it amazing that, nearly 20 years later, the same twisted and half-baked logic is still the argument from most on the right. Or maybe it isn’t amazing; maybe it f***ing depressing.
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What I do know is depressing is that the American public continues to be duped by the righties, and continues to vote against their own best interests.
I find it amazing that, nearly 20 years later, we had the exact same vice-presidential debate.
I find it amazing that, nearly 20 years later, the same twisted and half-baked logic is still the argument from most on the right. Or maybe it isn’t amazing; maybe it f***ing depressing.
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What I do know is depressing is that the American public continues to be duped by the righties, and continues to vote against their own best interests.
As you said, it continues to work, so why wouldn’t the right continue to use the same argument? When it stops working (not holding my breath) then perhaps they’ll switch.
My personal favorite bit was the part where the letter writer wanted Quayle to support violating the law. I’m sorry, but if you support a woman’s right to select abortion, but also support making abortion illegal, then you are therefore supporting a woman’s right to violate the law. And what a headline that would have made, eh? “QUAYLE ENCOURAGES WOMEN TO BREAK LAWS!”
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I do wonder if the Horton Lesson will be remembered the next time Mike Huckabee wants to run for President – given that, as governor of Arkansas, he commuted the 95-year sentence of convicted murderer Maurice Clemmons, who went on to shoot four police officers in Lakewood, WA, as they were drinking coffee in a Forza store (and was subsequently killed while approaching a Seattle PD officer, apparently with the intent of assassinating this officer as well. Fortunately, the cop in question had developed the habit of checking his mirrors frequently while parked).
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(Oh, and I almost forgot – Clemmons, at the time of the shooting, was awaiting trial on charges of rape of a nine-year-old child, and “assaulting an officer” for punching a deputy in the face during his arrest on that charge. And this was the guy Huckabee thought deserved a second chance…)
Frankly I don’t know why any politician would stick their neck out for a violent offender. They found God and turned their life around while in prison? Great, obviously prison was just the place they needed to be! Keep them there, hëll, extend their sentence, maybe they’ll find a cure for diabetes.
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While there are undoubtedly stories of people who got a second chance from commutations and pardons and went on to make amends for their past deeds, there are almost certainly more stories of those who went on to perform even worse deeds once they had the chance. I can see the value of high officials having the power of clemency but if they use it poorly, they deserve the grief. I think it WILL come back to haunt Huckabee should he run again, and justifiably so.
“What I do know is depressing is that the American public continues to be duped by the righties, and continues to vote against their own best interests.”
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Whereas I find it the height of supreme arrogance that you presume to know what other people feel is in THEIR “best interests.
But then, it is that I-know-what’s-best-for-you-mentality that best exemplifies why Republicans did hold the White House for 28 out of the 40 years before Obama’s election, why Clinton became the only Democratic two-termer in that time (while signing things from NAFTA to GATT to the Defense of marriage Act to welfare Reform to limiting death row appeals that were decidedly NOT liberal to ensure his popularity and approval ratings remained high). It is that same “we-know-what’s-best-for-you” mentality that is the biggest reason there is a strong, growing backlash against the Dems right now.
Generally speaking, it isn’t folks on the left who are telling me who I can choose to love and raise children with. It isn’t people on the left who are telling me that lower taxes for the wealthy is going to work out well for middle-class me. It isn’t the left that’s telling me my health care is just fine as it is.
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As many can claim, it’s the right, looking out for me, that tells me two loving adults are not allowed to become my parents. It is the right, trying to protect me from “wrong” ideas, that calls for book bans and bowdlerized text books. It is the right, claiming they want me to live longer, that is trying to maintain the current health system where my per-existing condition has prevented me from getting the treatment that would save my life.
Actually, it’s part of a politician’s job (if done right) to believe they are looking out for the best interests of their constituents. That’s what we hire them to do, so I have no problem with them believing they are acting in my best interests. True, they screw it up a lot, and many are hypocrites claiming they’re looking out for me but consciously not doing so.
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But generally speaking, it isn’t folks on the left who are telling me who I can choose to love and raise children with. It isn’t people on the left who are telling me that lower taxes for the wealthy is going to work out well for middle-class me. It isn’t the left that’s telling me my health care is just fine as it is.
