Posted on 01/24/2003 7:06:10 AM PST by Uncle Bill
HILL OF BEANS
New York Press
By Christopher Caldwell
January, 2003 - Volume 16, Issue 4
No Action
Last week, President Bush submitted two amicus curiae briefs to the Supreme Court, regarding the University of Michigan’s affirmative action program. The controversial admissions program ranks applicants on a 150-point scale, and awards a 20-point "bonus" right off the bat to blacks and selected other minorities. The admissions regime once had two tracks–one for whites and one for targeted minorities–and it protected those minorities from direct competition with the wider pool. The Bush administration, quite correctly, held that this made it a de facto quota system, and thus "plainly unconstitutional."
Supporters of the president have hailed the briefs as inaugurating a new era of race-blind, quota-free aid to the nonwhite. It would replace a bean-counting reverse racism with "what the Army has done," as Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander hopefully put it. But Democrats went berserk. According to Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, the administration has proved itself willing to "side with those opposed to civil rights and opposed to diversity in this country." University president Mary Sue Coleman complained, "It is unfortunate that the president misunderstands how our admissions process works at the University of Michigan."
Alexander, Daschle and Coleman are–in their different ways–completely wrong. The Bush memos are the most important substantive defense of affirmative action ever issued by a sitting president. If the Court accepts the president’s reasoning, it will have rescued affirmative action from what appeared to be a terminal constitutional illogic. More than that–it will have secured for this rickety program an indefinite constitutional legitimacy.
Affirmative action has been fragile since Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978). Back then (if I may simplify), the Court ruled that race-based quotas were illegal, but permitted race to be taken into account as a "plus factor" in admissions. Increasingly over the last two and a half decades the rationale for that plus factor has been "diversity." Diversity, in fact, is the stated rationale behind the University of Michigan’s modus operandi. Unfortunately for proponents of affirmative action, "diversity" has always been a vague concept–and it has never been clear whether, as a matter of law, it was sufficient grounds for flirting with racial discrimination against majorities. In Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education (1986), a plurality found against an affirmative action program justified on the grounds of diversity. And in the current controversy over the University of Michigan, many conservatives–including Florida Gov. Jeb Bush–have taken Wygant as a starting point for rejecting the diversity rationale. In an amicus curiae brief of his own, filed last week, the Florida governor noted: "This Court specifically indicated that such a theory has no logical stopping point, and would allow discriminatory practices long past the point required by any legitimate remedial purpose… Racial diversity is no more compelling a goal in the higher education context than in the context of other institutions or areas of state decision making."
That is not the view of our president. One of his briefs specifically endorses the diversity criterion. It runs: "Ensuring that public institutions, especially education institutions, are open and accessible to a broad and diverse array of individuals, including individuals of all races and ethnicities, is an important and entirely legitimate government objective. Measures that ensure diversity, accessibility and opportunity are important components of government’s responsibility to its citizens." It would be difficult to find a more hardline defense of the doctrine of diversity-for-its-own-sake anywhere in the Democratic Party. It would also be difficult nowadays to name a school that violates these ideals, aside from maybe Bob Jones. (Didn’t the president campaign there once?)
This is where the president’s brief gets tangled up in either its own illogic or its own dishonesty. The White House, again, is appalled by "quotas," and it has a smoking gun to prove that Michigan was using them. From 1995-’98, Michigan had an actual, explicit quota system. And in discussing the program that replaced it after 1998, the university admitted openly that it wanted, in the brief’s words, to "change only the mechanics, not the substance, of how race and ethnicity were considered."
The problem is, this is precisely what the administration wants to do itself. Nowhere does it express the slightest gripe about the demographic or academic outcomes generated by Michigan’s race-focused policies. Indeed, it promises solemnly to replicate them. It merely wants to obtain those results without saying the dirty word "race." So it recommends a set of bogus procedures that lead to exactly the same end. "[U]niversities may adopt admissions policies that seek to promote experiential, geographical, political or economic diversity," write the President’s Men. Universities can also "modify or discard facially neutral admissions criteria" [in other words, board scores and grades] "that tend to skew admissions results in a way that denies minorities meaningful access" [in other words, admission] "to public institutions."
"The government," according to the brief, "may not resort to race-based policies unless necessary." It sounds like Bush is arguing that race-based policies are always necessary–since elsewhere in his brief he says that diversity is "an entirely legitimate government objective." That is indeed what he’s arguing for, but more disingenuously than, say, Bill Clinton would have.
