Confrontation underutilized

BY STEVE BUTCHER

When Green Party member David Baldwin wrote, in a recent commentary for Pulse, that the United States is currently “a partisan battlefield,” and is undergoing the kind of crisis not seen since “the decade immediately preceding the Civil War,” I almost fell out of my chair. Other than a few mild but subdued grumblings, there is nothing on today’s political landscape that even remotely approaches the legendary period of the 1850s, when the nation endured the fugitive slave laws, Bleeding Kansas, the Pottawatomie Massacres, or the Harpers Ferry attack. There is nothing resembling the 1852 beating inflicted upon Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner by South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks; no effort equivalent to the one undertaken by New York Times publisher Horace Greeley, who personally financed a gun-running operation in support of Kansas free-staters; and certainly nothing to rival the election of 1860, which resulted in the dissolution of the United States.

Nor can Baldwin compare, as he does in the same paragraph, today’s political climate to the era of the 1960s. I tried in vain to unearth some recent development—any development—that would equal the October 1967 march on the Pentagon, the riots in Watts and Detroit, or the Freedom Rides. Where are the kinds of confrontations that would have brought to mind the sight of Bull Connor’s dogs mauling people on the streets of Birmingham? What personality has emerged from nowhere to challenge his generation, the way 22-year old Tom Hayden did when he issued the Port Huron Statement? Are there any clergy out there who would like to take the mantle from Martin Luther King, and gift us with their own “Letter From Birmingham Jail?” Remember the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee? SDS? The Weather Underground? Let me know when you hear someone challenge a university president the way Mark Rudd did, when, at the height of the Columbia Riots, he shouted at Grayson Kirk, “Up against the wall, motherfucker!”

Baldwin’s overall thesis has great merit, and his central analogy is entirely appropriate. He correctly describes an ongoing process in which the Green party is poised to attain the kind of milestone last achieved by the Republican Party, which emerged from the ruins of the Whigs, and which brought the nation the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln. Indeed, the Greens attract attention and support precisely because they eschew the kind of paralyzing, sclerotic gamesmanship for which the Democrats are notorious. Their fearless, almost lighthearted attitude is a wonderful balm in an age of Al Gore-like monotony. But to describe the current equation as on a par with the pre-Civil War era, or as rivaling the Sixties, is to engage in the most extreme form of hyperbole.

Baldwin’s reference to the emergence of Abraham Lincoln is instructive, if only because of what happened to the nation in 1860. Months before his nomination, and years before his Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln made several major speeches in which he argued that the federal government was powerless to interfere with slavery. He wanted to preserve the United States. But prominent Southerners had already asserted their determination to resist not just Lincoln, but anyone who did not explicitly endorse slavery. Their obstinacy eventually split the Democratic party, resulting in two separate conventions: on June 23, 1860, Stephen Douglas was nominated in Baltimore, and John Breckinridge was nominated in Richmond, Va. To make things even more complicated, a fourth party (if one includes the Republicans) had already convened in Baltimore the previous month. The result was an election in which the victor (Lincoln) overwhelmingly lost the popular vote, won the electoral vote, and witnessed the destruction of the country.

Contrast the events of 1860 to the events of 2000. An uncertain final vote in Florida left George Bush and Al Gore deadlocked. According to a famously breathless article in the New York Times, “chaos reigned.” It certainly appeared as if all of the elements were in place for a crisis; people spoke of the election going into the House of Representatives, an event not seen since 1824. Surely the sight of Katherine Harris obediently certifying the vote tally, and images of Jeb Bush’s hired goons waving their Sore-Loserman signs would prove to be the magic elixir that would galvanize the country. But when the United States Supreme Court finally ruled against the Democrats, what did Al Gore do? He meekly and subserviently capitulated. The Sore-Losermans went home, overriding the objections of many individual voters who believed that they had been robbed. The Democratic party acted like a clock whose battery had suddenly run down. So much for chaos.

Could Baldwin have some specific political issue in mind—something to more fully illustrate his point about today’s allegedly fierce and paralyzing national division? He mentions Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, nominations to the Supreme Court, and the economy, yet none of those topics has engendered anything but the most restrained, subdued debate; not even Cindy Sheehan has been able to muster more than a few desultory insults.

Indeed, our four bluest states—California, Minnesota, New York, Massachusetts—all have Republican governors; seven liberals and seven Republicans recently agreed to eliminate court filibusters; and New York Senator Hillary Clinton is considering co-sponsoring an anti-flag-desecreation bill. Contrary to Baldwin’s thesis, ours is a political era notable for its rather placid homogeneity—an indication that any discussion of divisions, splits and battlefields is premature.
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Steve Butcher is the assistant proofreader for Pulse and Southside Pride.