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As many can claim, it’s the right, looking out for me, that tells me two loving adults are not allowed to become my parents. It is the right, trying to protect me from “wrong” ideas, that calls for book bans and bowdlerized text books. It is the right, claiming they want me to live longer, that is trying to maintain the current health system where my per-existing condition has prevented me from getting the treatment that would save my life.
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I’d be much happier if the right weren’t “looking out for my interests” quite so much.
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The interesting thing is that one change would fix two problems here. If you could legally marry then you could be legal added to your spouses insurance. That’s actually the fix we had to do with my wife since she had a preexisting condition and couldn’t get her own insurance. We actually got married when we decided we were going to get married and had the wedding for the friends and family (and the official anniversary date) some time after that.
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There’s a “hidden” cost in the present system for you. If a married couple has one member lose their job, you still have no problems with insurance because you can carry your spouse. If a gay couple has one member lose their job they either have to spend a fortune they may not have to get insurance or contribute to the overall expenditures of the system by using the ER or defaulting on payments owed.
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I would disagree on the “that calls for book bans and bowdlerized text books” point though. There are small armies on the left calling for book bans as well and, while not quite the “family values” version of it, there are also groups on the left who want passages and words in some books changed when they’re not politically correct.
I’m with you on the gay marriage issue but if you think it’s only the right that is banning books, go to a college campus. Or look at some of the people who have been leading idiotic crusades against people like PAD and Harlan Ellison.
Sadly, Bill is correct. There are just as many ban-happy idiots on the extreme left as on the extreme right. In fact, it seems that a great many people’s definition of “freedom of speech” is “the freedom to speak sentiments that I agree with.”
Jonathan (the other one)
“My personal favorite bit was the part where the letter writer wanted Quayle to support violating the law. I’m sorry, but if you support a woman’s right to select abortion, but also support making abortion illegal, then you are therefore supporting a woman’s right to violate the law. And what a headline that would have made, eh? “QUAYLE ENCOURAGES WOMEN TO BREAK LAWS!”
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No. Not really. the two positions are not mutually exclusive. Putting aside for the moment that you are making it sound like Quayle was vehemently Pro-abortion rights, when all he did was say in response to a hypothetical question – though I despise her as a candidate, Hillary was very smart to constantly answer “I’m not going to get into hypotheticals” on the campaign trail – that he would actually talk to his daughter and support her decision. What was he SUPPOSED to say, given the law of the land? That he would toss her out of the house disown her and cut her out of the will if she didn’t do what he wanted? THAT would have gone over well politically!
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It’s like at the end of “The Untouchables” where Kevin Costner, who has done as much as any man could to enforce Prohibition is asked what he’ll do if it’s repealed and says with a smile, “I think I’ll have a drink.’ No hypocrisy there. He’ll enforce the law while it’s the law and refuse to break it himself, but if the law changes, he’ll act differently. Seems like a simple enough concept.
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“I do wonder if the Horton Lesson will be remembered the next time Mike Huckabee wants to run for President – given that, as governor of Arkansas, he commuted the 95-year sentence of convicted murderer Maurice Clemmons, who went on to shoot four police officers in Lakewood, WA, as they were drinking coffee in a Forza store (and was subsequently killed while approaching a Seattle PD officer, apparently with the intent of assassinating this officer as well. Fortunately, the cop in question had developed the habit of checking his mirrors frequently while parked).”
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Well, I HOPE so. Funny thing is, I am quite sure his opponents will not be accused of being racist or “distracting from the real issues” or “misdirection”. They’ll be accused of accusing Huckabee of being soft on crime – which is exactly what Dukakis was accused of by the GOP.
And the Dukakis furlough program was uniquely absurd.
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“No. Not really. the two positions are not mutually exclusive. Putting aside for the moment that you are making it sound like Quayle was vehemently Pro-abortion rights, when all he did was say in response to a hypothetical question – though I despise her as a candidate, Hillary was very smart to constantly answer “I’m not going to get into hypotheticals” on the campaign trail – that he would actually talk to his daughter and support her decision. What was he SUPPOSED to say, given the law of the land? That he would toss her out of the house disown her and cut her out of the will if she didn’t do what he wanted? THAT would have gone over well politically!”
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Well, you’re taking the hypothetical answer to an extreme so it doesn’t work very well either. There was an answer that he could have, should have, given that would have been seen as less hypocritical.
