Political Commentary
The Speaker's Dilemma
Even though I am a committed and partisan Democrat, I feel a bit sorry for U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). Sure, the man has his faults, but generally speaking, he strikes me as a reasonable adult who would love to make some sort of far-reaching deal with President Obama.
The problem for Boehner is that there are, by most estimates, about 40 of his 232 members that are dead set against making any kind of deal with the president or the Democrats. And without those people on board, and needing (currently, due to vacancies) 217 votes to pass anything, the only way he can get a deal done is with Democratic votes. This, of course, sets up a problem for the speaker—retaining his speakership. He can only lose, at this point, 15 Republican votes and still win a majority of the House at the next speakership election. That number will go up a little, or down a little, after the current vacancies are filled and the next general election is held in 2014, but the bottom line is this: if he gets crosswise with the Tea Party element of his caucus by bypassing them and doing a deal with the Democrats, he loses his speakership.
But there’s another problem, which is this: if this shutdown goes on or, even worse, Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling in two weeks and the economy tanks, most polling shows that the voters, correctly, will blame Republicans. That could mean, as Boehner himself has reportedly warned his caucus, Democratic control of the House in 2015, or at the least, a loss of Republican seats and a narrower majority. In either case, Boehner probably loses his speakership—definitely so if the Democrats win the House, but probably so if his party loses seats in a midterm under a Democratic president, which almost never happens. The last time that happened to Republicans, in 1998, then-Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) was obligated to resign.
Boehner’s dilemma, in short, is that if he cuts a deal with Democrats, he probably loses his speakership; and if he doesn’t, and things get bad for the Republicans, he probably loses his speakership. It’s a real damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t scenario. Maybe he can hang on if Republicans do lose seats but keep their majority, or perhaps the voters will forget all about this by next year (entirely possible, sad to say) and Republicans will increase their majority, in which case Boehner could keep his job. But those possibilities, at the moment, look unlikely.
So at this point, Speaker Boehner really has to take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask himself this question: “If I’m going down one way or another, how do I want to go out?” And one hopes that he will decide it’s better to go out with some honor and dignity, and that he will work a deal with the Democrats, and a few reasonable Republicans in swing districts who are scared to death of losing their seats next year, to prevent an economic calamity. History will be far kinder to him if he sacrifices his speakership in a good cause. It would be far better to go out with his boots on than to be found, at the end, hiding under his desk, in fear of his own caucus, and going down as a coward.
False Equivalence, Obamacare, the Government Shutdown, and the Failure of the Beltway Media
With a government shutdown perhaps a little more than a day away, the nonsense emanating out of Washington is heavier than usual, but this bit of claptrap on Twitter by a fellow who normally seems like a pretty decent journalist, Mark Halperin, got my blood up this morning:
Tips for inciting left/right attacks on CR tweets: say both sides share blame; say media is doing its best; say Obama/Boehner both good men
— Mark Halperin (@MarkHalperin) September 29, 2013
I’d like to take issue with at least two of Mr. Halperin’s three points of contention.
First of all, how exactly is this whole mess even partially the Democrats’ fault? Allow me to recap precisely what is happening here. The House Republicans, attempting to appease their wacko primary voters who might otherwise vote them out unless they stick it to the black man in the White House, sent a bill to fund the government to the Senate that would defund “Obamacare.” That, of course, would be the most notable accomplishment of the Obama presidency, which hasn’t even been implemented yet.
OK, let me pause here for a quick civics lesson. Generally, when a law is enacted, it is given time to work before we determine it is a failure. If it does, in fact, fail to work as hoped, we overturn it at that time and try something else. We don’t strangle it in the crib before we see whether or not it is actually going to do what we hope it will do. This latter thing—strangling it in the crib—is what Republicans are proposing to do because they believe it won’t work, or perhaps more correctly, because they fear it will work.
So, to get back to where we were: the House Republicans sent a bill to the Senate that would condition the funding of government operations IF the Senate Democrats agree to take away all funding for their chief accomplishment that hasn’t even been implemented yet.
