Editorials
CONNONWEAL Gary-kari — & after Gary Hart is gone but the questions remain—about morality, char acter, presidential leadership, and the responsibility of the media. As for the Hart...
...And no one can dispute that crime, drugs, and AIDS destroy lives, families, and sometimes whole neighborhoods...
...Still, the social contract between government and citizenry demands both that government provide detention for criminals, rehabilitation for addicts, and care for the needy, and that specific communities embrace or at least tolerate the placement of facilities designated to provide such services...
...Question: Should adultery automatically disqualify a candidate from the presidency...
...Fortunately, not all the problems are quite so anguishing...
...What they may indicate about character, particularly the dimensions of character most relevant to public leadership, can only be understood in connection with other traits and circumstances...
...what is needed is trust...
...Just what is this relevance...
...These are truths known to citizens even without benefit of Freud...
...308: But not taking sex and family feeling lightly also means recognizing their complexity...
...And where in the Commonweal editorial do we hear the voice of the Gospel: Fear not...
...PATRICK JORDAN THE NIMBY SYNDROME It was no typical case of arson...
...The American presidency, in particular, combines some of the aspects of the British crown and the British prime minister, and what the British might tolerate in a Lloyd George would have been unthinkable in a Queen Victoria...
...An overheard phone call may alert someone to a crime...
...Has it asked what these theories might look like to the survivors of a nuclear war, fifty years from now...
...Do we build our homes on toxic dumps and not admit that our sleep and perhaps our children's futures are affected...
...Such a fact might indicate that the nominee was insincere in opposing Roe v. Wade, or hypocritical about abortion, or an inconsistent elitist...
...Is it moral because of the end it hopes to insure or garner...
...Instead it was "veracity . . . discipline . . . trustworthiness...
...It simultaneously holds (a) that "womanizing" is a serious strike against any presidential candidate but (b) that other personal failings, like drunk driving or cheating on taxes, may be even more significant...
...Where is there the faintest appeal to the "New Commandment...
...But Hart's remarks were not just self-exculpatory...
...As so often, the public's apparent inconsistency may reflect a deeper balance...
...Both journalists agreed it would...
...At that point, of course, the questions get stickier...
...Perhaps it is the frightful memory, somewhere in our collective unconsciousness, of Hiroshima and Nagasaki...
...What concerned them wasn't the six infants — neglected and/or abused by their parents and left in hospitals long after treatment — who were scheduled to move into the house in Fresh Meadows, and thereby into the city's foster care system...
...The purpose of these weapons is to inaugurate or carry on acts of war so catastrophic that they are beyond the soul's wildest imagination...
...They were against drugs — the specter that the drug-addicted parents of these babies might bring their vices to the quiet streets of Queens, endangering other people's children as well as their own...
...If hard-nosed realism is your measure, ask the Pentagon...
...Anyone doubting that should have been listening to a public television discussion, broadcast right in the midst of the Hart brouhaha, on the president's power to shape interpretation of the Constitution by appointments to the federal courts...
...Lie detectors may reveal important information...
...No, the alleged arsonists said they weren't against homeless babes...
...It is a reality of the American system that candidates have to respect no less than they do the need for, say, an effective farm or education policy...
...Are there questions a candidate should simply refuse to answer—or any decent journalist refuse to ask...
...Installed, they lie hidden — do we not wish to look upon our saviors openly...
...In the last analysis, will it be Christ or Kissinger...
...That is why, for example, many voters who are untroubled by Teddy Kennedy in the Senate still balk at the idea of Teddy Kennedy in the White House...
...Run that by us again...
...In between is the great waffling public...
...We threaten our entire species...
...Effective law enforcement, open dialogue with the community, and vigilant citizens monitoring a facility's effect on the neighborhood can reduce some but certainly not all of these negative consequences...
...Why is Commonweal so sure that the latter means will not be able to achieve the bishops' goal...
...When the Best and the Brightest Award for Hubris and Complacency is conferred for 1987, we can guess whose name will be in the envelope...
...While the attitude is understandable in part, in the main, it is a form of self-interest that undermines the social contract between government and citizens which lies at the foundation of a free society...
...One national political commentator declared on TV that the issue in the Hart case "wasnor adultery...
...taxpayers pay exorbitant fiscal and social costs for stopgap remedies (like welfare hotels, babies residing in hospitals, and overcrowded prisons...
