7/12/00 12:15 p.m.
Back In Black
Bush among the NAACP.

Robert A. George is an editorial page writer
for the New York Post------------------------------------RAGGEDmail@aol.com

n certain ways, George W. Bush was in a no-win situation going to visit the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. While he gets a certain amount of credit just for showing up, there's hardly anything he could say to get an endorsement from any members of the liberal civil rights organization.  He even joked at the opening that he could see his "one or two" supporters in the audience.  On the other hand, if he appeared to pander too much or get into a budget-bidding war with Al Gore, conservatives would be furious.

As it is, he pretty much struck the right tone — though, apparently not for all. Bush candidly recognized that the relationship between the Republican Party and the civil rights organization has not been the greatest. In what can be perceived as a mild apologia, he noted that the "party of Lincoln has not always carried the mantle of Lincoln." To this rather innocuous statement, my friends John Miller and Ramesh Ponnuru reply in yesterday's Washington Bulletin:

It's not clear what this is supposed to mean.  Republicans should get over thinking that they have to apologize for being Republicans whenever they appear before black audiences. In fact, it would be nice if they simply cited the 1964 vote totals and then segued...into a discussion of the new civil rights battles...

Messrs. Miller and Ponnuru are under the impression, as are many Republicans and conservatives, that an "urban legend" of general Republican antipathy toward the '64 Civil Rights Act and the '65 Voting Rights Act is at the heart of the GOP/black community rift. In response, Republicans today trumpet talking points that more Republicans supported the legislation than Democrats — as if retroactive damage control will automatically restore the GOP's rightful image in the black community.

This is an understandable, yet mistaken, reading of what occurred in the 1960s. After leaning Republican following the Civil War, blacks first swung to the Democrats with the advent of the New Deal. However, Eisenhower got 39 percent of the vote in 1956.  Richard Nixon received 32 percent of the black vote in 1960. The Republican share of the black vote in 1964? Six percent. A Republican presidential candidate hasn't gotten above 15 percent since then. What happened in the short four years between 1960 and 1964? Well, in short, two names — Barry Goldwater and Martin Luther King, Jr.

In 1960, King refrained from endorsing anyone for president. King had a gut reaction that John F. Kennedy was marginally better on civil rights; Kennedy had called King's wife Coretta while King languished in a Georgia jail. Meanwhile, Bobby Kennedy worked on the judge to allow King to post a bond. Nonetheless, King felt it better for the cause to stay neutral. His father, Martin Luther King, Sr., originally endorsed Nixon, but switched to Kennedy after his son was released from jail two weeks before the election.

King's neutrality changed dramatically by 1964. King declared that though Barry Goldwater was not racist, his positions gave aid and comfort to racists:

I had no alternative but to urge every Negro and white person of goodwill to vote against Mr. Goldwater and to withdraw support from any Republican candidate that did not publicly disassociate himself from Senator Goldwater and his philosophy.

It is tempting to assail King for an unfair reading of Goldwater's ideology, but the candidate largely had himself to blame. He is proof of how one sound bite can besmirch a career and undermine the better angels of a political party's philosophy. Goldwater, as a conservative, was on the right side of history in many ways — many of his positions were vindicated by Ronald Reagan's election 16 years later. Some might say that those positions were further vindicated by Bill Clinton's nomination by the Democrats in 1992.

However, Goldwater's own 1962 statement, that — electorally — Republicans should "go hunting where the ducks are," a de facto rejection of the idea that Republicans should support the Civil Rights Act or even compete for the black vote, helped create an earthquake whose aftershocks resounded for three decades. Should the substance — that Republicans provided the winning votes for passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts — mean more than a few simple words by a failed presidential candidate? Perhaps, but Goldwater's tactical political move helped create an implacable foe in King — at the time, the most influential black man in America — and totally sundered the century-long relationship of blacks to the "Party of Lincoln." It has left a legacy that haunts Republicans and minorities to this day.

Bush was working with that amount of history as a backdrop on Monday. Bush is now the standard-bearer of the Republican Party.  He is working to make it his party. That means working to remove some unpleasant images. Is some of that imagery the fault of the media?  Yes. Is some of it Newt Gingrich, and an at-times a hot-tempered GOP Congress? Yes. But that's not all. If the combination of Bush's mild words and substantial message can help recast the party in certain quarters, why fault him — especially when his instincts are supported by the weight of history?

If there is one way Bush could have improved upon his speech, it would have been to explicitly repeat some of the language that he used two weeks ago when addressing the Congress of Racial Equality.  "I believe ownership is freedom," he said then. He should have reiterated it this week.

In addition, aside from over-apologizing, one error Republicans tend to make when speaking to black audiences is to forget the economic message. Republicans seem to feel that focusing on compassion for those less fortunate is the key message for black audiences. That should be part of it, but there is a black middle class out there. They might be interested in hearing about tax cuts or other economic development ideas. A recent New York Urban League poll listed economic development as the primary black concern. A survey of other cities would undoubtedly uncover similar results. Note to the Texas governor:  when addressing the black community, pepper your compassionate conservatism with a little bit of capitalism. You might be surprised at the result.

Of course, in the year 2000, not even the wizard Harry Potter could get George W. Bush a majority of the black vote. But there's no reason why a Republican can't eventually get 25-30 percent nationally. Bush's recent moves have been careful steps in that direction.  The GOP as a whole could (and has) done a lot worse.