The House Republicans had to know that this proposal would be rejected, as in fact it was; the Senate amended the bill to take out the defunding of Obamacare and sent it back to the House. At this point, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada), who is not normally known for standing up to Republican bullying, told the House: stop wasting our time. We are not going to agree to gut our own healthcare bill, so send us something else.
The House Republicans responded by passing another bill, this one delaying Obamacare (which is what you do when you can’t defund it outright—you delay it and delay it until you get control of the government, and then you kill it). And when it became even more clear that Harry Reid really wasn’t bluffing (which, let’s face it, the Republicans already knew), they pivoted to a third bill that, also, will take steps to prevent Obamacare from ever taking effect.
I’d like Mr. Halperin to answer this question: exactly what part of this is the Democrats’ fault? The Republicans have made it plain that they will shut down the government unless the Democrats agree to give up on the centerpiece of their brief control of the government from 2009-11. They have given the Democrats no other options; they have put no other proposals on the table. It’s either gut Obamacare or government shutdown. Every time the Senate Democrats say “Leave Obamacare out of the funding bill or we won’t pass it,” the House Republicans send the Senate another bill attacking Obamacare. How, exactly, are the Democrats even partially to blame for the fact that they are being blackmailed by obstinate, childish Republicans? That is a case of “victim blaming” on an epic level.
As to Mr. Halperin’s second point (the media is doing its best)—please. Today’s media covering federal government and politics, with a few exceptions, appears to be a hapless collection of glorified stenographers who feel their only responsibility is to accurately report what either side says. So if one side lies, and the other side tells the truth, both are given equal weight because it is not the media’s responsibility to actually find and report objective facts. If they merely present each side’s talking points accurately, they seem to believe that they have done their job properly. “Team A says the sky is blue, and Team B says the sky is pink with purple polka dots. We report; you decide!”
As to Mr. Halperin’s third point, that President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) are both good men, well, that one may well be correct. From my observations over the last few years, I’ve always gotten the impression that Boehner would like to cut a deal with the president, but that the absolute loons on the far right of his caucus have blocked him from doing so. But even this point, if correct, is irrelevant to the larger point. That point, simply put, is this: the Republicans are so hell-bent on strangling Obamacare in the crib that they are willing to shut the government down to do it. Shouldn’t the media be making that point and, more importantly, asking why?
Did Pressure-Based Diplomacy Win The Day In Syria?
As President Obama prepares to go on the airwaves to seek support for a military attack on Syria, a new development has entered the equation. A new Russian proposal would have international monitors take control of Syria’s chemical weapons, offering everybody involved a face-saving way out.
For the president, the Russian plan is a lifeline. Having been trapped by his own pledge to become involved in Syria’s civil war if dictator Bashir al-Assad used chemical weapons— which hawks like Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) and his protege, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-South Carolina) have used to put constant pressure on him—Obama needed a way out to avoid an unpopular attack. He made a smart political move to put the onus on Congress—which, importantly, broke a longstanding precedent of presidents violating Congress’s constitutional war-making prerogative—but this gives him an opportunity to get out of the trick bag cleanly.
If the deal happens, and Syria gives up its chemical weapons, President Obama can say—probably not without justification—that his threats of force brought the Syrians to heel. He will have won, through a triumph of pressure diplomacy and the happy coincidence of the Russians saving his political bacon, a diplomatic triumph without firing a shot. One wonders if he and Russian president Vladimir Putin didn’t cook this up during the recent G-20 summit in St. Petersburg. If so, it was a brilliant move by both presidents. It gets Obama out of a political mess at home, and it makes Putin look like a positive contributor to the global diplomatic scene—not exactly a familiar role for the often-criticized, autocratic Russian leader.
In fact, it is probably Putin who comes out the big winner here. It’s a PR coup for him, at home and abroad; this marks a major return to the world leadership arena for a country that has suffered a crisis of confidence since losing the Cold War and seeing the Soviet empire break apart at the seams. Putin can make the case that Russia is back on the world stage—if not quite at the top, then at least near the head of the table.
But even if Putin is the big winner, Obama can also come out smelling like a rose too, which seemed impossible just a day ago.
