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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2011 > January > 17
Monday, January 17, 2011
Editorial: Obama, Boehner hit right chords after Tucson
It is perhaps a measure of the general good fortune of this society that the Tucson massacre has seized the attention of the nation, to the point of prompting an evening presidential speech five days later pre-empting normal television and to the point of prompting a national discussion about the nature of our politics.
After all, in some places, horrors the size of that in Tucson are common.
President Barack Obama recognized
that the event might be comparable to 9/11, obviously not in scope, but in the potential for bringing the country together.
There’s a certain irony in that, of course, because the first political impact of the massacre was to set off an appalling descent into finger-pointing and countercharges.
The president recognized that the country wanted something else. He delivered a speech that could hardly fail to move, ending with a memorable peroration about the little girl who was killed. He spoke of her idealism, her budding recognition of government, her assumption that her congresswoman must be a good person, a potential role model.
“She saw all this,” he said, “through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted.”
“I want to live up to her expectations,” he said. “I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it.” A good hope. Also worth noting is a public statement by new House Speaker John Boehner, of West Chester. That he shed tears surprised no one, of course. But it was good for country to see him shed tears for Democrats. That offered hope that things aren’t quite as far gone in Washington as they sometimes seem to be.
When Speaker Boehner spoke of a young congressional aide who was killed in the massacre, he referred to him as “one of our own.” He meant it. Some old-timers were reminded of a time when Capitol Hill was something of a community, when people were bound together by shared interests. It’s not nearly so true today.
Like the president, the speaker avoided the mud fight about who might be blamed for the shooting and who is trying to make political hay out of it.
Even before he spoke, Speaker Boehner was being given good marks by Democrats for the spirit with which he had dealt with the tragedy.
Ultimately, perhaps, one impact of Tucson will be to remind people who participate in politics for a living that politics is one boat, and that they are all in it, that they have more in common with each other than with people who aren’t engaged.
To some outside Washington, the very possibility of people in different parties having warm feelings for each other is a threat, evidence that some entity called “the people” is being forgotten by the political establishment. But often they mean not “the” people, but my people, the good ones, as opposed to the bad ones.
Soon enough, Washingtonians will return to their old fights. But for a while, at least, maybe some of them will be able to look at each other a little differently.
Meanwhile, it should not be forgotten that the politicians are not the only players in the nation’s political discourse. The vitriol and demonizing will continue so long as that behavior finds a market. The people have to send a message — a sustained message — about what they want.
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Editorial: O’Connor right; election rules make no sense
Set aside for the moment the question of whether judges should be elected. That one has been thrown around in Ohio forever. For this moment, the question is about how judges are elected.
Ohio has an incredibly stupid, indefensible hybrid of a system.
Theoretically, judicial races are non-partisan. That is, political party labels do not appear on the ballot. This leaves some voters in the dark about the candidates.
Of course, the most alert voters know that judicial races typically are partisan in the meaningful — as opposed to theoretical — sense: candidates are backed by political parties and partisans.
They are often screened by party organizations and, if there’s competition for the party’s endorsement, selected by a party chair or committee. Then their names show up on the party’s mailers that are sent to voters.
The party’s help often doesn’t go beyond that. Generally, they don’t have money to burn on these races.
But, at least in contests for the Ohio Supreme Court, other political groups throw their money behind candidates according to their party affiliations. Make no mistake, the liberal and conservative interest groups know who the Democrats and Republicans are.
However, that isn’t what’s peculiarly stupid about the system. After all, a similar system is used in city elections. There, too, party labels are missing from the ballots, but party connections are typically known and considered, at least in big cities.
What makes judicial races special in their absurdity is that the supposedly non-partisan races that happen in November are preceded by partisan primaries.
That is, if more than one candidate wants to be the choice of a particular party, and if someone isn’t willing to abide by the decision of the party organization, then a primary is held.
And it’s held under the same rules as other Ohio primaries: To vote, a person must request the ballot of the party in question. People who are unwilling to identify themselves with a party in a primary don’t get to vote.
But then the winners in the two parties go before the general electorate — without party labels.
So before a candidate runs as a non-partisan — because, after all, that’s appropriate for a judge or justice — he or she has to be the more successful partisan. Ohio’s new chief justice, Maureen O’Connor, says she’d like to change that.
She says that judicial candidates should have to run in the kind of primary that cities have: Everybody enters one field; there are no party labels on the ballot; and the top two finishers advance to November, again sans labels (on the ballot).
The logic is strong: If the candidates are really non-partisans, let them run as non-partisans. But all systems have downsides.
Unlike municipal races, most judicial races are held in even-numbered years. So there are likely to be other primaries happening at the same time. Presumably, the O’Connor proposal would work like this: the same judicial races would be on all ballots — Democratic, Republican or independent.
One could imagine a year in which far more people are voting in one party’s statewide primary than the other’s, because the juicy action is on that side. This could result in two judicial candidates of the same party advancing to the November finals.
If that’s the great concern, a different reform might be in order: put party labels on ballots in all judicial races — primary and general. There’s always something to be said for the honest approach.
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Editorial: Dayton’s MLK day has cloud hanging over it
As local Martin Luther King Jr. celebrations go, this year’s has a sad backdrop.
Right before the holidays, the Urban League, a major and long-time provider of social services to the black community, was abruptly closed because it couldn’t meet payroll.
Two weeks ago, there was a possibility that the local Southern Christian Leadership Conference — newly reconstituted after it was caught up in scandal — and the Dayton Christian Ministers Association would have rival MLK marches today.
That silly situation only ended after Dayton’s police chief said that two marches couldn’t go forward, that that was asking too much of his department.
Another local black organization, the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, also collapsed in the last year because of its connections to the local SCLC and because of its own involvement in billing governments for social services that weren’t being provided or documented.
Then last week, the Rev. Raleigh Trammell, who ran the SCLC and was also a leader in the ministers’ group, was indicted on dozens of felony charges for his alleged role in the scandal that engulfed the two groups.
(Meanwhile, Rev. Trammell and others outside of Dayton remain under investigation by federal authorities for their handling of finances at the national offices of the SCLC, a storied group whose first president was Dr. King, and which has had its own dire problems.)
Then there’s the national economic picture and political atmosphere.
The unemployment rate is stunning among blacks, especially in cities. The housing crisis has decimated many black neighborhoods, and blacks (and the poor and the elderly) were targeted by purveyors of predatory loans that stripped many of wealth created over a life time.
Though the history Barack Obama made when he was elected prompts tremendous pride, the president has not been able to deliver the enormous change many were hoping for.
The level of attacks on him and some specific insults have been painful.
On the local political scene, in the last 13 months, two prominent black political officials — former Mayor Rhine McLin and former Sen. Fred Strahorn — lost re-election, notwithstanding the fact that they were running in areas that favored them.
Adding all this up, there has been much concentrated disappointment and heartache, mixed in with embarrassment.
It’s presumptuous to assume what Rev. King might say in these times. It’s also difficult to speculate about his thoughts because there is the big picture and the small picture.
The big picture is that civil rights have come incredibly far in this country and, in many ways, there’s much to be proud and hopeful about.
Possibly Dr. King would be most taken with this good because that was among the things that made him great — his sense of possibility, his capacity for inspiration even in dark times, his refusal go give in to despair or defeat in the face of overwhelming problems.
Though there’s much more to do — especially in the area of improving blacks’ economic fortunes — the remarkable success in stemming discrimination and bridging the racial divide continues to be worth noting and celebrating today.
Going forward on the local level, though, promoting those moral imperatives will take new groups and changed ones.
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