...If this is correct, then out of the depths we must cry to you, Lord...
...No, said Moyers firmly...
...Who leaves matches out for children, or guns in the reach of distrubed adolescents...
...Is it because of such voices and upraised arms that the nuclear night has so far been prevented from falling again...
...your fear is worth nothing...
...We have exchanged the club of our ancestors for the heat-sensing, computerized total fire storm of the bomb...
...Yes, he had "made some mistakes"(echoes of Ronald Reagan) because he was, yes, "human," and though they may have been, yes, "big mistakes," they certainly weren't "bad mistakes...
...in the depths of the sea or chained off in no man's lands, time bombs subject to accident, blackmail, stupidity, and misguided ideologues...
...Running throughout his statement was the implication that he was just too good for the "political game," victimized as a "rare bird" because of his fatal superiority to other politicians...
...would that be a story...
...There is too little breadth in the Commonweal opinion, too little vision...
...Does it give the media license —or indeed an obligation—to investigate and publicize every aspect of a candidate's life...
...Might it be that for each of our nuclear warheads there arises before the face of God a voice, silent to us since August 1945, which pleads in our behalf: " No...
...Yes, replied another respected journalist...
...We are prisoners, but we should be grateful...
...As for the Hart candidacy itself, goodbye and good riddance...
...and government is railroaded into a secrecy that thwarts any attempt to hold it accountable...
...Is it the weapons themselves that deter...
...On the other hand are the tough guys—call them the Front-Pagers...
...There have been opportunities...
...a society rife with them would be hateful...
...Today, the "royal" dimension of the presidency badly needs to be contained rather than emphasized...
...and we are bold enough to smile down on those who would even suggest the law of compassion...
...But Hart cases make bad laws, as well as bad puns...
...This rationale, called NIMBY (Not in My Backyard), has been raised throughout the nation to protest the construction of prisons, facilities for the mentally ill, drug-treatment centers, shelters for the homeless, AIDS hospices, and now a home for six so-called "boarder babies...
...3. Just because some information proves useful, don't suppose that the means of obtaining it have to be institutionalized...
...What if the nominee had herself obtained an abortion...
...Does this mean that, in an age of media scrutiny, the nation's insistence on what are currently called "family values" in its national leader will leave it bereft of qualified candidates for the presidency...
...We willingly threaten not only our enemies, but our selves...
...We are hostages to a dragon monster of our own making...
...It quickly dropped its opinion of Gary Hart but just as quickly blamed the press for going too far in digging out the Hart story...
...Harlem's cherished Hale House, which cares for drug-addicted mothers and children, has refused to disclose the location of its centers for infants with AIDS, lest the public rage against it, or someone ignite a bundle of rags in the basement...
...It is not true, as the editorial asserts, that the logical conclusion of rejecting nuclear deterrence is total and unilateral disarmament...
...Responses have tended to fall into three groups...
...It did not concern the nominee directly and therefore had no relevance to the question of congressional approval...
...Furthermore, if we know the other traits and circumstances, the sexual behavior is simply apt to be confirmatory...
...It is true that property values can drop when certain types of public facilities go up next door...
...We are colossal masochists...
...Ordinary folks who tuned in late might have stupidly thought he was talking about adultery...
...Out of the depths we cry...
...310...
...But the case of Hart has raised issues that will no doubt haunt the rest of the campaign, and have important implications for American public life generally...
...The pro307 gram's moderator suddenly asked Bill Moyers what he would do if a document came across his desk showing that the fourteen-year-old daughter, of an anti-floe v. Wade nominee for a federal judgeship had obtained an abortion...
...but it is not about to disappear, and probably shouldn't in any case...
...Hart never quite grasped the difference between articulating a political program and being a political leader...
...Has it not been rather the human decision not to use 309 them...
...Nuclear weapons are, to use the phrase of Freeman Dyson, contemptible weapons...
...We have created it to protect our own freedom...
...But there is an answer: Love one another, as I have loved you...
...All's fair in love and politics, and if you can't stand the heat, stay out of the bedroom...
...Where is there a ready acknowledgement of the responsibility we all bear for the situation we have created...
...At the heart, we have chosen the law of the cudgel...
...Even private organizations are affected...
...I haven't spent a lot of time and effort trying to create an image," said the man who has worn his brains on his sleeve just as ostentatiously as other politicians have worn their hearts there...