I have been a harsh critic of the president’s push for military intervention in Syria over the last few weeks. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe he was gambling that mere bluster and threats would win the day, and he wouldn’t have the need to actually engage militarily. I obviously have no idea, but if that was his plan, it wouldn’t be the first time Obama was playing chess while everyone else was playing tic-tac-toe.
Assuming the Syrian government takes the deal—and it would probably be stupid not to, because what it gives up in chemical weapons, the Russians will more than make up for with conventional ones—it looks like this thing may have just come together as well as possible, and that rarely happens by accident. The only losers here appear to be the Syrian rebels, and given the uncertain character and composition of their movement, that may not be a terrible thing. Assad’s a bad guy, sure, but sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.
What "Independent" Means To The Far Right
I recently moved from Chicago to the San Francisco Bay Area. After a few weeks here, working in San Francisco and living in Alameda, I am convinced that this move was a no-brainer and that I should have made it years ago. But I digress.
My move involved me driving in excess of 2,500 miles, including a little more than 40 hours of actual road time. Fortunately, I did not have to do this all in one shot, i.e., driving 14 hours a day for three days. I had some friends along the way who I met, which broke up the monotony considerably.
One of my stops was a side trip to Kansas City, where I met a good friend and former colleague of mine, as well as her husband and their new baby. My friend is a moderate Republican, and her husband is very conservative. We managed to find a way to discuss politics without any weapons being drawn, which was fortunate for me, because they have a lot of guns, and I do not. Go figure.
During my conversation with my friend’s husband, I finally came to understand something that has perplexed me for years. Although he is an uber-conservative who believes that everything Rush Limbaugh says is fact, he described himself as an “independent.”
As I mentioned, this is a phenomenon that has perplexed me since the onset of the Tea Party disease in 2009. As anyone who closely follows politics can attest, there is a large number of Tea Party adherents who describe themselves as “independents,” although it is clear that when they vote, they vote almost exclusively for Republicans and against Democrats.
The reason this confused me, at least until my conversation with my friend’s husband, is because my working definition of a political independent has always been someone who will vote for politicians of either major party, depending on which person appears, to the independent voter, to be the better candidate. An independent, by my definition, may vote more predominantly for one party or the other, but does at least on some regular occasion cross party lines. Up until the late 1990s, when it dawned on me that there weren’t very many Republicans who cared about anything beyond the preservation of wealth and privilege for a handful of Americans, I considered myself an independent and almost always found a Republican or two to vote for in every election—usually in some relatively modest office such as city council member, in which political ideology tended to take a back seat; there’s no liberal or conservative way to fix a broken street light.
And yet, there has been this explosion of Tea Party supporters who clearly would sooner be boiled alive and flayed than vote for a Democrat, but steadfastly refer to themselves as independents.
Well, I’m pleased to report, after my discussion in Kansas City, that I get it. Because what my friend’s husband made plain to me was that, to him, political independence means that he is independent of the Republican Party and its fortunes.
To explain: he’s never going to go out and vote for a Democrat, but he doesn’t give a flying crap about the Republican Party, either. While he is going to vote for Republican candidates pretty close to 100 percent of the time (except, perhaps, for the occasional Libertarian or Constitution party candidate that tickles his fancy), he isn’t particularly interested in whether the Republican Party sinks or swims. He isn’t interested in the party making compromises or moderating its principles for the purpose of winning elections. He’s going to adhere to principle, period. How the Republicans are going to win elections by spouting a grocery list of unpopular positions is their problem, not his.
All right. This makes absolutely no sense to me at all, but at least I get it now. To the Tea Party “independent,” it isn’t about splitting your ticket and voting for a few Democrats. It’s about only supporting those Republicans who are conservative enough for you. If this means Republicans lose the election well, gee, we didn’t really think about that, and that’s not our responsibility. (A Republican strategist, Myra Adams, recently wrote an excellent piece that addressed this issue. It’s good reading; very illuminating.)
