Where Does Responsibility Enter the Hernandez Story?

In late July, Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Hernandez chuckled at the suggestion that he had become the de facto “good guy” Eastside councilman, since allegations of impropriety had begun swirling around his colleague, Richard Alatorre. What Hernandez didn’t know then was that he had already become the focus of an intra-agency police task force. Now, ironically, Hernandez’s recent arrest on drug charges may do nothing to lower his good standing.

Inspired in part by the empathetic and sometimes morally relative reaction from a variety of local officials, the spin on the Hernandez affair has been nothing short of generous. The prevailing understanding--eloquently advocated by Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg--that drug addiction is an illness that does not reflect on a person’s character, has all but obscured the fact that a crime was committed and that elected representatives carry a greater burden than average citizens to conduct themselves responsibly. No mention was made that cocaine is notorious for skewing judgment or that an elected official’s bad decisions affect tens of thousands of lives.

Of course, Hernandez’s reported contrition has also spared him any scorn he might otherwise have faced. In addition, his tireless advocacy for the very poorest and most disenfranchised of his constituents--which some homeowners in the more stable parts of his district often felt was at their expense--built much good will for him among many community members, activists and even reporters.

Perhaps because drug abuse is such a widespread social problem that transcends racial and economic lines, the Hernandez affair received no ethnic spin. To the surprise and relief of many, the arrest has not been interpreted as signifying anything about Latinos in general or Latino politicians in particular.

In the not-so-distant past, when Latinos invested an unrealistic measure of hope and responsibility in their few public figures, a councilman’s fall from grace would have been a bigger blow. The defensiveness and shame many minorities feel when seeing prominent ethnic figures--whether a celebrity or politician--run into trouble with the law is waning among the region’s Latinos. With so many Latinos visible in a variety of social spheres, Latino public personages are somehow less representative of the whole and less imbued with the singular power to bring either honor or shame on the entire group. Of course, Latinos are also suffering from the broader American trend of cynicism and low expectations of public officials.

Still, there are those who would attest that the improprieties of past and present Latino officials--from Henry G. Cisneros to Art Torres--have everything to do with ethnicity. Indeed, one could argue that the first wave of Latino representatives may suffer more from the pressures and attendant headiness of officialdom than, say, a white politician.

It is true that Latino officials are often charting never-before navigated political courses. Furthermore, public advocacy has a greater significance for the representatives of poorer and working-class districts, where public-sector involvement is wanted and needed, than it does for an official from a middle or upper-middle class area, whose constituents are likely to see government as an intrusion. Hernandez, who represents L.A.’s poorest district, definitely sees himself as fighting an uphill battle for services and representation against the more well-to-do parts of the city.

Few registered the paradox in blurring Hernandez’s responsibility for his drug abuse while still giving him credit for the good deeds he has accomplished in office. Belief in the current medical perspective on drug addiction does not preclude anyone from judging the councilman’s choice to take the highly addictive drug in the first place.

Curiously, current attitudes about drug addiction are at odds with the more traditional moral and emotional outlooks of many of Hernandez’ foreign-born constituents. The sympathy the councilman enjoys in the neighborhoods he represents is laced with much anger. Many constituents--even some of his staff members--feel betrayed. A neighborhood activist who once marched against drugs with Hernandez through the streets of Pico-Union held back tears as she told of her conflicting emotions. Neither current medical practice nor the law, which may likely show leniency in the Hernandez case, can fully encompass the contradictions present in America’s moral life today.

If this case tells us anything, it’s that this country has no coherent attitude, let alone policy, toward drugs. While we spend billions of dollars attempting to interdict drugs coming from Latin America, we then treat apprehended actors, athletes and politicians as if their drug buys aren’t what keep those illicit lines of commerce open.

But what’s more disturbing than this double standard is the belief that explaining away an adult’s responsibility is somehow more compassionate than making him accountable. Indeed, the opposite is true. Excusing a mentally competent man from his duty to himself and others is to deprive him of his dignity. And esteem in his own eyes and in others’ is precisely what a man like Hernandez needs to fully rehabilitate himself.

Any politician abusing cocaine deserves our opprobrium. To show no outrage against someone who has become a victim of his own worst instincts is to lose faith in that person’s ability to improve himself. Indeed, the most hopeful utterances of this affair have come from Hernandez’s office. After apologizing and admitting that he has a problem with drugs that was heightened by the recent death of his mother, the statement released on the day of the councilman’s arrest goes on to insist “that is no excuse.”

This is not the first or last time a politician will be caught doing drugs on video tape. The nation’s schizophrenic perspective on drugs does not bode well for the success of the so-called drug war. So, if we can’t hope to turn back the tide of drugs in the country, we can at least allow for people who have succumbed to their weaknesses to redeem themselves. But there is no possibility of redemption if we refuse to acknowledge the distinction between what’s right and what’s wrong.