Dr. Condoleeza Rice was confirmed as the new secretary of state by the U.S. Senate last week in an overwhelming 85-13 vote. Her confirmation came as no surprise, and her critics were the “usual suspects:” sore loser Democrats like Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, whose only goal in life is to make things difficult for the Bush Administration.
Most of the 12 dissenting Democrats (and one Democratic-leaning independent) voted as they did more for political reasons than anything else. They didn’t vote against Dr. Rice because she is unqualified – virtually everyone, including her critics, agrees that she is. They voted against her out of opposition to the Bush Administration’s policy on Iraq. Voting against a cabinet nominee over disagreement with an administration’s policy is unusual, but not unexpected. The Democratic party desperately needs to convince the American people that the Iraq war was a mistake in order to gain a better political standing. It’s a strategy that was not very successful in the last election, but with poll numbers being as they are, could possibly work in ’06.
Still, one cannot help but wonder if something more sinister is at play in this move. One of the leading obstructionists to a vote on Rice’s confirmation was Sen. Robert Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat. Sen. Byrd, you might recall, is a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Though he officially left that racist group in 1943, he has spent much of his career in public service fighting against civil rights legislation. He was particularly opposed to desegregating the military. During the Civil Rights movement, Byrd called Dr. Martin Luther King a “coward.” Byrd also holds the dubious distinction of having voted against both African-American Supreme Court Justices: liberal Thurgood Marshall, and conservative Clarence Thomas.
But that was years ago, you say. Surely Sen. Byrd has changed since then. Obviously, there is no way to see if racism still stains his heart. However, he did use the N-word on Fox News Sunday in 2001, so it seems fair to question his commitment to equal rights, and his motives for opposing Dr. Rice’s confirmation.
What is truly curious about this situation is not Byrd’s opposition to Dr. Rice, but the mainstream media’s baffling silence on the matter. Outside of talk radio and internet blogs very little has been said. Do you think the media would be so silent on the matter if the roles were reversed, and a Republican former Klansman was fighting so hard to stop the confirmation of an African-American to a cabinet post? Of course not. That Republican would be stripped of any leadership position he held, and quite possibly banished from politics altogether. Or, more likely, he would have been so ostracized (and rightfully so) at the beginning of his career, and never would have gotten anywhere in politics.
Yet, because he is a Democrat, Byrd gets a pass. This is nothing new. We all remember Sen. Trent Lott’s (R-MS) stupid comments about how Strom Thurmond should have been elected president in 1948 (when he was a segregationist Dixiecrat). No one remembers Sen. Christopher Dodd’s (D-CT) equally stupid praise of Byrd: “Robert C. Byrd… would have been right at any time [in American history]. He would have been right at the founding of this country… he would have been right during the great conflict of civil war in this nation. I cannot think of a single moment in this nation’s 220-plus year history where he would not have been a valuable asset to this country.” Where’s the outrage?
Other interesting facts omitted from most observer’s official memory include how nearly every segregationist (including Alabama Gov. George Wallace, Georgia Gov. Lester Maddox, and Arkansas Gov. Orville Faubus) was a Democrat. Or that a higher percentage of Senate Republicans supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than did Democrats. Being a Democrat clearly does not exempt one from racism.
So what are we to think of Robert Byrd’s opposition to Dr. Rice’s confirmation? Byrd has long been a harsh critic of Bush, so perhaps it is for political reasons. Perhaps Byrd is the only person in the world who honestly believes Rice is not qualified. Or perhaps it is something more despicable. There is no way to know. Even if a reporter asked, it’s doubtful that Byrd would tell the truth.
But it would still be nice if someone would bother to ask.
John Brown (www.johnnorrisbrown.com) is a senior in political science and history at the University of Tennessee @ Knoxville. Contact him at johnnyb325@aol.com. This column originally appeared in the February 1, 2005 edition of The Daily Beacon entitled "Racism plays role in confirmation," available here.