So the next time some poll shows that “independents” favor a Republican candidate over a Democrat, keep in mind that a lot of these people calling themselves “independent” are not moderates, and if they don’t especially like the Republican candidate, hell, they might not even vote at all. Self-described “independents” supported Mitt Romney in 2012. Self-described moderates voted for Obama. We all know how that turned out.
The lesson here: the opinions of people who call themselves moderates are likelier to be closer to the actual results than the opinions of self-described independents. If it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, it doesn’t matter how many times someone calls it a unicorn; it’s a duck.
Quack.
What A Weiner
It’s clear to everyone that Anthony Weiner, Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City, is obviously not a good husband. Most people who know his name learned it when his sexting exploits (would that be “sexploits”?) became public and led him to resign as a member of Congress. After his press conference today, in which he admitted he continued engaging in this juvenile behavior even after it cost him his job and damaged his marriage, it is obvious that he is an incorrigible lout.
This fact, in itself, does not disqualify him from holding public office. Many of our greatest political leaders have engaged in sexual behavior that many people would find reprehensible. Franklin Roosevelt cheated on his wife as a young man (with her social secretary, no less) and, as it turns out, also carried on numerous sexual dalliances while he was president. He also saved America from the Great Depression, the Nazis and the Japanese militarists, which to me qualifies him as the greatest political leader in our nation’s history. Bill Clinton engaged in a tryst with an intern, which was slimy, but he also balanced the budget. Thomas Jefferson had a longstanding sexual relationship with a slave, Sally Hemings—and regardless of how it’s been presented, one always has to question how consensual such a relationship could have been, given that he owned her—but he wrote the Declaration of Independence and boldly doubled the size of the country through the Louisiana Purchase. It’s well known that John F. Kennedy would copulate with any woman possessing a pulse, but he also averted nuclear war through his deft handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Then there’s his successor, Lyndon Johnson, who once reportedly said “I got more women by accident than Kennedy ever got by design,” but he also pushed through the most meaningful civil rights laws in U.S. history. (And even if LBJ was exaggerating his actual accomplishments in the sexual arena—we all know how Texans like to brag—even his longsuffering wife Lady Bird admitted that her husband had been an incurable horndog.)
So Weiner’s sexual indiscretions should not, in and of themselves, disqualify him from elected office. What should disqualify Weiner, in my opinion, is that he’s an idiot.
To expound on my assertion: the first time he engaged in his squirrelly online behavior was stupid—seriously, how do any of these public officials think nobody’s going to find them out?—but to continue doing it, when he admitted all along he was thinking about running for mayor of New York, is a level of stupid that should make everyone question his maturity and judgment.
Let’s consider also some other points as to why Mr. Weiner is too stupid to be trusted with a high political office:
1) When your name is Weiner, and you served as a member of Congress, it really should be obvious that if you engage in any hijinks of a sexual nature that the jokes will write themselves—and you will be a walking punch line.
2) Weiner may be the first politician in history to fall victim to a sex scandal without actually getting any sex out of it.
3) See point #2 and consider that this has now happened twice.
Seriously, how stupid is this guy?
Stop Me If You've Heard This Before
So now we hear that President Obama is reportedly caving into pressure to intervene on behalf of the Syrian rebels due to the nation’s dictator, Bashir al-Assad, using chemical weapons in the ongoing civil war there. The decision comes after an onslaught of pressure from people like Senator John McCain (R-Arizona), who seems never to have encountered a war he didn’t want America involved in.
The first, admittedly snarky, comment I will make is that I thought President Obama defeated Senator McCain in 2008, and that one of the key reasons he did so was because he, unlike McCain, had made clear that he opposed getting America involved in a Middle East quagmire that McCain wholeheartedly supported. It took almost five years, but apparently, McCain has finally prevailed.
Having gotten that comment out of my system, let me sum up the arguments of the people who support getting us involved in another damned war that nobody but certain politicians and defense contractors want:
1) A brutal Middle Eastern dictator is using chemical weapons against his own people.
2) Said dictator has links to international terrorism and has meddled in the affairs of a small neighboring country.
3) We have a moral obligation to gather a coalition of nations and intervene against this dictator.
