Daley’s lame evasion freshens ‘ancient’ allegations of cheating
What is a fair-minded Chicago voter to make of the strong evidence reported Thursday in the Tribune that current Chicago mayoral candidate Bill Daley received illicit help to pass a state insurance broker’s test in 1973?
That was 46 years ago! Talk about bygones.
“At a time when Chicago is facing serious issues around crime, taxes, education and the city’s future, the Tribune’s focus on ancient history is irrelevant,” said a statement from Daley’s campaign.
The fair-minded person, the one who wants to be an objective juror in the court of public opinion, uninfluenced either way by feelings about the candidate or the Daley family, squints skeptically at this deflection. Yes, the allegation is old, but it is serious. Where is the refutation, explanation or apology? Where is the counterpoint or clarification that will allow us to decide how relevant this story is to our vote?
The fair-minded person — this fair-minded person, anyway — views the response as a fresh and therefore relevant offense, a bigger mark against him than any shenanigans he was part of nearly half a century ago.
Another fair-minded person — you, perhaps — will have a different verdict. That’s fine. As long as we’re all trying to apply our principles consistently and honestly.
I’ve been thinking a lot about fair-mindedness lately, having received some two dozen angry messages from readers in the past several days accusing me of partisan bias and hypocrisy in my assessment of the controversy involving Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam.
If Northam were a Republican, these indignant correspondents contend, I would be far less willing to categorize his wearing of blackface makeup 35 years ago as obliviousness rather than racism. I would be howling for his resignation.
Not true. The principle I applied in looking at the situation was that no one is perfect and that time informally erases many mistakes just as time formally erases many crimes.
Not all mistakes and all crimes, of course. But our understanding that people change as the decades pass and our tradition of forgiving those who repent dictates a response of mercy, not rage, to an offense such as Northam’s.
Yes, his apology has been marred by shifts in what he was willing to admit to and by an excruciating performance at a news conference. If we learn that he’s been lying today, that’s a fresh offense and he has to go. But nothing we know about his life since 1984, when he admits to having darkened his skin to imitate Michael Jackson for a dance contest, suggests that his hurtful and offensive decision was evidence of malice, much less of a toxic character flaw that disqualifies him from public office to this day.
All racism is evidence of ignorance. But not all ignorance is evidence of racism.
Some correspondents asked, what about Brett Kavanaugh? After Christine Blasey Ford accused the conservative U.S. Supreme Court nominee of sexually attacking her when they were both teenagers, correspondents noted that I argued (in vain) that Kavanaugh shouldn’t be confirmed by the Senate.
I did. But it wasn’t because of what Kavanaugh did or didn’t do in the early 1980s, when Ford said he groped her and tried to take off her clothes at a high school party when he was drunk. Not to minimize the harm of that kind of attack, which I do believe occurred, but it strikes me as a redeemable sin of youth, so long as the offender seeks redemption.
Kavanaugh’s disqualifying offense to my mind was lying under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee not just about the incident but also about aspects of his character back then as revealed in his high school yearbook.
I bring this up not to relitigate that particular controversy — we’ve all made up our minds on it and moved on — but to say I like to think my conclusion would have been the same for a similarly accused male Supreme Court nominee with the liberal bona fides of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
I like to think so. But I recognize that it’s a constant challenge for all of us not to be overly harsh on members of the other team and overly forgiving of members of our team.
Consider:
What’s a fair-minded voter to make of the image published recently by The Washington Post showing that Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., identified herself as “American Indian” in 1986 on a registration form for the Texas state bar? It’s still more evidence of Warren’s peculiar and seemingly opportunistic effort to claim a Native American identity based on family lore that she had indigenous people as distant relatives.
She has abandoned that effort and apologized to tribal leaders angered that she took a DNA test (that found mere traces of American Indian ancestry), as though blood and identity are equivalent. I find it weird but not disqualifying.
But I find it far weirder that President Donald Trump — who has not retracted his own origin story after a New York Times report last year showed his claim to being a self-made millionaire to be a myth if not an outright fraud — gets away with mocking Warren with the slur “Pocahontas.”
Trump tells more lies before breakfast than Warren has probably told in her entire life, so the fair-minded voter concludes that Trump and his unprincipled enthusiasts are rip-snorting hypocrites to taunt her.
What’s a fair-minded person to make of political scientist Vanessa Tyson’s accusation that Virginia’s Democratic Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax forced her to perform oral sex on him in a Boston hotel room during the 2004 Democratic National Convention?
This is a significant accusation because Fairfax is next in line should Northam resign, as people all across the political spectrum are demanding he do. But the fair-minded person weighs the evidence supporting this accusation and the evidence supporting Fairfax’s’ insistence that the encounter was consensual without regard to party or consequences.
The passage of 15 years hasn’t mitigated this alleged offense, and if it’s true then Fairfax needs to resign and see if he can start his political career over.
The news seems to make daily demands on us to judge and pass sentence on the confessed and alleged misdeeds of others.
Fair-minded people won’t necessarily all draw the same lines, apply the same standards and reach the same verdicts. But they’ll strive for consistency, make sincere efforts to put shoes on other feet and follow their principles to sometimes uncomfortable conclusions.
And their fairness will illuminate their letters to newspaper columnists.
Quote of the month, so far
Mayoral candidate Daley to the Tribune’s Bill Ruthhart on why he stays away from so many mayoral forums: “Some of these people in this group would go to a door opening, because they have nothing else to do. I’m not going to be dictated by the schedules of people who are looking for anything to get a few people in a room and think they’re going to get points by kicking the hell out of me with a bunch of lies or rhetoric that heats up the crowd. Why would I want to do their work for them? Forget it. I don’t need to do that.”
Be all ears
Two new podcasts I’ve been recommending:
“Back Room Deal” is a short, near-daily, ward-level analysis of the coming Chicago election hosted by Ben Joravsky and Maya Dukmasova of the Chicago Reader. Their brisk conversations and insights have made me smarter.
“Public Official A” is a serialized retelling of the bizarre, compelling tale of now-imprisoned former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, hosted by WBEZFM 91.5 political reporter Dave McKinney. The archival audio and fresh interviews make this a must-listen for local history buffs.
Re: Tweets
The winner of this week’s online reader poll for funniest tweet is, “Three conspiracy theorists walk into a bar ... You can’t tell me that’s just coincidence.” by @theDRaGnrebOrN. To receive an email alert after each new poll is posted, go to chicagotribune.com/newsletters and sign up under Change of Subject.