That poll of young Jewish voters seems also in line with ones I've seen speaking of the black electorate. So in addition to anti-Christian bigotry, the older Jews (like blacks) still carry their outdated views of the political climate. Many still think that Republicans are the party of John Birch. As I said on another thread, many older blacks have never forgiven Republicans for Barry Goldwater's opposition to the Civil Rights Act. Perhaps younger, more open minds will see how things have changed since then.
by Franklin Foer
Post date 09.21.00 | Issue date 10.02.00
It was January 1999, and a somewhat reluctant political operative had come to Texas to talk with Governor George W. Bush about joining his presidential campaign. The meeting was meant to allow the candidate to size up the prospective adviser, but it was the adviser who had the bigger doubts. He was squeamish about the Republican Party's "Southern Strategy"--its history of exploiting racial fears to win national elections. The operative didn't want to be part of that kind of enterprise.
But the governor beat him to the punch. "Let me tell you about myself," Bush said, launching unprompted into a monologue. "I've seen a lot of racial tension in my lifetime. In living memory, we've had cities burn. We need to deal with social problems. It's why I want to run." A week later, the operative signed up.
Tell that story to most Democrats and most reporters, and they'll probably roll their eyes. Jesse Jackson calls W.'s good-guy pose on race the "inclusion illusion." New York Times columnist Bob Herbert complains, "The Republicans still aren't interested in blacks. They are simply trying to present a friendlier, more moderate face." Many journalists don't think Bush is really trying to appeal to blacks at all--he's just surrounding himself with them in an effort to win over white women, in what The New Republic's Michelle Cottle dubbed "the ricochet pander."
But there's a good reason to believe Bush's posture on race is sincere: It's a family tradition. During the late '50s and early '60s, few senators--not Al Gore Sr., not John F. Kennedy--had a better record on civil rights than W.'s grandfather Prescott Bush. The Connecticut Republican sponsored legislation desegregating schools, protecting voting rights, and establishing an equal employment commission. His son George led fund-raising drives at Yale for the United Negro College Fund. And when, in turn, George's own son George Walker was caught using the word "nigger," Barbara Bush washed his mouth out with soap.
In fact, the Bushes' problem on race isn't that they're insincere; it's that they're overly sincere. They're so convinced of their personal decency that they expect it to trump the deep, long-standing ideological differences that separate their party from black political opinion. Most Republicans take a hardheaded view of race: Blacks are Democrats, and there's not much you can do. The Bushes, by contrast, not only want to be loved by African Americans, they think they deserve to be loved--even when they hold political views that are anathema to most black voters. This combination of self-righteousness and naïveté creates a recurring cycle of courtship, disillusionment, and backlash. It marked President Bush's political career and is now clearly under way in George W.'s. But nowhere can it be seen more clearly than in the experience of W.'s more earnest younger brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, a man for whom racial politics has turned into an obsession, a psychodrama, and an utter disaster.
To his credit, George Herbert Walker Bush tried to carry on his father's tradition of racial outreach in the much less receptive terrain of his adopted state of Texas. Soon after arriving in the oil town of Midland in 1948, Bush pointedly invited an official from the local NAACP to his house for dinner. Later, as head of the Harris County GOP, he put the party's money in a black-owned bank. But he distinguished between his personal behavior and his stances on policy--support for integration may have sold in Connecticut, but it was a nonstarter in West Texas, and Bush couldn't make a political career without playing to the crowd. So, when he ran for Senate in 1964, he bashed LBJ's civil rights record: "The new civil rights act was passed to protect fourteen percent of the people. I'm also worried about the other eighty-six percent."
Bush's opposition to desegregation wasn't anything unusual among white Southern politicians in the 1960s. And his personal behavior was probably better than most politicians'. But what really distinguished Bush was his firm belief that the latter would override the former in the eyes of black voters. Years later, in his autobiography, Bush wrote that black support for his opponent in the 1964 race, which he lost by 300,000 votes, was "both puzzling and disappointing.... My hope had been that a Republican candidate might be able to break the Democratic Party's grip on black voters in the area."
When he ran for president in 1988, Bush once again genuinely expected to do well among black voters. Had he not supported fair housing legislation in 1968 and implemented affirmative action as chair of the Republican National Committee in the early '70s? But, of course, he'd also been vice president in an administration that opposed sanctions against South Africa and tried to restore tax breaks for whites-only colleges. And, in the 1988 race itself, he crudely stoked white fears with his Willie Horton advertisement.
Once again, the surprise wasn't that Bush took positions unpopular among blacks or that they responded by voting for his opponent; it was that he took the rejection personally. In 1989, months after he won the presidency, he commissioned a political consulting firm to diagnose African American perceptions of him. The firm suggested the obvious: He needed to improve his relations with black leaders and attend more "significant black events such as speaking at major black institutions like Hampton University." Bush redoubled his efforts to reach out, but in 1992 he once again utterly failed to win the black vote. Once again, the reasons were obvious--he wavered on affirmative action and offered no major policy response to the Los Angeles riots. And, once again, Bush seemed mystified.
