I'm not implying that Pat Buchanan's comments should be reconsidered, or that he isn't a racist. I'm suggesting we reconsider our plan of action. This is a moment of education, not of gotcha and punishment.
Nailing Buchanan to the wall would provide some temporary satisfaction, but what would it accomplish in the larger discussion on race? Signaling that saying slavery was the best thing that ever happened to blacks is unacceptable public discourse? I dare suggest that the vast majority of the country knows this lesson already.
So we have to ask ourselves, what is the endgame? And I confess that I'm not writing this diary to prop myself up saying I have the answer. I might be wrong in my conclusion. But I offer this observation up anyway.
IMO, it all turns on an important distinction - Pat Buchanan sincerely believes what he wrote.
I've watched Pat Buchanan say racist things on television for 20 years. What he wrote on his website is not new from him. He sincerely believes that black people should feel grateful for their situation as a whole. He clearly sees blacks in this country as complaining, lazy, and unappreciative.
It's a rancid view. And wrong.
But ask yourself this - what is the outcome goal from hearing statements like these? To punish, or to change minds?
We know how to punish. In fact, because it's so tough to get at the quiet, sneaky racism all over this country, about the only thing you can do is when someone really crosses the line, you get their head as a trophy. Bluntly, and over time, the public discourse is taught by negative reinforcement that it must fall between certain lines.
There is positive in this. It establishes an official, public life series of guidelines for how we behave. Companies adopt employee policies that mirror these public sensibility guidelines. Over time, younger generations grow up rejecting racism in some part because a public censure example has been set.
But there is also some negative. There is the undercurrent of backlash, which is fueled by a sense that the conversation on race isn't quite "real" either. Getting a racist to parrot non-racist speech that he or she clearly doesn't believe is a public victory, but it doesn't get at the heart of racism. You get people retreating into a corner, muttering resentments about "political correctness" that actually, painfully, have some truth in them. People whose minds could be changed are not reached because they remain in quiet, private enclaves.
And the danger is that many sincerely wrong beliefs never get countered because they never get aired. They are only aired when speaking to the safe audience and thus reinforced.
Obama's speech was a bold thing for more reasons than his personal political career. It was bold because it asked people to listen to other people and explicitly not to disown and demonize them, even if the things they say are wildly wrong. I believe that Pat Buchanan sincerely believes what he wrote. And it is wildly wrong.
But I also believe that Barack Obama's reaction to hearing them if Buchanan spoke them to him one-on-one would not be to denounce Buchanan, but to listen to him and try to change his mind, to show him another perspective. That's how authentic change happens.
So if we go after Pat Buchanan's head, one of two things will happen. We'll get it or we won't. But will Pat Buchanan change? Will the country feel safe to really talk about race? To a great degree it depends on us. If we go into the same mode of "X said what? He must be punished!" then I submit to you that nothing will change.
If the next big racial story, a week after Obama gives this great speech, is that Pat Buchanan is fired for those comments, the country at large will hear the meta in all of it - Obama calls for new conversation, but don't get lulled into saying what you really think if you have a lot of white resentment because it is still very very dangerous. Between those two realities, America will play it safe. And that would be tragic, given this opening a great leader has offered this country.
So what can we do?
The first thing is that Buchanan can't be let off the hook. He can't be un-confronted. By no means am I saying that a by-product of Obama's speech is carte blanche to unload a bunch of filth. But Buchanan is the poster child for white resentment of what he sees as black privilege and black ungratefulness at white generosity. As mind-blowing as those concepts are, they are real to him, and certainly to many others.
I would rather see Pat Buchanan asked by MSNBC to do a one-hour moderated show with someone who would talk with him on this topic. Someone who has the poise to both accept the buried nugget of truth in Buchanan's comments - even if it is only simply that white resentment is real no matter how grotesquely and factually whacked its basis is - and to counter it with a more authentic truth, with statistics on programs Buchanan cites, with authentic emotion, that Buchanan's notion of white beneficence toward blacks ain't all it's cracked up to be.
Maybe this is a pipe dream given the loaded nature of all this - but I do believe that this is exactly the kind of conversation Obama is pointing toward the country having. With a high-profile sincere white resenter like Buchanan, and a counterpart who will not get rattled but can both understand Buchanan's point of view and challenge it, maybe MSNBC can offer the nation a service.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it sets up a bad precedent and others will be able to follow in the slipstream and say and write toxic things and then plead the Pat Buchanan defense if they are facing pressure to resign/be fired. I don't claim to know the right thing. I guess the main reason I'm writing this diary is something feels off about the reaction of just going for Buchanan's jugular. Buchanan has been a bad actor for a long time, but I can tell you this - there is martyr potential for Buchanan here. "Obama seduced him into being open about racial grievances and it's the same old gotcha." I don't want that to be the story.
This is a unique moment - the first firestorm-potential high-profile racially toxic public comments by a public figure in the aftermath of the Obama speech.
What do we want? A trophy head or a conversation developed? What would Obama call for?