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president's speech last night was about money — the budget,
taxes, spending, etc. — so there wasn't a lot in it on
civil-rights issues. But where these matters were alluded to, the
president's words and instincts should be reassuring to conservatives.
For starters, it would have been easy to shoehorn race into the
speech. Indeed, one of the most troubling things about the Democratic
party and, more generally, the Left these days is their insistence
on viewing every problem through a racial lens. A classic example
appeared in a New York Times headline this morning: "California
Utility Woes Also Hurt Companies Owned by Minorities." It takes
real creativity to find a racial angle to utility deregulation,
but the Times did it.
And so President Clinton would surely have found some way to make
a racial appeal in a speech about the budget. President Bush did
not.
Likewise, consider this line from the president's speech: "And to
provide quality care in low-income neighborhoods, over the next
five years we will double the number of people served at community
health-care centers." President Gore would surely have changed the
first part of the sentence to read, "low-income and minority
neighborhoods." Of course, the skin pigmentation of the people living
in a low-income neighborhood is patently irrelevant, but that doesn't
matter to the race-obsessed politician.
Having twisted an economic problem into a racial one, President
Gore would also have suggested a different solution. It's not enough
to bolster community health care centers; no, what's needed and
what would be promised would be more African-American doctors and
nurses.
Never mind that there is no sound medical reason for a doctor or
nurse to be the same skin color as his or her patient. The politically
correct mantra says that the way to ensure better health care for
underserved groups is to lower medical-school admission standards
for people who share the skin color and national origin of those
groups. This is ridiculous, to be sure, but very much in the zeitgeist,
as painstakingly demonstrated by Sally Satel in her recent and excellent
book PC,
M.D..
The president's speech also mentioned his "New Freedom Initiative"
for disabled Americans, which he had announced
| “President
Clinton would surely have found some way to make a racial
appeal in a speech about the budget. President Bush did
not.” |
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soon after taking office. The Americans with Disabilities Act has
created a morass of litigation and has placed enormous burdens on
the private sector. Given this, and given his father's and the president's
own strong support for the ADA, conservatives were entitled to fear
the worst from the new initiative.
But the initiative is largely unobjectionable precisely because
it recognizes what the ADA does not — that technological and
structural changes to help the disabled should be paid for by the
government if the government is requiring them, not by the particular
business unfortunate enough to be targeted for the change. If the
justification for a ramp is to improve society by making it more
accessible to the disabled, it makes sense for society to pay for
it — not the Mom and Pop deli that bureaucrats decree should
have the ramp.
The only explicit reference to a civil-rights issue in the president's
speech was his call on Attorney General John Ashcroft "to develop
specific recommendations to end racial profiling." John Derbyshire
and I recently debated the issue of racial
profiling on this website (and, more briefly, in the hard-copy
National Review). I have no doubt that W. was riveted to
his laptop throughout, and I am proud to say that my eloquent and
brilliant analysis apparently carried the day.
Thus, I think that the president is right to condemn racial profiling,
in addition to what he calls the "the stubborn vestiges of racism."
Bringing the notion of civil rights back round to actual discrimination
— i.e., deliberately treating people differently on account
of their skin color — is a welcome move. More often than not,
these days, talk of "civil rights" is just code for quotas and income
redistribution.
Of course, as Mr. Derbyshire and I discussed, there are good ways
and bad ways to address profiling, and President Bush seems to understand
this, too. He impressed upon Attorney General Ashcroft that "we
will not hinder the work of our nation's brave police officers."
Addressing profiling in a principled way will not be easy, mind
you, but the president's words last night were reassuring. Clearly
he understands the issue's delicacy.
So, all in all, a good night on the civil-rights front. The real
tests lie elsewhere, of course, but the president's instincts so
far are sound. Sure beats President Gore.
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