Ironically, at the beginning of his political career, Jeb Bush seemed more hostile to the black political class than his father ever had. A self-styled libertarian who subsisted on a regular diet of Heritage Foundation briefings, Bush kicked off his first gubernatorial campaign in 1994 by promising to beat "the government into submission." He pushed for a massive increase in prison construction, complained about welfare mothers, and vowed to end affirmative action. Bush's opponent, Lawton Chiles, accused him of appealing to "hate and fear" and branded his running mate, Tom Feeney, "the David Duke of Florida politics." But Bush, whose wife is Mexican, figured nobody would take such charges seriously. "In Miami, he'd integrated himself into the Hispanic community, with his wife and Cuban [business] partner. He thought that he could transfer that understanding to African Americans," recalls Feeney. "He was a bit naive about that." At a televised town-hall meeting in Tampa, a hostile black reporter asked, "What are you going to do to deal with the African American community? Don't tell me about welfare!" Bush replied: "Probably nothing."
Bush paid a price, garnering only 6 percent of the African American vote and losing by a mere 63,000 ballots. "He took it on the chin," says Feeney. "That one response, `Probably nothing,' cost him big. Fairly or unfairly, it turned people off. It might have cost him the election."
Like his father before him, Jeb seemed genuinely wounded by the turn of events. Tom Slade, then chair of the state Republican Party, recalls, "The defeat and the vileness of the campaign devastated him." Bush himself later said, "I felt bad that people felt the way they did about me. It broke my heart to see those things, because that is not who I am." And so, in the months following the election, Bush set out on a furious mission to refute the charges of bigotry. He began meeting with T. Willard Fair, the conservative head of the Greater Miami Urban League, and together the two opened a charter school in Liberty City, historic home of the city's black community and site of the infamous 1980 riots.
Bush also created a think tank that would primarily study the political leanings of African American voters. For a year, he watched focus groups from behind the glass, listening to Florida's blacks explain their views on issues like welfare, affirmative action, and school prayer. He published his findings in a report, writing, "Just as alcoholics must first admit they have a problem before they can begin to deal with it, so too must conservatives admit that the old ways will ensure the same dismal results."
When Bush ran for governor again, in 1998, he tried to put these words into action. He campaigned ferociously in black neighborhoods--praying with black ministers and addressing crowds after introductions from his friend Fair. He arranged scores of meetings with African American leaders, visiting them in their offices or inviting them to play golf. "He just showed up, and there are not many Republicans who do that," says State Senator Daryl Jones, head of the legislature's black caucus. "He was charming, but he was also a novelty." When Bush spoke to black audiences, he used carefully calibrated language. He referred to vouchers as "opportunity scholarships." He dropped the tough talk about welfare. And he avoided affirmative action. "It's a very sensitive issue, because it means different things to different people," he demurred.
Bush even apologized for his previous campaign: "Republicans have ignored the black voters of this state, and I was a part of that. It was wrong." It worked. Helped by endorsements from prominent black politicians and ministers, Bush's support among blacks rose from 6 percent to 14 percent. Bush took the increase as a personal vindication, a sign he had finally broken through the Republican Party's race barrier. "He showed that he understood there's an important connection between blacks and Republicans," says Bush's longtime adviser Al Cardenas, now head of the state party. "African Americans have a natural home in the Republican Party."
The euphoria didn't last. In January 1999, Bush got an unexpected--and, as it would turn out, unpleasant--visit from Ward Connerly. Connerly, the black activist who had sponsored California's anti-affirmative-action referendum three years earlier, told Bush he intended to sponsor a similar initiative in Florida. It was not exactly what Bush, just a month into office, wanted to hear, and he publicly denounced Connerly's tactics as "divisive." But Bush--who still, after all, opposed affirmative action himself--figured he had better seize the opportunity and review the constitutionality of the state's racial preferences. Because of his newfound credibility with black voters, he thought, he could convincingly push through a reform or maybe even a repeal of affirmative action that blacks would understand was not racist and possibly even in their best interest. "He believed," says Tom Slade, "that he was in a unique position to end affirmative action on his own terms."
At first, it appeared the gambit might work. In November of last year, Bush unveiled "One Florida," an executive order banning the explicit consideration of race in admissions and contracting. It was a frontal assault on affirmative action, but Bush linked it to programs that he thought blacks might find preferable. He proposed investing $700 million in K-12 education and, more important, agreed to admit the top 20 percent of each high school's senior class into the state university system. Given Florida's sharply segregated high schools, Bush was, in effect, guaranteeing that minority admissions would increase. One Florida even won some early accolades from African Americans. Les Miller, the black Democratic leader in the state House, praised Bush for "taking positive steps toward protecting racial and gender inclusiveness." State Senator Daryl Jones told me, "I was prepared to believe him, because he seemed sincere."
