12/11/00 11:35 a.m.
Dimwitted Punditry
The dimmest of them all: ABC’s Terry Moran.

By NR’s John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

here has been some incredibly dimwitted punditry over the last five weeks, but we may have a candidate for the dimmest of them all: ABC's Terry Moran, in an online commentary posted last week. He begins portentously: "It is the unacknowledged story in the Florida court battles over the presidential election: Race."

Unacknowledged? Hasn't this man been listening to Jesse Jackson? Or Kweisi Mfume? Or just about any member of the Congressional Black Caucus?

It gets worse: "At bottom, this has been a struggle of 'rules' vs. 'fairness.' …It is no accident that the biggest champions of rules in general are white men. We wrote them, after all. For centuries, we were the only ones allowed to write them. So rulemaking is something white guys have been very comfortable with and very good at throughout our history."

You know, like that law in Florida about certifying election results within seven days. It's something only white guys could possibly be comfortable with.

Of course, Moran's understanding of the split between rules (favored by conservatives) and fairness (favored by liberals) is superficial. He fails to comprehend what all conservatives intuitively know: Fairness can be achieved only through rules agreed upon beforehand. Otherwise, fairness becomes merely what we think it ought to be right now — an arbitrary standard that is a slave to fleeting sentiment. Our flawed human institutions can hope to achieve something close to procedural fairness, though they often fail even at this. They are certainly not equipped to secure transcendental fairness. That's for another world, which is also something conservatives tend to believe in. Liberals, on the other hand, want to build heaven on earth.

But enough of this white-man talk. Moran has covered the Supreme Court and the Gore campaign for ABC News, and he is capable of writing a loaded sentence like this one: "Most Republicans and conservatives have argued that the only way to ensure legitimacy in this election is to stick to the pre-established rules, while Democrats and liberals say the only fair thing to do is make sure every single citizen's vote has been scrupulously counted, regardless of what the rules might say, in order to vindicate the overarching moral principles of democratic self-government."

Ah, yes. The Republicans: worried about legitimacy and rules. How cold, lawyerly — and inhumane. The Democrats: champions of moral principles and democratic self-government. Count every vote because every vote counts!

It is the unacknowledged story in the Florida court battles over the presidential election: Media bias.

(Moran's article may be read here.)

Speaking of Fairness…
The Bush-Cheney Transition website includes an online job-application form for would-be members of a Bush administration. Happily, it doesn't ask for applicants to identify their race. But, unfortunately, it does ask for their "ethnicity," by which it apparently means race, because the potential answers are: American Indian, Asian, Black, Hispanic, White, Other, and None. (Traditionally, Hispanics have been considered an ethnic group, not a race; it is possible to be white and Hispanic, black and Hispanic, etc. Liberal civil-rights groups have sought to blur this difference.)

There was nothing necessarily inevitable about this. Two years ago, when George W. Bush was running for re-election as governor, the Campaign For a Color-Blind America sent him a candidate questionnaire. It listed a series of statements, and asked for the response "Agree" or "Disagree." Here are a few of the questions it asked, with Bush's replies:

The vestiges of racial discrimination in our society require the state government to classify and favor individuals on the basis of race and ethnicity. (Bush: Disagree)

The State Legislature should enact a law that would ban discrimination and preferences on the basis of race, color, sex, ethnicity and national origin in the operation of public employment and public contracting. (Bush: Agree)

The state government should classify and favor individuals on the basis of race and ethnicity when that furthers diversity in contracting and employment. (Bush: Disagree)

Since educational and economic disparities between the races are so pronounced, it is important that the government "level the playing field" by using race-based "affirmative action" to help people get ahead. (Bush: Disagree)

For the sake of obtaining a diversity of viewpoints and experiences, public educational institutions should be allowed to consider the race and ethnicity of applicants. (Bush: Disagree)

On the Site
Ponnuru on "What if Gore Wins?"