Let’s dispense right away with the idea that there is any equivalence between a pair of arch-segregationist Southern Democratic Senators from the pre-Civil Rights era, and a guy that Barack Obama knew from Chicago who never had any national political power. Reverend Wright said that one bad thing that one time; Eastland and Talmadge were both … well, you know. Obviously, that’s not the point I’m here to make.
Condemnation of former Vice President Joe Biden for allegedly “praising” his long-dead former colleagues, Mississippi Democrat James Eastland and Georgia Democrat Herman Talmadge — both vicious and committed racists — for their “civility” and collegiality has been swift, intense, and broad-ranging. For the record, even though we’ve all read some report of this or other, here (via The New York Times) is what he said about working in the Senate with men like Eastland, who left the Senate in 1978 having been there since World War II and died in 1981, and Talmadge, who entered the Senate under Eisenhower, left right after Reagan was elected and died in 2002, in his own caucus:
“I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland,” said Mr. Biden, 76, slipping briefly into a Southern accent, according to a pool report from the fund-raiser. “He never called me ‘boy,’ he always called me ‘son.’”
He called Mr. Talmadge “one of the meanest guys I ever knew, you go down the list of all these guys.”
“Well guess what?” Mr. Biden continued. “At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished. But today you look at the other side and you’re the enemy. Not the opposition, the enemy. We don’t talk to each other anymore.”
Although I’m really not here to offer an opinion on what Biden said, or on Biden himself — i.e., I’m not here to endorse or rebut the criticism — I will say this: For my part, and maybe I’m missing something, or maybe I have a terrible blind spot on this subject, at face value what I hear/read here from Biden is that it used to be possible to work with thoroughly despicable people with horrible views, to be in the same room with them without feeling so offended by their mere presence that one can only seethe and recoil and only speak if it’s to castigate them, and to set such feelings aside in order to accomplish a task that you’ve both been given. Senators don’t choose their colleagues (a Senator from Delaware has no say over who the voters of Mississippi and Georgia send to the Senate), and their responsibility to govern, legislate, negotiate and behave civilly is not abrogated because their colleagues are risible human beings with disgusting views, whom they might even personally loathe.
It seems to me, and again I may be looking at this from the wrong angle or from too great a distance, that Biden is now being pilloried because he didn’t hate, and still doesn’t hate, his long-dead racist/segregationist ex-colleagues, and for talking about them in a way that doesn’t constitute, express or convey unequivocal, unabashed condemnation and denouncement of them, their views, their words, their actions and the consequences thereof. He talked about them without mentioning or acknowledging what horrible people they were and why, the despicable things they did and said, or how hurtful and destructive their views, words and actions have been, at the time and throughout history. And he was far too kind in “praising” them for being “civil” in going about doing their actual jobs.
As a general matter, I personally have never been comfortable with this “hate requirement” as I call it, that seems to have been pervading American politics in the last two decades. This idea that you have to hate and/or condemn and vilify certain people every time you talk about them, in order to satisfy voters that your own views, thoughts, ideas and feelings are correct; in short, that you’re a bad person if you don’t hate bad people. I lost friends in the early 2000’s because in their view, I didn’t hate Muslims or “terrorists” enough. I know people who just couldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 because she didn’t hate Wall Street enough.
The real Year of the Hate Requirement, as I remember it, was 2008. We all remember Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the Chicago pastor of Barack Obama’s church who said that one bad thing that one time, and we all remember both Obama’s primary and general-election opponents castigating Obama for saying kind, complementary, non-condemnatory things about and “refusing” to vilify this man he’d known for years and of whom he was fond. It got to the point where I was regularly reading or hearing from people who found it impossible to believe that Obama could have attended Wright’s church and not come to share every view, thought, idea, opinion and feeling that Wright may have had.
More and more, as this farcical sh*t-show (at least that’s how I saw it) went on, and the calls for Obama to publicly condemn and denounce Wright increased, all I could think about was that “hate requirement” that had me so perturbed in the aftermath of 9/11 and the Iraq invasion. Whether it was Wright, or Bill Ayers, or Louis Farrakhan, or whoever else Obama knew, met, had interactions with, talked about, &c., I lost count of how many people told me they couldn’t vote for him because he knows, likes, said nice things about, doesn’t hate, or hasn’t condemned or denounced, any one or any number of bad people.
To put a fine point on this, during the 2008 primary season a dear friend of mine who was supporting Hillary Clinton not only couldn’t support Obama but was deeply concerned, and was actually frightened, about the possibility of Obama winning the nomination because, quote, “He has Wright; he has Farrakhan!” In hindsight I wish I had asked what “has” meant, but it was obvious: These are bad people that Obama either knows, has met, is acquainted with or has talked about, without hating, condemning or denouncing, and perhaps in a way that might be considered somewhat kind, or not unkind — and that’s just not acceptable.
I don’t remember precisely what Obama had supposedly said about Farrakhan that had my friend so up in arms (and I’m frankly afraid to Google it given what I might find adjacent to it), but in any event, by my recollection Obama was either at least arguably kind to or complimentary of and/or didn’t denounce or condemn or vilify Farrakhan, therefore Obama “has Farrakhan.” That statement still baffles me 11 years later. Now, Biden “has Eastland” and “has Talmadge” in essentially the same way, except that each of the men Biden now “has” has been dead for years/decades.
When the film Good Night, and Good Luck came out in 2005, I was reminded of this quote from Edward R. Murrow in his rebuttal to Senator Joseph McCarthy; it resonated with me at the time, and I was reminded of it again in 2008 when it resonated even more strongly:
The Senator charged that Professor Harold Laski, a British scholar and politician, dedicated [a] book to me. That's true. He is dead. He was a socialist. I am not. He was one of those civilized individuals who did not insist upon agreement with his political principles as a pre-condition for conversation or friendship. I do not agree with his political ideas. Laski, as he makes clear in the introduction, dedicated the book to me not because of political agreement, but because he held my wartime broadcasts from London in high regard.
Maybe what I’m talking about (and what Murrow thought McCarthy was implying) is not a “hate requirement” so much as a say-that-they-were-bad-every-time-you-talk-about-them requirement. Or, a say-that-they-were-bad-every-time-you-talk-about-them-and-never-talk-about-them-in-any-other-way requirement. Instead of “You’re a bad person if you don’t hate bad people,” maybe a better way to put it is, “You’re a bad person if you don’t expressly acknowledge that bad people are bad, and how bad they are, and why they’re bad, and how badly their badness hurts people, every time their names are mentioned, and if you ever talk about them in a way that doesn’t acknowledge and convey their badness or that might be considered somewhat kind.” I’m not sure there’s really much of a difference; “hate requirement” is just a convenient (albeit hyperbolic) shorthand for the whole phenomenon.
In the end, from what I’m hearing and reading, Biden either doesn’t hate Eastland or Talmadge enough, or didn’t make enough of an effort to condemn them or acknowledge their badness or the effects of their badness when he spoke about them, or simply spoke about them too kindly, to satisfy some Democratic primary voters. The same, apparently, applies to what Biden has said, and has not said, about the current GOP.
I’m not saying that I agree or disagree, or that any of this is or is not a reason to oppose Biden in the primary; again, I’m not here to join or refute the criticism. I’m not even saying that this idea, whether we call it a “hate requirement,” a “condemnation requirement,” a “never-be-kind-to-bad-people requirement,” or some variation thereof as discussed herein, is necessarily or in all circumstances wrong. But it has always struck me and still strikes me as highly, disturbingly illiberal.