But it didn't take long for the support to unravel; in fact, it took about 48 hours. Threatened with losing his position atop the black caucus, Jones quickly retracted his tentative support. "Our people fought and died for affirmative action," he later explained. Willie Logan, the black former Democrat who consulted with Bush as he cobbled together One Florida, told me, "You can't take away people's affirmative action. That's something they understand and get mad as hell about. I told Jeb that he'd get clobbered. He told me that it wouldn't be a problem."
It was. Within days, the national civil rights leadership descended on Florida. There were signs protesting PHARAOH BUSH and JEB CROW; Jesse Jackson denounced the plan as a "crucifixion." Part of the response was sheer demagoguery. But Bush had also miscalculated. He simply didn't have the credibility with black voters--and their elected representatives--that he thought he had. And it wasn't hard to see why. Sure, Bush had struck a conciliatory tone toward blacks in his 1998 campaign: He had made friends with all the right people and visited all the right places. But, when it came to actual policy, his platform had been largely the same as when he ran for governor for the first time. He was still for relatively strict welfare reform, school vouchers, cutting government spending--in effect, he was still pushing a typical Republican agenda. Bush's rhetorical shift had made some difference, but he had still won only 14 percent of the black vote, a percentage wildly out of line with his subsequent claims to have sparked a black political realignment. Bush and Florida's blacks remained on opposite sides of the ideological divide. And so when black Floridians saw Jeb attacking their community's most cherished issue, affirmative action, they turned on him with a vengeance.
It came to a head at a Miami town-hall meeting last February. Addressing the largely black audience, Jeb sorrowfully talked of his "heavy heart," telling the crowd that "this has been a difficult time for me" and insisting, "I've lived my life embracing diversity." The crowd just jeered. As he left the hall, friends say he broke into tears. "He had simply no idea that this was coming," says Fair. "I remember him calling me one night in a real panic. He couldn't understand why people would do this to him." Just like his father.
Politically, One Florida was a fiasco. Not only did it not turn black Floridians into Republicans, it cemented their allegiance to the Democrats. "The party had been pretty unhappy. One Florida helped bring us all back together," says Democratic State Senator Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Indeed, Florida's Democrats look more formidable this year than they have in close to a decade. Their U.S. Senate candidate has a double-digit lead, they have a good shot at picking up House seats, and, most of all, they are visiting their One Florida wrath on George W. In one of the strangest ironies of this year's presidential campaign, Jeb, who most observers assumed would deliver Florida for his brother, may have become a liability instead. Bush and Gore are running neck and neck in the Sunshine State, and Gore has a shot in large part because of an energized black vote. As one Democratic operative told me, "For black voters, this election will still be about punishing George W. for Jeb's sins." Or, as Wasserman Schultz puts it, "If George W. Bush loses Florida, he might not be the only Bush in peril."
If W. loses Florida, he will almost certainly lose the election. And that would be a bit unfair--the animosity isn't really aimed at him; he's simply a proxy for his brother. But he's not a bad proxy. W., like his brother and father, is also fixated on proving his racial benevolence. In the campaign, he has surrounded himself with African Americans, visited numerous inner-city schools, and ensured that blacks filled the speaking roster at the Philadelphia convention this summer. His staff seems almost obsessed with the level of support he received among Latinos in his 1998 reelection bid and with his endorsement from Latino politicians like the Democratic mayor of El Paso.
And, once again, the goodwill comes with a fair helping of self-righteousness and naïveté. The Bush team consistently exaggerates W.'s share of the Latino vote in 1998--imagining a Hispanic realignment that this fall's vote will almost surely reveal to be a mirage. And Bush himself seems almost offended when critics note the racial disparities in Texas's criminal justice or health care system--insisting they have no right to judge what's in his heart.
But they're not judging his heart; they're judging his policies, and that's the distinction the Bush family has been consistently unable to grasp. W. probably does genuinely care about the welfare of black Americans--so do his brother and father. But the assumption that blacks vote for the candidates who show them the most personal goodwill is itself paternalistic. Black Americans, like other Americans, don't need to be loved by politicians; they want to be served. And the Bush family opposes the agenda of activist government and group rights that most black Americans, for better or worse, think serves them best. Indeed, the Bushes have not even tried to convince blacks that their perceptions of their self-interest are wrong. Instead, they have agonized over how to show blacks that they personally view them as equal to other citizens. But the best way of recognizing black equality would be to treat blacks like everyone else--as a constituent group that votes not on sentiment or image but on selfinterest. Which is what black voters keep saying when they break the Bushes' hearts every election year.