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from: Dahlia Lithwick

I Want To Believe

Posted Friday, Aug. 4, 2000, at 11:30 PM ET

Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor. Chris Suellentrop is a Slate assistant editor.

PHILADELPHIA, Thursday, Aug. 3—Not since we first encountered Anna Nicole Smith has the question "Are they for real?" more consumed this nation.

While at its worst, the GOP's new inclusiveness and social sensitivity is pandering (the 400-foot sombrero on the Mariachi singer tonight being rock bottom); at its best, it's pretty moving. A genuine note of Christian redemption—we have ignored you, O poor and downtrodden, we have shunned your NAACP conventions—was sounded throughout the week. Even cynical reporters found themselves wondering idly whether, maybe—is it too much to hope?—this was more than just a shameless ploy.

Tonight on the way to the convention, I chat with a black man who works in television. I ask if he believes there's a kernel of authentic redemption in the new GOP. He shakes his head, saying it's all just a commercial. He says the pandering sickened him. "Why can't they spend this money they use trying to fool us refurbishing schools?"

The speculation about the genuineness of George W. Bush's new compassion is reminiscent of how we feel about death-row inmates who claim to have found Christ. We want to believe they've really changed. But mostly, we just go ahead and flip the switch anyhow.

But the Republicans say they really have changed, and the Democrats are wigging out this week because the country is just desperate enough to need to believe it. Now the Dems have to figure out how to communicate the message that they cared about the poor and downtrodden first without looking like a bunch of babies. As if poor minorities are a lunar landing and whoever gets to them first gets to keep them.

Still, it's hard to doubt Gov. Bush's compassion for the burnt-out and the broken tonight. In his speech he describes the 15-year-old black boy, an "angry, wary kid" he encounters in the Marlin, Texas, jail. He tells of the boy's "haunting" question: "What do you think of me?" And he understands what the kid is really asking: "Is there hope for me? Do I have a chance? ... Do you, a white man in a suit, really care what happens to me?" Imagine Ronald Reagan giving such a speech. Bush has spoken to a black boy in a jail. But he has not answered the boy's question.

Toward the end of a nearly flawless speech, Bush returns to the boy in jail. And again, he does not tell us whether he answered this boy.

Is the New Sensitivity real or made of silicone? And what if it ruptures and poisons us all? Bush has selected a running mate who's made his feelings about poor children, bullets, and Nelson Mandela pretty clear. But he's building a case for himself as the first Republican presidential candidate in a long time to lie awake nights worrying about the crack babies instead of his chip shot. A black boy in juvie is still a prop—a human version of the 400-foot sombrero. Unless there is an answer for his questions. An answer would have made him—and in turn Gov. Bush—easier to believe in.

dispatches
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from: Dahlia Lithwick

I Want To Believe

Posted Friday, Aug. 4, 2000, at 11:30 PM ET
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Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor. Chris Suellentrop, a former Slate staffer, writes "The Opinionator" for the New York Times.
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Reader Response from The Fray:

You're aiming at the wrong gender, Dahlia. The only real solutions to these sort of problems in our society will come through volunteerism, changes in character, Christian philosophy, etc. Not through more money, more muscle. Blame the males for not having the courage to believe in their own rhetoric, but don't denigrate the women for talking about and encouraging the only ideas that will actually work.

And Hillary has suffered more than her opponents? Does it matter to you at all that it is self-inflicted? Hillary Clinton isn't first and foremost bright, ambitious, or tough; she's a masochist. And a collaborator. And these types of people don't deserve anything, except maybe more leniency at trial than the puppet-masters. Suffering doesn't make a saint.

--Bill Buss

(To reply, click here.)

All of today's news coverage featured women who are happy to be with a party that understands their needs. Which needs where those? Having the big house in Texas with doors to their children's room? Having the Presidency be a prerequisite to being a grandfather? Of creating sterile school environments so we don't have to think about those poor, uneducable children? Did the speechwriters not have time to throw something together or was that speech calculated for her to sound like a woman who won't interfere with men's business?

--Cathy M.
(To reply, click here.)

(8/1)

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