Bush, to let him make the case in his own words, wants to use "race-neutral alternatives" to achieve exactly the same race-conscious results that Michigan has been obtaining for years. And he has a "race-neutral" model in mind: the "affirmative access" program he initiated while he was governor of Texas. Under this program, the top 10 percent (by grade point average) of students in every high school in Texas are automatically admitted to any state university they choose. This tends to produce college-admissions results that mirror the ethnic composition of the state. But the reason it produces affirmative-action-compatible results is that the state’s schools are so heavily segregated–if they were integrated you would have the same problem of whites being disproportionately represented in that "talented tenth." (Other problems include overcrowding and plummeting academic standards at the state’s flagship Austin campus, but that’s another article.) As Terrence J. Pell of the Center for Individual Rights argues, such programs are not really race-neutral; rather, they involve "reverse engineering the admission system to get a certain racial outcome."
The fancy, legalistic way of describing what Bush’s Texas program possesses and what Michigan’s lacks is "narrow tailoring." Old-fashioned affirmative action, the Bush reasoning goes, uses the broad-brush criterion of race. "Because it operates much like a rigid, numerical quota," the brief says, the university’s "policy imposes unfair and unnecessary burdens on innocent third parties." Bush-style "affirmative access," by contrast, directly attacks the real problem, which is kids who are for socioeconomic reasons stuck behind the eight ball, regardless of what race they belong to. But on closer examination, Bush’s policy imposes just as many burdens; it merely makes those aggrieved innocent third parties harder to identify and help. The working-class black kid who finishes 29th in a class of 300 at a lower-class school full of dropouts may not be a rocket scientist, but he’s got it made–he’s off to Austin. The identical working-class black kid whose parents have made the fatal mistake of enrolling him in a challenging school full of overachievers and who finishes 31st in a class of 300…well, he’s destined to a life working at the car wash.
"In light of these race-neutral alternatives," the president complacently concludes, the University of Michigan "cannot justify the express consideration of race." This sounds like it’s anti—affirmative action, but the "express consideration of race" that Bush pretends to deplore is a synonym for frank consideration of race. And that is all the difference between affirmative action and Bush’s phony alternative. The Bush plan achieves everything affirmative action does, only less honestly. In so doing, it manages to give affirmative action not just a new lease on life, but a good name. "In light of these race-neutral alternatives, respondents cannot justify the express" (in other words, honest) "consideration of race."
Bush to Propose Funds for Black, Hispanic Education
Bush Administration Defends Affirmative Action
Rush Limbaugh says the affirmative action brief still keeps promoting race preference and its bad
"In other words, more color-coded government"
Bush's affirmative action ambush: Ilana Mercer contends president clings to faulty logic
Condoleezza Rice Partly at Odds with Bush on Race Case
Powell Says He Disagrees With Bush on University of Michigan Affirmative Action Case
Affirmative Action Faces a New Wave of Anger
Bush Adviser Backs "Use of Race" in College Admissions
Affirmative action: Its time is long past
Two More Myths About Affirmative Action (Almost Clintonian approach) Cornell Review
Bush: My Quotas Are Better Than Yours!
Bush's Affirmative Action Briefs Walk Fine Line
Bush brief to high court doesn't tackle affirmative-action ruling
Bush administration skirts key legal question in affirmative action case
Once again, there is zero accountability for the Bushes. I voted for both of them, but when Bush 41's performance as President lost him millions of his 1988 votes, it's Pollyannish folly to ignore the consequences of his "vision thing," or lack thereof.
You aren't going to build a successful coalition by saying that "no matter how badly Republican politicians screw up, no matter how much of the Democrat agenda they advance, you have no choice but to vote for them."
It's a cold, hard political fact that if you say "the RINO way or the highway," you are going to lose some votes. How many? That will vary. In some races you'll get away with it, and in others, you won't.
I think, though, that it will cost the GOP more than it helps, and the urgency of efforts by RINO apologists to bluster at the possibility of defections indicates to me that they secretly understand the danger they court.
You all protest too much.
I'm saying vote them OUT!President Bush's prescription drugs plan is a road map to an enormous expansion of the Great Society welfare state.
That's fine for Democrats who advance larger and more expensive government, beyond what we already can't afford. What do we do with Republicans who are tugging on that same end of the rope?
Shhh... you might wake the lotus-eaters.
Yes, but as highly as we regard Reagan, I still wonder why he didn't veto those Democrat deficit budgets. He vetoed very few major budget bills.
You guys say this as if the conservatives were being spiteful or trying to get rid of '41. That's not what happened. '41 couldn't get his base behind him, even if they were coming out, they weren't inspired to go into the streets and bring others. Who's going to rally behind someone who stabs them in the back.
Your foolish message, one which you're trying to pawn off on others is "you better vote this way or else". That's no way to get anyone behind you, no way at all.
For example, in 2,000 I went into the street for GWB and nearly was arrested in the process. This time around I'll be lucky if I have the energy to pull the lever, I certainly won't be motivated to do anything beyond that, because he I think he sucks. Preventing the other guy from getting in is a lousy motivator, having something to believe in for a change would be refreshing.
