Talking on Race, Bush Is ‘Nuts’--or ‘Gutless’

If you think George Bush exploited Willie Horton to win the presidency, wait till you see what he does with the Los Angeles riot. You can almost hear the high-fives slapping as his campaign crew starts to work on turning a national tragedy into the Republican version of a race war. All the while, our benevolent President feigns great concern for the unwashed masses mired in poverty. Give me a break! Bush wouldn’t know poverty if he fell over it.

We’ve already gotten the usual two-faced President. The first face was to protest that, certainly, no one in his White House would take political advantage of the violence. This was immediately followed by blaming the social programs of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society for the “root problems” of the inner cities.

Pointing the finger of blame in this direction bordered on insanity and supposed a stupidity on the part of the public that was mind-boggling, not to mention gutless. And don’t buy the latest White House “backing off of the Great Society blame” line. Bush had already used it at the University of Michigan on May 5, 1991, when he said, “The anti-poverty programs of the Johnson era were not only a failure but produced the opposite of their intended results. Programs intended to help people out of poverty invited dependency.”

Already, the direction of the White House response is clear: Scare the hell out of the suburbs. After all, that’s where the votes are and where this election will be decided. Get ready America; next time the violence will not be confined to the inner city; next time the suburbs will be threatened. Only Bush and his troops stand between “them” and “us.”

If we, the press and public, allow the GOP to exploit this race-baiting for the reelection of this do-nothing President, it will mark a low in U.S. politics--and we’ll deserve what we get.

What we’ll get, for the inner cities as well as the rest of us who like to think of ourselves as Americans all, will be none too pretty. There’s no real argument about what’s happened since the GOP took control of the White House 12 years ago. Our central cities are worse off--mired in unemployment, homelessness and crime. Violence has increased. The much-ballyhooed war on drugs is rarely discussed in public because it has been lost. Public education is falling apart--a deterioration accelerated under our “education President.” The inner-city family--a favorite subject of clucking conservative politicians--is crumbling.

A decade of neglect has resulted in impoverished minorities who, because they have no hope, also feel they have nothing to lose. While our national leadership has shown us how to blame the victims of the inner city, they haven’t taught us how to solve the problems of the ghetto. But you law-and-order Republican mudslingers had better remember that when you race-baited after the riots of the ‘60s to get Richard M. Nixon elected, you were lucky. The cities weren’t armed then; now they are.

On that point--the “black leadership” invited by Bush to the White House is completely out of touch with what’s going down on the streets. They won’t say it, but I will. Wise up to the fact that there are black racists in our cities who are bent on killing or maiming whites. They aren’t wounded, dysfunctional young men; they are racist punks who deserve jail, or worse.

But if we are getting little direction from black leaders, we are getting no direction from the President, who has demonstrated how little he knows about the country’s social problems, how little he plans to do, how little he cares.

It should not be a big surprise. Here is Bush, defender of the wealthiest of the wealthy, criticizing programs designed to help the poorest among us. Here is the same man who has done less than nothing to help them get jobs, income and homes. “Less than nothing” because he has worked to cut the programs designed to give people an opportunity to reach some of these goals, to live a little better. All this from a man raised in a pampered environment, who, during the Depression, was driven to school by a chauffeur and who, during the virtual depression of the ‘90s, vetoed extension of unemployment benefits at the first tee at the Kennebunkport Country Club.

I suppose there’s a ray of hope that, after visiting dozens of burnt-out stores, talking with eyewitnesses and attending a few funerals, Bush and his campaign team may get an attack of conscience. That the former “education-environment President” may mutate into the “inner-city President.” He may worry that his 1,000 points of light will be the sites of fires in our major cities this summer. That an already weak presidency will be remembered in history for its lack of compassion and lack of domestic policy, and the resulting tragic consequences for the country. Maybe he will see hope in Jack Kemp’s enterprise zones and in some of the dozen other underfunded social programs he has cut back.

Don’t count on it. More likely he will figure out how to exploit the riots for political gain. We will have race-baiting that will worsen race relations; we will have tough talk that will lower support for social problems, and we will have blame, lots of blame, for anyone threatening his grasp on power. Given this, my best advice to Bush is to step aside and let real leaders try to heal the wounds and address the causes.

I have some faith that Americans will reject the Republican law-and-order strategy, but maybe they won’t. If not, as you said, Mr. President, you’d do anything to get elected. That’s one of the few thing you’ve kept your word on.