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Part of what bit Quayle in the ášš there was that he was saying that he would support his daughters choice, but he was fully intent on supporting the party’s decision to take that choice away from every other daughter in America. That really does come of as his saying that he felt that he an his family should be able to make choices and have options that he felt other families should be denied.
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If he wanted to play to the values crowd, then the answer was obvious. An unborn life is precious and adoption is a blessing to those good people out there who cannot have children of their own for various medical reasons. Therefore the family would do whatever they needed to do to support his daughter during that time.
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It doesn’t come across as hypocritical and it doesn’t open the door to people saying, if the daughter were keeping the child, that it was easy for rich folks to say that it wasn’t a problem when they could pay for help around the house and not force the daughter to choose work and child over finishing high school or college.
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Quayle’s answer played into the stereotype of the Republicans that the Democrats were nurturing at the time. They think that as long as they have theirs everyone else can go hang for all they care. It partly played to the idea that Republicans have the ingrained philosophy that some people are more equal than others.
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Or, if he felt that it was a viable option for his daughter that should be made available to her, he should have stood on that principle for everyone’s daughter and stated that he was indeed pro-choice. It might not have played well with the moral majority, but it’s doubtful that they would have voted Democrat or dumped Bush over his VP. They would know that Bush was a better option for their POV than Dukakis was and that they could work on Quayle later if the need arose.
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In the meantime, the moderates may have supported Bush/Quayle more strongly in both the ’88 and ’92 elections if the ticket and the party looked a little more inclusive on social issues and focused their conservative fire ,ore on economic issues and various constitutional issues.
if he felt that it was a viable option for his daughter that should be made available to her, he should have stood on that principle for everyone’s daughter and stated that he was indeed pro-choice.
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Agreed. But it should always have been apparent that Quayle did not think it “should be made available to her” to begin with. His very next sentence was that he would hope she wouldn’t make that choice. It’s hard to see where it was ever a fair interpretation that he was backsliding in his preference that that choice shouldn’t exist at all. But the question was what would he actually do, not what legal regime would he like to have, and that choice did and does exist. (Thank God. Pregnant 13-year-olds, like in the hypothetical, are a better argument for legalized abortion than any other that I can think of.) So I think Quayle did give the only answer he could– but like a poor student on an essay question, he failed to explain his answer.
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Still not really sold on that POV. By saying that he would support her choice while hoping she wouldn’t make that choice… He’s saying that he supports her right to choose.
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“I would counsel her and talk to her and support her on whatever decision she made.”
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Of course, the administration when into spin control the next day saying that Quayle’s comments on Larry King did not in any way mean that he would allow his daughter to have an abortion while a teen-ager. Marilyn Quayle also came out and declared that her daughter would take the child to term. Dan quickly followed that lead.
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Total and complete 180 and that didn’t help matters. If memory serves it also added fuel to the fire amongst a growing chunk of Republicans and GOP members at the time who were putting pressure on Bush to dump Quayle as the VP.
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Like I said, his saying that he would support his daughter’s choice, rightly or wrongly, while supporting Republican pushes to outlaw abortion and then backtracking over his answer just looked bad. It wasn’t that he didn’t explain the answer when he gave it that was the problem. The problem was that he turned around and changed the answer. It looked desperate and it looked like he was covering up for a loose lips moment where he was, as I said above, living down to the stereotype of the “some are more equal than others” brush that the Dems were good at pushing.
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I was a poor answer and the backtracking that followed only made it look worse.
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Uhm… That was meant to be…
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“Of course, the administration then went into spin control… “
You misread what I said. In the original discussion, it was not stated that Quayle had called for making abortion illegal (he may or may not have, not germane to this point) – it was the writer of the original letter who wanted Quayle to have called for that.
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Now, combining this with Quayle’s statement that he supported a woman’s “right to choose”, this would have led to the logical conclusion of supporting a woman’s right to break the law.
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Note please that I did not attribute such a stance to Quayle; I pointed out that the letter writer was doing so, had he cared to pursue his statements to their logical ends.
Sean,
“trying to maintain the current health system where my per-existing condition has prevented me from getting the treatment that would save my life.”