Where have we heard this script before?
Haven’t we had enough misguided foreign adventurism yet? Even if it is a fact that Assad is using chemical weapons on his own people, what happens if we intervene and he is overthrown? By all accounts, the rebels in Syria are of various ideological stripes, and some of them appear to be close to al-Qaida.
In short, neither side is any good, and no matter who wins, Syria is not going to emerge as a western-style democracy. There is no point in getting involved in another country’s civil war, in which the end result, no matter who wins, is going to be the same: Syria is going to have a bad and dangerous government. But hey, at least a few obscenely rich defense contractors will get even more obscenely rich, and a few Republican politicians will get to beat their chests and look tough.
Mr. President: I voted for you in the 2008 primaries (over a far more experienced candidate) and supported you passionately, with my money and with my time. I drove eight hours each way, before the Ohio primary, to go door to door for you in the cold, rain and mud of a depressing post-industrial city that time forgot twenty years ago. I took your literature to a dangerous neighborhood that—literally—sat on the wrong side of the railroad tracks. Upon knocking on a door that opened to reveal two people who were cooking meth and clearly suspicious of a stranger, I handed over your literature to prove I wasn’t a cop. (The meth-cookers immediately went from suspicious to enthusiastic and earnestly assured me they were voting for you.) I can’t speak for the millions of other Americans who have similar stories from the 2008 campaign, but speaking for myself, I did this largely for one reason: because you were right about Iraq.
You got elected president, probably for more than any other reason, because you were right about the mistake of fighting what you rightly called a “dumb war” in the Middle East. Mr. President, please, don’t forget now what you knew then.
Benghazi BS: Republicans, Desperate For A Scandal, Make Mountain Out Of Molehill
So it seems that the latest hyped-up Republican balderdash regarding the White House response to the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi centers on the discovery that the talking points developed for U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice were edited.
Pardon me while I yawn.
Seriously, this is the big, damning revelation that’s going to make Benghazi a bigger scandal than Watergate? Please. This is a bunch of hyped-up horse crap that doesn’t mean diddly squat, except that it is being used as a political cudgel by a bunch of hypocrites who engage in the same, largely innocuous practices on a daily basis.
First, let me tell you a little bit about talking points. People who work in politics and public relations are very familiar with talking points, which, for those who do not know, is a list of answers to questions that a politician, or a public or corporate official, might be asked by media or investigators. Talking points are crafted to keep the spokesperson from saying anything that might conceivably be used to attack the person, or the office, or the company, that the spokesperson represents. They are used as a defense against the “gotcha” culture that today prevails in politics and journalism, in which any poorly considered word can be turned into an attack (justifiably or unjustifiably), even if that word is taken wildly out of context.
Every politician, and every politician’s staff, uses talking points for exactly this reason (just as the ridiculous people who attack President Obama for using a teleprompter also use teleprompters virtually every time they make a major speech). And, with every politician’s office or corporate entity that uses talking points, there is always a multilayered review process that almost inevitably leads to revisions, because of the hair-trigger sensitivity involved. There is a justifiable fear that any single word that isn’t perfect (and perfectly innocuous) may boomerang, and this leads to a hypersensitivity on the part of the people who write and edit the talking points.
So what have we learned here about the talking points the administration initially used after the Benghazi attack? We learned that they went through multiple iterations and that a State Department official spent a lot of time quibbling about a few words because she was worried about what some unnamed senior officials in her department might think.
As someone who has spent most of the last dozen years writing talking points until they’re coming out of my ears, and dealing with the hypersensitive worrywarts who parse every word, I understand exactly what happened here. And what occurred here was almost certainly a case of overzealous caution that, in all likelihood, amounts to nothing more.
But the Republicans in Congress know that most people have no idea what talking points are, why they are used, and what the process is in developing them and using them. And they are counting on this fact to help them make something sinister out of this. Certain media organizations who undoubtedly know better are not only allowing them to get away with it, but helping them spread it, and this, sadly, is nothing new. Scandals, trumped up or otherwise, are good for ratings. And anybody out there who seriously believes that the “liberal media” is in bed with the Democrats, consider how much we heard about Whitewater, or Monica Lewinsky, or dozens of other things even more ridiculous, during the Bill Clinton presidency. Media outlets want viewers and readers because this is how they make money, and scandals are good for business.
