Profiles in Cowardice

This is an article I published in my local newspaper a few years ago.

Profiles in Cowardice

In 1957, Senator John F. Kennedy published Profiles in Courage, a book containing eight accounts of outstanding acts of bravery by elected officials. It won a Pulitzer Prize. A sequel, edited by Caroline Kennedy, is twelfth on the New York Times Bestseller List as of this writing. Each of the vignettes in these books describes one of those comparatively rare moments when a politician transcends politics and self-interest, and makes a difficult choice on the sole ground that it is the right thing to do.

Such displays of courage are rare at the best of times, and from my own observation, they are not becoming any more frequent. While it is altogether fitting to recognize them, I propose to give a moment in the sun to one of their opposite number; a moment of craven, tail-between-the-legs political and moral cowardice. In that spirit, submitted for your consideration are the Elian Gonzalez Senate Hearings and Senator Trent Lott.

In the early morning of Saturday, April 22, 2000, armed agents of the United States Department of Justice entered the Miami home of Lazaro Gonzalez and took his nephew Elian into custody. They did this for two reasons. First, Lazaro Gonzalez, in order to become Elian’s temporary guardian, had signed a document pledging that he would surrender Elian whenever and wherever the Immigration and Naturalization Service directed. The INS directed him to surrender Elian, and he refused. The second reason was that Elian’s father Miguel had come to the United States and wanted his son back. Two months later, Elian and his father flew back to Cuba together.

When the raid was over, all of the real people had done essentially all of the real things that would be done to reunite Elian and his father. At that point the stage was set for the entrance of the politicians.

Trent Lott, then Senate Majority Leader, immediately announced that Senate hearings would be convened within a week’s time. "We have a responsibility to ... try to find the truth because there are a lot of questions out there," said Lott, a Mississippi Republican. "I just wish I knew the truth." Senator Connie Mack a Republican from, not surprisingly, Florida said, “"Are we going to settle a legal dispute at the point of a gun? I think the question is so fundamental that it would be a dereliction of duty not to conduct an investigation." Lott ordered Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, then chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, to schedule hearings. With Truth and Duty at stake, there seemed to be no avoiding them.

Then an even more compelling factor intervened: the Opinion Polls.

Polls showed that an overwhelming number of Americans approved of the Justice Department’s raid on the home of Lazaro Gonzalez, and an even more overwhelming number agreed that Elian Gonzalez should be given into the custody of his father. Now, Republican Senators Lott, Hatch, and Mack were faced with a dilemma: should they go forward with the hearings for the sake of Truth and Duty, or slink away like a craven curs in the face of public opinion. The outcome was never in doubt.

On April 28, 2000, a spokeswoman for the Judiciary Committee announced that the hearings, planned for the following week, had been postponed because the Justice Department was unable to provide all of the documents that the Committee had subpoenaed in time. The Clinton administration, faced with the unheard-of opportunity to actually avoid a Congressional investigation of something it had done, played right along (“Documents, yeah! That’s the ticket!”). The spokeswoman announced that the hearings would be rescheduled "in the coming weeks," but that no specific date has been set.

And it still hasn’t been set. It never will be set. Eventually the entire idea of hearings was allowed to die a quiet death.

Why did Mack, Hatch, and Lott, experienced politicians all, make such a blunder? Connie Mack’s motivation was transparent; in calling for hearings he was simply toadying to the large Cuban American community that voted in elections in which he ran. Hatch, to his credit, never seemed particularly enthused about the whole thing. Lott was simply unable to control himself. A man with the temperament of a schoolyard bully, he had attacked the Clinton administration so often that his immediate reaction, flying in the face of all common sense, was to try it once again. Like many bullies who are confronted, he slunk away. Final tally, Political Expediency over Truth and Duty in a landslide.

A bit of recent history might help to put this in perspective. Richard Nixon, while president, appointed an Appeals Court Judge named G. Harrold Carswell to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. Carswell’s nomination, which had to be confirmed by the Senate, ran into two problems. One was evidence that he was racially biased. Another, admitted even by his supporters, was that he just didn’t seem very bright. Republican Senator Roman Hruska, a supporter, said, "Even if he is mediocre there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance?” Despite Hruska’s stirring endorsement, Carswell’s nomination was not confirmed.

The spineless, unlike the mediocre, have never lacked for representation. With Trent Lott in the Senate, they never will. And that’s today’s Profile in Cowardice.

POSTSCRIPT: In fairness to Lott, we should now revisit the issue of his cowardice in light of his public comment that America would have avoided "all these problems over all these years" if it had elected segregationist Strom Thurmond in 1948, instead of Harry Truman, who sponsored some of the earliest civil rights legislation enacted in twentieth century America. These remarks cost Lott his position as Senate Majority Leader. So the question arises, was Lott bravely espousing an unpopular, but deeply felt view when he said this? Or was he shamelessly pandering to bigots and stupid enough to think that he wouldn't get caught? You be the judge.