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I’m sorry about that, Sean. I’ll respond to the rest of your post some other time. Didn’t know you were sick.
seventeen months later…
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I wasn’t actually sick, Jerome. I used that as just one in a list of examples of ways in which, contrary to your claim, that it is “the right” that actively tells folks what is in their own best interests.
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But while a fictional example for me, it *is* an unfortunate actual fact for many, many people.
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Wow.
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I actually remember the idiotic abortion/shooting her boyfriend analogy from all those years ago even if I forgot where I read it. The first thought that I had when I read that at 21 is about the same as the one I have reading it today.
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That guy is a complete f’n idiot.
Saying it’s humane and desired but it is not a right is a circular argument: The reason it’s not a right is because it’s not a law. If it’s a law, then it will be a right.
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No, it won’t. Then it merely will be legal. A right is something more fundamental. You have a right to free speech. You are legally permitted to drive the posted speed limit on the highway, weather permitting, but you do not have a right to do so. The legislature, or DOT, or whoever sets speed limits in your jurisdiction, can change the speed limit whenever it feels appropriate. For that matter, you don’t have a right even to a driver’s license. Driving is a privilege that can be conditioned on any number of requirements on your part, such as carrying insurance, or consenting to a breath test if you’re suspected of driving while impaired. Rights can’t be conditioned, and can be regulated only up to a point. It’s important not to confuse the two; it’s not just a semantic difference.
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That’s always been the strongest argument against entitlements. You create a legal entitlement, and people start to think they’re entitled to it by right, rather than through the political policy of the current government. Think about the 65 retirement age. It was devised as a way to prompt turnover in the workforce, ease unemployment, and provide old-age relief to people who were at the end of the circa-1933 actuarial tables. Somewhere along the line it became something people were just due, and efforts to increase the retirement age to even somewhat keep track with improved life expectancy are about as popular as drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa. A retirement parachute for everyone is a wonderful idea. It is “humane and desired” as a matter of public policy. But a right?
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Family leave is even less of a right. At least retirement is backed by governmental payouts, and you can make a reasonable argument that people develop a legitimate expectation for the government to be consistent through time. (Although, the whole point of elections is to give an opportunity for policy shifts, so I think that argument has limits.) Family leave is a “right” to make a third person– an employer– hold a job vacancy for someone. Since when do individuals have the right to make other individuals do things on their behalf? We should be very, very careful about the circumstances where we give individuals rights against other civilians. If it’s permissible because the government can bring about things that are “humane and desirable,” isn’t the whole argument by pro-life politicians that forbidding abortion is the humane and desirable way to treat unborn children?
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Go back to the Proposition 8 argument in California. If rights are derived by the policy of the government– if making something a law makes it a right– then it is absolutely true that there is no right to gay marriage. The legislature didn’t create one. Two referenda denied it. So the question has been answered, right? “It’s not a right… because it’s not a law.” I doubt anyone reading this actually agrees with that logic. Going in the opposite direction, I don’t believe that government-sponsored health care is a right, and nothing that happens in Congress this or any other weekend is likely to change my opinion about that.
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Laws should exist to validate rights. In a democracy we choose what rights we extend legal protection to, but it is always a valid argument to claim that something is a right because it derives from the nature of free people, whether or not the government currently recognizes it or protects it. It was reasonable in 1972 to argue that privacy rights implied abortion choice rights. It is reasonable now to argue that unborn fetuses should (or morally do) have the right to live. The state of the law rarely has any impact on the claim of whether something is truly a right. A right is at least as much a moral as a legal claim. Sometimes people use the word in the same sense that Peter did in his column, but when you think about it, we generally recognize there’s more to it. Gays can coherently claim that it is their right to equal recognition of their relationships, the Constitution of California and US Equal Protection jurisprudence notwithstanding. Amnesty International exists (in theory– its actual practices are grist for another argument) largely because there are people who have rights that are being violated, even if– or perhaps particularly when– some legal system doesn’t recognize those rights. One of the beauties of living in a free country like the US or UK is that we can almost equate those usages of the word “right,” because the gap between what the law allows and what people deserve is relatively tiny, and because over time the law has traditionally been very good about bridging such gaps as have existed.
David the Bold, I agree with much of what you say. Just because something is legal, it is not necessarilly a right. I know of people who think that because they own a car, they have the right to drive it. Likewise, the right to bear arms does not extend to the right to carry it whereever you want, even though I think it should.
