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Noonan on the parting of the ways
So many unbelievable things have been said in the immigration debate in recent days that the normal response I would have had to any one of them, if it had been said by itself, has been lost in the rush. In Peggy Noonan’s column on what she describes as the final split between President Busheron and his base, she mentions again something he said in his immigration speech on Tuesday and I gasp in amazement that he said it. He said that the people who oppose the immigration bill “don’t want to do what’s right for America.” Meaning, we opponents of S.1348 know that the bill is right for America, but we just don’t want to do it…. because we’re bad. Has a president ever said this about the American people, let alone about the people who voted him into office? I don’t think that Clinton for all his obnoxious posturing ever said anything like this. He came to New York during the 1993 mayoral election campaign and said that the only reason people would not vote for the incumbent David Dinkins was that they “don’t like people who look different than themselves.” (Maybe he said, “They don’t feel comfortable with people who look different than themselves.”) Now that’s pretty raw stuff in the racism-baiting category; I thought it was unprecedented at the time. Yet here’s the difference between Clinton and Bush. Clinton was not saying that these racists realized that their racism—which he made of point of calling covert, not overt racism—was wrong; he was saying that their racism was a sin they were caught up in. Bush by contrast is declaring that the opponents of the bill know that the bill is the right bill and they are consciously rejecting what they know is right. Also, Bush and his supporters have not made Clinton’s distinction between overt and covert racism. They have repeatedly accused the the bill’s opponents of being motivated by overt racism, nativism, xenophobia, hatred of Hispanics, etc. Here as in other previous instances I’ve discussed over the years, the wholesome, family-values, “I will honor the office” president turns out to be worse than his pocky predecessor. Noonan’s explains the Bush team’s behavior thusly:
They are trying to lay down markers for history. Having lost the support of most of the country, they are looking to another horizon. The story they would like written in the future is this: Faced with the gathering forces of ethnocentric darkness, a hardy and heroic crew stood firm and held high a candle in the wind. It will make a good chapter. Would that it were true!Well, that’s another way of saying what I’ve been saying: that the Bushites’ motivation is to break what remains of white-majority America once and for all. Except that in Noonan’s view, Bush doesn’t expect to win. He expects to lose, and he expects to have virtually no supporters left by the end of his presidency. But history will honor him for having stood bravely, no matter what the cost, against the racism that still prevails in America.
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