On April 6, 2006 George W. Bush convened a town hall meeting at Central Piedmont Community College in downtown Charlote, North Carolina. He expected a very favorable, controlled setting for his own self-glorification.
If different in any way from fourscore and seven similar gatherings elsewhere in the country, Bush expected the people of the central Carolinas area to be especially welcoming of his talk of necessary sacrifices and defense of freedom.
He expected a Norman Rockwell moment. Boy, did he get one.
I think that George W. Bush chose the Charlotte area for three reasons. One, it has been a major evangelical stronghold and a deep well for Republican fundraising. Second, I think he chose this part of the state because it is a long distance from the nearest military bases and by 2006 his narrative on Iraq was running threadbare with the troops. Third, because Representative Sue Myrick has almost always voted in lockstep with George W. Bush's whims. Pro-sprawl and pro-war, Sue Myrick always welcomed a visit from the likes of George W. Bush or Dick Cheney. Or Ann Coulter for that matter. To her, all three were good people and Iraq was the good and necessary beginning of a generations-long war.
Harry Taylor, along with many North Carolians then and many, many more now, had a different opinion entirely. And he was of a mind to give the President a piece of his mind.
Harry Taylor's video performance from the CPCC exchange with Bush is described as a Norman Rockwell moment. To watch the video though is to see a man given power far beyond his wisdom to handle appropriately, turn an important exchange between the highest office of the land (his own) and the highest power of the land (that of the people) into a scarce more than an exchange between the bullying popular kid and the quiet bookish sort that no one ever noticed before.
Harry Taylor is not some meek figure in American life. His biography will tell you that. He has served his country in Air Force, enjoyed commercial success and served his fellow citizens actively through community work. I have met him. He is easygoing, confident, thoughful, intelligent, well-spoken and calm. And there is an entire country's worth of such American in this country. And by that fateful day two years ago, quite a few of them were fed up with the likes of George W Bush.
Harry Taylor drew the straw; when the time came to set the President of the United States straight, it was he who delivered the message in person. And he did so.
In that moment Harry Taylor spoke as it is the right of any average American citizen to do, and did so in the face of the power of the Presidency, in a room full of people who very much liked what the President had done and had to say about it: No regrets, no apologies, no plans to ever stop.
In such a situation, most people would feel foolish to even speak up.
We had all lived with that doubt for several years, one dutifully cultivated by supporters of the president -- that freedom is not freedom for the individual to dissent, to speak up, to dare contradict and chastise wrongful actions and intentions when they are those of the President.
In early April 2006 Bush was controversial but he was wildly popular with his base. His party was in complete control of the government and there were no guarantees that the 2006 election would do anything but reward his actions further because Democrats were openly disputing the strategy of going after votes in all fifty states. that Howard Dean's audacious plan to go after votes nationwide was going to wreck the Democratic Party.
Party leaders balked at sending scarce funds to states like North Carolina, which were long written off as Republican strongholds.Media and bloggers alike ruminated on how such dissension could wreck everything when mid-terms traditionally went for the opposition. Yep, woe were the Democrats, in early spring 2006. Doomed, doomed! Let me know when this sounds familiar.
And on April 6, 2006 George W Bush was thinking pretty much the same thing. That he was standing on a very safe safe in front of a very safe audience in a very safe state. He was safe from everything but the truth, and he was about to get a dose of it.
Harry Taylor was sitting sandwiched between Republicans, holding a microphone in his hands, about to stand up and deliver a message of truth to the most intemperate, most powerful man in the world.
He looked left, looked right, looked across the audience between himself and the stage, and realized that not one person other than he in that room was going to say anything that George W Bush didn't want to hear.
And George W. Bush needed to hear more than a few such things.
What Harry Taylor said was not important. What was important was that, on behalf of us all, he spoke truth to power.
And despite all his snickerings and side comments, Bush was constrained by the forms of his own political theater. He has set up a town hall meeting and such gatherings are not meant to be on-script. Bush thought that North Carolinians were a special kind of American -- the kind that do not know and assert their rights and liberties as citizens of a great and principled Republic.
Bush thought Charlotte, North Carolina would be a perfectly safe place to get up and clown around in front of friendly partisans about tapping people's phone and taking them off in the night without notification or trial.
George W. Bush thought that he was being very gracious by granting an American citizen permission to speak, when it was never Bush's place to say who could and should speak in the first place.
It is now two years later, and Harry Taylor is running for Congress of the United States. Americans are winning their honor back, one Democratic victory at a time, one citizen speaking truth to power, one citizen taking up the mantle of public service, at a time, because for eight all-too-long years too all too few people have done so diligently, lawfully and respectfully with an eye to the common good of the people.
This has come about in part thanks to Harry Taylor's own standing up and doing what Americans have always had the right and the might to do - call it like they see it.
The Republicans never surrendered this right to speak up. In fact, they magnified the First Amendment to become a right to outright lie to the American people and be proud of doing so. It was the truth they had a problem with, and they just tried to make fools of anyone who spoke it.
Republicans tried to turn telling the truth into something worthy of ridicule. They failed. Then they lost control of Congress. And soon they will lose control of the White House. And soon, very soon, Harry Taylor will be speaking truth to power as Representative from the Ninth District of the State of North Carolina.
For more information, please see Harry's campaign website. If you are of a mind to, please visit this ActBlue site. Here are some of the many, many thank you's sent to Harry from his fellow Americans.