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I even mostly agree with you when you say, “Going in the opposite direction, I don’t believe that government-sponsored health care is a right, and nothing that happens in Congress this or any other weekend is likely to change my opinion about that.”
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I don’t think that government sponsored health care is a right. But, I do think that health care is. And, if the private sector will not provide it, then the oly alternative I can see is for the government to.
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At my day job, I tell hospitals and clinics whether or not they can have medication, or medical supplies. I know of one client who had to give out prescriptions in sandwich baggies because we wouldn’t release their order of bottles. I’ve lost track of how many patients have had to have their surgeries rescheduled because I couldn’t release the hospital’s pharmaceutical orders. And, these are people with health care. The bottleneck is caused by hospital administrators who would rather get their paycheck than pay their facility’s bills, and by people without healthcare getting ER help rather than preventive care.
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So, from my perspective, anything that can help improve the system as a whole is benefitial.
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Theno
Peter David: Saying it’s humane and desired but it is not a right is a circular argument: The reason it’s not a right is because it’s not a law. If it’s a law, then it will be a right.
Luigi Novi: Whether something is a “right” is not necessarily a question of whether it’s a “law”, or whether it’s “humane or desired”. When people discuss whether they think something is or isn’t a right, they may be speaking one of two possible contexts: 1. Whether it’s a natural right, and 2. Whether it’s constitutional. Something is not a natural right just because it’s “humane” or “desired”. I “desire” a penthouse apartment. Doesn’t make it a right. I once helped an old woman who had fallen on the ice, because it was the humane thing to do. That doesn’t mean that my doing so was her “right”. As for whether something is constitutional, that can be debated ad infinitum, but something isn’t constitutional just because it’s a question of law. Many laws govern the use of motor vehicles, but driving is not a right, it’s a privilege.
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Laws don’t just come into being ex nihilo. Every new law that is enacted, especially those that provide for a certain segment of society or compel employers to do so, carry with them a price, usually in the form of taxpayers’ money. Thus, it’s not circular for someone to argue that Family Leave, or any law that may raise taxes or incur other costs is not constitutional nor a natural right.
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Peter David: No one should attack any movie or TV program if they haven’t seen it. This, to me, is self-evident. Dan Quayle was wrong to do it. And if you did it with Deep Throat, you were wrong, too.
Luigi Novi: In some cases this is a valid point, but not others. If someone is going to make an assertion in matters of fact, particularly if it pertains to a particular aspect of a work’s content, then yes, this is a reasonable principle. Saying that Murphy Brown was “mocking” the importance of fathers, or that she “called it just another lifestyle choice” is just such an assertion that would require watching the episode, or at least, having some equivalent evidence, like a clip or transcript from a reliable source.
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A person who dislikes pornography, on the other hand, does not need to see Deep Throat in order to attack it as pornography. Depending on the nature of the “attack”, as long as they relied on reliable sources for general knowledge of it’s content, saying that they need to see it in order to criticize it, and equating it with Quayle’s criticism of Murphy Brown, is silly.
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Alan Coil: What I do know is depressing is that the American public continues to be duped by the righties, and continues to vote against their own best interests.
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Jerome Maida: Whereas I find it the height of supreme arrogance that you presume to know what other people feel is in THEIR “best interests.
Luigi Novi: It’s pretty easy to gauge what people feel is in their best interests by how they vote. How is it flawed to conclude that people who voted for Bush or McCain apparently felt that it was in their best interests to do so?
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And if you meant presume to know was is in people’s best interests, again, how is it flawed to form an opinion that what is bad for the entire country is bad for everyone in it, regardless of who they vote for? If I think that Generic Presidential Idea X is bad for country because it will raise taxes, take away our freedoms, or worsen our standing in the rest of the world, how can I conclude that it’s in my best interests to be against it, but not in those of others? At issue is whether it is good or bad for our interests, and the reasoning you use to form that conclusion, but the conclusion is going to be the same for everyone; it’s not like we’re arguing the aesthetic appeal of a particular color of drapes or styles of music or film.
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Jerome Maida: that is the biggest reason there is a strong, growing backlash against the Dems right now.
Luigi Novi: The “strong, growing backlash” you mention is simply the usual criticism of the current presidential administration that every administration receives from the other side, regardless of what part that president is in.