Hillary's
Plantation Politics
By Star Parker
Monday, February 4, 2008
Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary
Rodham Clinton, in their first one-on-one debate, in Los Angeles, were asked
at the outset to distinguish themselves from each other.
The question was motivated
legitimately by a sense that there is really very little difference between
these two liberal Democrats.
Both noted a key difference in
their approach to health care. Each wants extensive government regulation.
But Clinton wants federal government mandates to force individuals to buy her
plan and Obama rejects individual mandates.
This key departure in health
policy hints at a far more fundamental difference in the mindsets of these
two candidates.
Clinton's big-government
liberalism is less rooted in liberal ideals than in the interest-group
plantation politics that has defined the Democratic Party of recent years.
These differences in orientation
were articulated well back in a famous keynote address given at the 1976
Democratic convention by a black congresswoman from Texas, Barbara Jordan.
Jordan made an appeal for a sense
of national community that would derive its authority from citizens. She
warned against what she called "the great danger America faces -- that
we cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest
groups."
It's evident that if a Democrat
gets elected president, we will have our first woman president or our first
black president. We're hearing a lot about the gender and race thing from
Clinton, but not much about it from Obama.
It was Clinton who introduced race
tension into the election. After Obama told a crowd in South Carolina at the
time of Martin Luther King's birthday that the slain civil rights leader's
crusade was not a "false hope," Clinton stepped in to point out
that President Lyndon Johnson (the white patron) got the Civil Rights Act
passed.
And then, of course, the senator's
surrogate, husband Bill, minimized Obama's landslide victory in South
Carolina as a black thing, pointing out that Jesse Jackson also did well
there in 1984 and 1988.
When asked at the L.A. debate
about immigration hurting blacks by depressing wages, Obama refused to take
the bait. He insisted on addressing immigration as a national problem, of
concern to all, and independent of the unique problems that are plaguing our
inner cities.
Why does the black candidate want
to keep race out of the discussion, and why has Clinton made such a point to
keep it in?
*** Morris opened speculation
about this, pointing out that Clinton would use her inevitable defeat in
South Carolina to her advantage by provoking white backlash with
not-so-subtle reminders of race politics and bloc black voting.
And indeed, Bill Clinton followed
the script with his reference to Jackson.
But there's much more to this.
Hillary Clinton is playing with
black psyches as well as white ones.
Black consciousness has always
been defined by a sense of vulnerability. The painful realities of black
American history have always posed a barrier for many blacks to buy into
American ideals or the American dream.
Moments, such as in King's famous
speech, when he called "the magnificent words of the Constitution and
the Declaration of Independence ... a promissory note to which every American
was to fall heir," or Jordan's appeal in 1976 to transcend
interest-group politics, have been, unfortunately, exceptional moments.
The more common political appeals
to blacks have played on fears that the country is incorrigibly racist and
that their only hope is to salvage a piece of the pie through political power
and protection.
Nothing can be more threatening to
these politics than a successful, talented black man like Obama running as an
American candidate rather than as a black candidate.
But a black off the plantation is
the last thing that Sen. Clinton wants. She wants blacks to feel impotent and
vulnerable and in need of a political patron to hand them the goodies they
need.
Nothing could speak more clearly
to the differences than Oprah Winfrey coming out for Obama and Clinton
rolling out Robert Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television, to
speak on her behalf.
Winfrey is a mainstream success,
with a daily TV audience of millions of women, mostly white. Johnson made his
fortune through black sexploitation.
At a Democratic Party candidate
debate last summer at Howard University, Sen. Clinton was asked about the
prevalence of AIDS among young black women. Her response was to first
attribute this to racism and then talk about government programs. Can anyone
imagine her telling blacks the truth that the solution starts with
responsible personal sexual behavior?
I certainly don't buy into Obama's
liberalism. But I am not surprised one bit that so many see him as a breath
of fresh air over Clinton's hacked plantation politics of fear, dependence
and patronage.
Star Parker is a regular commentator
on CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News as well as author of White Ghetto: How Middle Class America Reflects Inner City
Decay
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher (1788-1860)
