Political Protest Overwhelmed by Voter Apathy
Published on Friday, January 7, 2005 by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Political Protest Overwhelmed by Voter Apathy
by Tony Norman
One day when we're once again able to talk about political profiles in courage
without gagging, we'll look back on the first week of January 2005 with a mixture
of amazement and horror.
First, we'll be amazed by the courage of some Democrats in Congress who, in the face of relentless mockery from conservative pundits and an increasingly complacent media class, questioned the extent of voting irregularities in Ohio on Election Day.
According to conventional wisdom that always seems to favor Republican realpolitik, interrupting the tally of the Electoral College to push for debate about the Ohio vote was just another pathetic attempt by back-benchers to delegitimize President Bush's victory over Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., got the ball rolling earlier this week with a report outlining a series of voting irregularities -- including allegations of voters in Democratic urban strongholds being wrongly purged from registration lists and a shortage of voting machines in those areas. Had this happened to the Republicans, it would surely have resulted in federal and state lawsuits voiding the election as irredeemably tainted within 72 hours of the vote.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., represented Kerry better than the losing candidate represented himself yesterday. True to the pattern of aristocratic disengagement he was never able to shake, Kerry skipped the historic vote yesterday to go to Iraq to visit American soldiers. Left unexplained is why military folks who voted overwhelmingly for his opponent would be interested in a patently phony photo-op.
Freshman Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the future Prince Valiant of the Democratic Party, took the floor and made an eloquent plea for election reform along with several colleagues. Still, even Obama couldn't bring himself to vote against certifying the election for Bush. But the point couldn't have been clearer: what happened in Ohio stunk to high heaven.
Participating in only the second debate about an Electoral College count since 1877 is guaranteed to turn up in the first reel of the next Michael Moore movie, but so what? Voicing renewed commitment to open and fair elections at a time when half of all eligible Americans don't vote isn't a reason for hanging one's head in shame.
When it comes to the ballot box, we should aspire to be at least as bold as our friends in Ukraine who turn up in greater percentages to vote and seem to care passionately about whether they've been disenfranchised.
The apathy that afflicts U.S. voters was also apparent in the confirmation hearings yesterday for Alberto Gonzales for attorney general.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd called it exactly right in her piece: "You know how bad the situation is when the president's choice for attorney general has to formally pledge not to support torture anymore."
Amen. To add insult to injury, yesterday the Bush administration refused to provide senators sitting in judgment of Gonzales' fitness for the post with additional documents that would clarify his role in the so-called "torture memo" controversy.
Somehow, American prison guards at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo believed they had government sanction to play fast and loose with the Geneva Conventions since "Sept. 11 changed everything." Gonzales insists that it isn't his fault that a few sadists working for the U.S. government believed they had the blessing of the president's chief legal counsel to "get medieval" on al-Qaida.
Repeating his belief that "terrorists are not soldiers," he conceded that they still had civil rights our government is morally bound to respect. In saying this, he was utterly unpersuasive. There is little doubt Gonzales will sail through confirmation with only a singed hair or two. These days, the AG doesn't have to be moral, just loyal and utilitarian. Leave morality to the next generation to judge.
Copyright © 2005, PG Publishing Co., Inc. All rights reserved.