What’s really happening here is happening for multiple reasons, none of which emanate from a legitimate concern about the security of our embassies. While numerous outlets reflect different numbers, a well-documented article by the admittedly liberal-leaning Media Matters for America demonstrates, through usage of independent sources, no fewer than seven such attacks during the George W. Bush administration. Where were these investigation-demanding Republicans then?
What’s really going on can be summed up in four quick points:
1) The fact that Republican members of Congress, in order to impress their political base, must attack the president constantly. Any Republican who doesn’t appear sufficiently aggressive against the president (see Charlie Crist, Chris Christie, etc.) immediately gets torn apart by the conservative base, and in some cases, such as what happened to Crist (now a Democrat), ends up facing a primary challenge.
2) The fact that Republican politicians have never gained any traction in their constant attempts to stoke hatred against the president and thereby weaken his personal brand. It has driven Republicans to distraction, as noted in a proposed super-PAC attack against President Obama during the 2012 election, that “Americans still aren’t ready to hate this president.”
3) The desire to bog the Obama Administration down in defending itself against ridiculous attacks rather than continuing to create uncomfortable pressure on the Republicans on actual issues, such as background checks for gun purchases. If you don’t think the president’s efforts on this issue have been producing results, look only at how Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-New Hampshire) and other Senators, of both parties, have seen their approval ratings fall off a cliff since voting against the background-check bill.
4) The Republicans’ abject fear of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gaining the Democratic nomination in 2016. As Time magazine reported on April 12th—just before this ridiculous tempest in a teapot was ginning up—numerous Republican political movers-and-shakers were all but conceding that Secretary Clinton would be unbeatable in a 2016 presidential run. They need to tarnish her now and either convince her not to run, or at least dent her approval ratings.
This isn’t about national security or a “cover up.” This is about the Republicans’ ongoing efforts to find a silver bullet against a president who, just like Bill Clinton, they couldn’t beat fairly at the polls. It’s also an attempt to preemptively destroy Hillary Clinton, whom they know they can’t beat at the polls. Don’t buy the hype.
Empathy Begins At Home
Last week, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) made news by announcing that, upon learning his son is gay, he has changed his position on gay marriage and now supports it.
It wasn’t unpredictable that there would be those on the political right who would criticize him for his change of heart. But what disturbs me is the blowback he is getting from some on the left.
I’ve seen a lot of social media chatter, since Portman’s announcement, along these lines: “So it took his son coming out for Portman to change his tune—why didn’t anybody else’s sons or daughters matter to him?”
First of all: Really? A Republican changes his mind and takes your side, publicly, on a crucial civil rights issue, and the first thing you do is criticize him for his motives, or for not doing it soon enough? Focus, people, will you?
Why Senator Portman changed his mind doesn’t really matter. The fact is that, regardless of his motives, he has taken a courageous stand that is almost certain to create political problems for him with at least a segment of his base. Any time a conservative changes his or her mind on this issue, that’s another crack in the wall of intolerance.
But there’s another reason why this is important. Remember when President Obama said one of the key characteristics he was looking for in a Supreme Court justice was empathy? Republicans reacted as if he had committed blasphemy.
Senator Portman’s love for his son enabled him to have empathy, and when that light of empathy went on over his head, he was able to extend it to everyone in the LGBT community and publicly change his position on marriage equality. That’s huge, and it took real guts. But more than anything else, it demonstrated the power of empathy in promoting progressive change.
The reason why the enemies of change are so afraid of empathy is pretty simple. It’s much harder to support policies that hurt a particular group—gays, the poor, ethnic minorities, etc.—when empathy enables you, for a moment, to walk in their shoes and see them as fellow human beings. Senator Portman has demonstrated—intentionally or not—why empathy is the number-one weapon against the opponents of social progress.