To blame conservatives for '41s lack of leadership and back stabbing is illogical, absurd and poorly thought out. Huge mistake as well. The election was his to lose, which he foolishly did by being a weak leader and peeing away the solid voting block that Reagan left him.
Kind gentler, compassionate conservatism....it's all a big lie and a bunch of crap designed to serve the dynasty adn it's not working.
See when Reagan dealt with the Rats, he was doing just that, dealing. He always got something back, and provided solid leadership and had great and measurable conservative victories. In a world where it seemed all was against him, he won the cold war and made drastic and very fundamental changes to the tax structure. He was a conservative giant, Bush '43 is a mental midget.
GWB just gives it all away in a pathetic attempt to garner political wins, and our country is suffering greatly for it. He doesn't get anything in return, and if I'm not mistaken, the freak has still REFUSED to use his veto pen. It's uncanny.
How about the Democrats currently running for President? I think most (if not all of them) are for a "onepayer" 100% government provided healthcare system. Which one of these guys do you prefer? And which one of these Democrats do you trust with appointing the next crop of Supreme Court Justices?Bush is asking for $300 billion for ten years. The Democrats are offering $1 trillion. If this scam passes, the price of admission will be somewhere in that range. Then...
The baby boomers retire and qualify for the freebie plan. Each year thereafter will see a larger constiuency for the drug handout. How will it possibly be privatized?
The path to privatizing unearned subsidies ("entitlements") requires a weaning of the populace from government dependency, not a further encouragement of it. Yet Bush is promoting more dependency, hoping that the beneficiaries will be grateful to the GOP. How does this lead to a smaller and less expensive government? Who's going to pay for it?
Further, how does anyone really think that once seniors come to expect this latest freebie, that the Democrats won't outbid the GOP for their votes, as they have for decades?
Can't think of a one, but I can't see as that's any reason to ignore President Bush's largesse with our money.
Stopping Democrats' big government plans is easy: vote against them.
The second task is trickier: how do we stop the big government plans of Republicans like President Bush?
I suppose that we can trade a Republican mental midget for a Democrat mental giant again. And maybe this time we can do it without a Ross Perot to confuse the issue. The Democrat base loves their guy and people like you hate our guy. The enemy within.
(Bold and underline formatting is mine.)
~~ Ronald Reagan, in his autobiography, An American Life
"When I began entering into the give and take of legislative bargaining in Sacramento, a lot of the most radical conservatives who had supported me during the election didn't like it."Compromise" was a dirty word to them and they wouldn't face the fact that we couldn't get all of what we wanted today. They wanted all or nothing and they wanted it all at once. If you don't get it all, some said, don't take anything.
"I'd learned while negotiating union contracts that you seldom got everything you asked for. And I agreed with FDR, who said in 1933: 'I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average.'
"If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that's what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it.
I have to laugh. You guys point to Reagan, yet, when he walked out of the White House in 1988, government was TWICE as big as when he entered.
Hell, Pat Buchanan never advocated smaller government; he just wanted to use big government for his causes.
The only true voice for "small government" are the pipsqueaks in the Libertarian Party, and they're hanging onto the toilet bowl rim by their fingernails.
NONE Jim. You know that. Having Rats in is certainly not the answer, but neither is what's happening to us now. Mr. Know-it-all me doesnt have an answer right now.
I'm wondering if; a. We can make some real changes in the primaries or b. helping to push the whole thing over the edge than having a mechanism in place to pick up the pieces or at least have the satisfaction of hitting back as opposed to being dogged around. I don't like being dogged around and used, I gave that up for lent.
A. is bold and probably not do-able and b. is risky and probably wishful thinking.
Your gig of working within is a plan that sounds good, but it hasn't worked out. I've been behind it all the way (as I'm a tech and ex-military as well and realize the value of tactics), and might even try it again, but lets face it, it's gotten us nowhere and we ain't getting any younger.
Again, I don't know for sure what to do. At this point I'm probably going to put it in God's hands. I know that if we can somehow move these few thousand active FReepers in some direction and make it count, we can do great things. We shouldn't have to eat dirt, we deserve better.
Maybe meetings, planning sessions with the network and other activist orgs, property rights groups etc. Think-tanks, tactical planning. Fund raising? (nah). Summits with leaders etc.
You know how it's done, you were just some schmoe looking for like minded people to talk to you on Yahoo, now look at you. IMO this can be the beginning as opposed to the peak. We have great potential here Jim, we need to take advantage of it.
A lack of what you subjectively call leadership did not justify putting the likes of the Clinton's in our White House for two terms. Bush 41 never did anything in his whole life that justified that. The damage done will be with us for at least a generation; probably longer.
Your missing my point though. It's not that anyone did anything out of spite, it's that conservative weren't motivated (ie given the fuel they needed) to go out and "grass roots" the electorate. As I said, "you better or else" is not a motivator in these circles. That's pure physics.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.