...Will some other editor, with much less provocation maybe but a good tip nonetheless, have enough fortitude not to make stakeouts standard operating practice for political reporters...
...Among them are individuals of intellectual caliber equal to or greater than Hart's and with a good deal more proven legislative or administrative skills...
...While questioning the morality of nuclear deterrence and calling for the ultimate dismantling of all nuclear weapons, they have maintained that the means to such a goal are multilateral, verifiable, and gradual reductions...
...it does not even guarantee they will be used only by competent authority...
...American presidents not only lead the nation politically, they represent it symbolically...
...Question: Does persistent flouting of one's marriage vows reveal something about a candidate's character that might be relevant to service in the nation's highest office, or for that matter in almost any office...
...If the symbolic role of national leadership eliminates political figures who recklessly affront the society's sexual standards, it is no less symbolically unacceptable to allow presidents, presidential candidates, and other top leaders no sphere of privacy for their intimate lives...
...2. Don't destroy all the lines between public and private...
...that stable neighborhoods may change, depending on the size and nature of the facility in question...
...To whom do we turn for advice in learning to resolve human conflict...
...Is it indeed nuclear weapons which have deterred nuclear war...
...The U.S...
...With nuclear arms we have created the ultimate weapon of massive human terrorism...
...We hope so, and not because sexual behavior is unimportant, but because it is important, and with it the preservation of a sphere of privacy essential to genuine intimacy and family relations...
...the ability to sustain relations over time...
...that doesn't mean eavesdropping should be made a habit...
...Gary Hart may have given the Miami Herald sufficient cause for its stakeout before the fact and plenty of justification for it afterwards...
...that affluent neighborhoods are too often not considered as possible sites...
...They do not know what they are doing...
...Answer: Yes...
...And if we have shown the wisdom not to use them, can we not decide to dismantle them...
...No, the Constitution does not guarantee they will never be used...
...Their manufacture is fraught with danger, as is their deployment...
...Would Moyers consider that a legitimate news story...
...They are either amused or appalled by this primitive American moralism that thinks public life and sexual mores might in any way be connected...
...When the social contract breaks down, all things are possible...
...After the revelations of the preceding days, we were to be reassured by the assertion that "frankly, I'm pretty happy with who I am...
...CONNONWEAL Gary-kari — & after Gary Hart is gone but the questions remain—about morality, character, presidential leadership, and the responsibility of the media...
...Answer: No...
...Of course, political figures who parade their families and construct their images with little vignettes about their breakfast cuisine have only themselves to blame for the erosion of a private sphere...
...If Gary Hart wanted to confirm all the nagging doubts about his character, he could not have done it better than with his departing statement...
...Waves of organized protest and litigation by any community mean that government has to dicker, often resulting in decreased services...
...Commonweal may have made a prudential judgment that nuclear deterrence is necessary, the lesser of evils...
...they were self-congratulatory...
...Allegedly, the house was torched by a few members of the Fresh Meadows Improvement Association, family men who couldn't bear to see their neighborhood jeopardized...
...What has dropped from sight in the Commonweal editorial is that nuclear armaments are by design war-fighting weapons...
...AN EDITORIAL DISSENT Commonweal's editorial "Is Deterrence Moral" (May 8) concluded that it is not only inevitable but reasonable, and by deduction advisable, that we accept living beneath the nuclear threat, at least into an indefinite future and perhaps forever...
...And for every time the media have stepped over the line to dig up political leaders' personal failings, they have probably stepped over the line dozens of times to peddle imagemakers' pap...
...Who is it that instructs us in the meaning of life...
...But it has not explained why nuclear deterrence is moral...
...bishops have never suggested that...
...Nonsense...
...The loss of Gary Hart, for instance, still leaves the Democratic party with an excellent range of candidates...
...The lines were blurring fast...
...It fails to see beyond the dragon's smoke...
...To the worldly wise and the tough guys, the public seems to be saying: 1. Don't take sex and family faithfulness lightly...
...On the one hand are the worldly wise —call them Euristocrats...
...Are useful means necessarily moral...
...Indeed, has it asked what these look like to the very Communion of Saints...
...It settles for the view of a small number of American intellectuals and strategists...
...What if the nominee had made the arrangements for the daughter...
...All that is left is to prevent it from breaking forth in fiery fury by appeasing it with attention and resources (our homage), and to parade it before our enemies...
Vol. 114 • May 1987 • No. 10