The Republican Senator from Ohio should be congratulated and praised for his decision, and those of us on the left should do a better job of understanding what it means: When people feel empathy, we win.
The Sequester: Why It's Going To Happen
I have a theory on this sequester business. I think a number of Republican and Democratic politicians secretly want it. Some Democrats (most notably, Howard Dean) believe this is the only way they’re going to get military spending under control, and some Republicans feel this is the only way they’re going to get any spending cuts at all.
Neither side is happy with all the cuts, but none of them are ever going to happen any other way, and this option, which requires nothing but continued inaction, enables each party to blame the other. Ask yourself a question: would Congress have passed this ticking time bomb in the first place if it really didn’t want it to go off?
Thank You, Dr. Koop
Dr. C. Everett Koop, who served as the U.S. Surgeon General under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, died today at 96 years old.
Dr. Koop was a true hero and a great American, and it is hardly disputable that many Americans alive today owe their lives and their health to him. In fact, the nearly ubiquitous expectation of condom use today, in order to prevent the spread of disease, can be traced directly to Dr. Koop and his extremely visible advocacy of safe sex.
Safe sex may seem like a no-brainer today, but in the 1980s, when social conservatives were feeling their oats—with one of their own in the White House and the so-called “Moral Majority” becoming a political force—it took real courage for Dr. Koop to lead a public crusade for the usage of condoms.
It was a real surprise to just about everybody that Dr. Koop would lead this crusade. A deeply religious, devout, conservative Christian, he considered homosexuality, non-marital sex and abortion to be morally wrong. I could not disagree more with his point of view on these issues. And yet, the fact that he was able to put his views, and the pressure of his ideological peers, aside and go where the facts led him—that is what elevated Dr. Koop to a true national treasure.
Confronted with the AIDS epidemic, which at that time was largely seen as a “gay plague,” those who supported Dr. Koop’s appointment expected him to condemn homosexuality and advocate sexual abstinence. Dr. Koop instead launched his public crusade in which he worked tirelessly to educate the public that the safest way to have sex was to use a condom every time.
Dr. Koop did not simply issue a report and leave it at that. He all but shouted it from the rooftops, using his office as a very public, very visible platform to spread the word across the country and the world. And it worked. When the 1980s began, condom use in non-marital, sexual relationships was by no means a given, particularly among gay couples, or among straight couples in which the female was on the pill. By the time I graduated high school in 1990, it was well understood that if you planned to have sex, you needed to use a condom. In terms of public health, there are probably two things anybody alive at the time remembers: “Just say no (to drugs),” as Nancy Reagan told us; and “Use a condom every time,” courtesy of Dr. Koop.
Additionally, Dr. Koop suggested that children receive comprehensive sex education starting in elementary school, which is still—unfortunately—a controversial issue today, nearly 30 years later. And, in another service to public health, he took on Big Tobacco and promoted the idea of a smoke-free society. We are not there yet, but every year, fewer and fewer Americans are engaging in this risky behavior.
And while Dr. Koop never veered from his belief that abortion was murder, he also refused to cave in to pressure from the right and endorse errant, pseudo-scientific theories that abortion would cause lasting harm to women who underwent one. It is a pity that there are those today who do not have the courage or the wisdom to follow his example.
In a time when it has become increasingly unlikely for those with strong viewpoints to overlook those views, and do what is necessary to save lives and improve public health, Dr. Koop stands as a beacon of reason, courage, and rectitude. Dr. Koop did the right thing for his country and his fellow human beings, even though he undoubtedly disapproved of the actions that made his condom crusade necessary. Despite his beliefs, he was right in his actions. I believe history will record that Dr. C. Everett Koop was one of the most influential and consequential human beings of the 20th century.
In matters of religion, I am an agnostic. I don’t know if a god exists, and frankly, I don’t care. But if the God in which Dr. Koop believed devoutly all his life does exist, and the good doctor has, in fact, met his maker today, I am confident that this divine being has welcomed Dr. Koop warmly, and congratulated him on a job well done.
Godspeed, Dr. Koop. Thank you for a life of service unmatched by almost anyone alive today.