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D I S P A T C H E S Three Questions
A review of the major newspapers Friday morning shows that both Sen. Joe Lieberman and former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney scored high marks for engaging in a civil and thoughtful discussion during the vice presidential debate — contrary to their running mates’ performance earlier in the week. Curiously, there is little discussion, however, of the surprisingly honest responses each of the candidates gave to questions on same-sex marriage, racial profiling and a woman’s right to equal pay. The fact that those issues were even raised is stunning, considering the lack of attention given to social issues during the presidential debate. Moderator Bernard Shaw did what Jim Lehrer could never have done, at least not with the same urgency or authority: He asked the candidates to imagine that they were black.
Shaw: Dick Cheney, Joe Lieberman, you are black for this question. Imagine yourself an African-American. You become the target of racial profiling either while walking or driving. African-American Joseph Lieberman, what would you do about it? “And, you know, it makes me want to kind of hit the wall because it’s such an assault on their humanity and citizenship,” said Lieberman, who went on to note that he and Al Gore supported an executive order and civil rights legislation prohibiting racial profiling. Cheney spoke only in generalities about the need to improve race relations, yet in some ways his response was more poignant. In it he acknowledged his own “whiteness’ and the impossibility of understanding fully what it would be like to be targeted because of race. “[I] try hard to put myself in that position and imagine what it’d been like, but, of course, I’ve always been part of the majority and never been part of a minority group,” Cheney continued. “But it has to be a horrible experience. It’s the sense of anger and frustration and rage that would go with knowing that the only reason you were stopped, the only reason you were arrested, was because of your color of your skin, would make me extraordinarily angry. And I’m not sure how I would respond.” This was possibly the most honest and insightful comment on race since former Sen. Bill Bradley ended his campaign. Cheney sounded like an academic interrogating his own identity, self-conscious of his own standpoint. The fact that he was in a national political debate, where it’s all about false modesty and self-aggrandizement, made his acknowledgement all the more remarkable. Shaw also elicited surprising responses when he asked whether same-sex couples should have “all the constitutional rights enjoyed by every American citizen.” The idea of discussing same-sex marriage would have seemed ridiculous just a couple of years ago, considering the political aftermath of the Defense of Marriage Act. While an increasing number of politicians have recently become more vocal in decrying discrimination based on sexual orientation, granting gays and lesbians equal rights in marriage is still political taboo. Republican responses during the primary season, and to the Vermont decision earlier this year to allow same-sex civil unions, varied from absolute disgust to strong opposition to the idea. But now that hundreds of same-sex couples from around the country have obtained civil-union licenses in Vermont (and a sitcom about a gay man and his best friend recently won an Emmy for best comedy), the question is not only appropriate, it is essential, and the candidates’ responses reflected the current political reality and hand wringing over gay rights. In this context, Lieberman and Cheney’s comments can both be categorized as ground-breaking, if only because they acknowledged that they are indeed struggling with the fact that gays and lesbians are not afforded the same rights as heterosexual couples. “The question you pose is a difficult one for this reason: It confronts or challenges the traditional notion of marriage as being limited to a heterosexual couple, which I support,” said Lieberman. “But I must say I’m thinking about this because I have friends who are in gay and lesbian partnerships who’ve said to me, Isn’t it unfair that we don’t have similar legal rights to inheritance, to visitation when one of the partners is ill, to health care benefits? And that’s why I’m thinking about it and my mind is open to taking some action that will address those elements of unfairness, while respecting the traditional religious and civil institution of marriage.” Cheney, whose daughter Mary is a lesbian, sounded like he was working through his own doubts instead of reciting the party line. “The fact of the matter is we live in a free society and freedom means freedom for everybody. We don’t get to choose and shouldn’t be able to choose and say you get to live free, but you don’t. And I think that means that people should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into. It’s really no one else’s business in terms of trying to regulate or prohibit behavior in that regard,” he said. “The next step then of course is the question you ask of whether or not there ought to be some kind of official sanction, if you will, of the relationship, or if these relationships should be treated the same way a conventional marriage is. That’s a tougher problem. That’s not a slam-dunk. I think the fact of the matter of course is that matters regulated by the states — I think different states are likely to come to different conclusions and that’s appropriate,” Cheney added, concluding, “I think we ought to do everything we can to tolerate and accommodate whatever kind of relationships people want to enter.” On the subject of women receiving 75 cents on average for each dollar earned by men, Shaw asked the candidates, “What do you males propose to do about it?” making the point that men are in the position of power. After declaring that the gap is “unfair and it’s unacceptable,” Lieberman spoke of supporting the equal pay act proposed in Congress and helping women business owners. He added that other human rights and civil rights laws could also come into play, and acknowledged the ripple effect caused by the inequality. “You know, in so many families, women are a significant bread earner or the only bread earner. So this, this cause affects not only the women, but families and the children as well,” Lieberman said. Cheney ducked on this one, offering a response that was far less dynamic than his other answers. Instead of addressing inequality between the sexes, he instead focused on the differences in tax proposals put forth by Gore and Bush. “It’s important to understand that the things that we’re trying to change ” focus very much upon giving as much control as we can to individual Americans, be they men or women, be they single or married, as much control as possible over their own lives, especially in the area of taxation. We want to make certain that the American people have the ability to keep more of what they earn and then they get to decide how to spend it,” Cheney said. In the spin room following the debate, C-SPAN’s cameras listened in as several politicians including Sen. Joe Biden and former Secretary of Labor Lynn Martin spoke to reporters about the candidates’ responses. The buzz was that the questions were fresh and revealing, and the candidates had handled them well. Martin told a reporter that she ‘really liked” Shaw’s question on racial profiling, and the answers both candidates provided. “I don’t think either of them did great on the women question,” she added. “Both of them need a little work on that.” Earlier in the week, Shaw was asked about the infamous question he posed to Michael Dukakis in 1988 about whether Dukakis would support the death penalty if his wife, Kitty, was raped and murdered. Dukakis’ emotionless, policy-driven response foretold his doom. And America would never forget the question, or the man who asked it. "The question will follow me to my grave," Shaw said. "My only defense is, since when did a question hurt a politician? It’s not the question, it’s the answer that counts." This time around, Shaw’s questions were not shocking because of their graphic nature, but they should be considered just as memorable. Just as he had done 12 years before, Shaw cut through the chase and presented both candidates with the opportunity to reveal more about their character than any previous interview or public appearance had accomplished. Try to imagine Lehrer (or Wolf Blitzer or Tim Russert) deliver the same lines. It wouldn’t happen. And therein lies the problem with the single moderator format: too often, the questions asked fail to reflect the concerns of a cross-section of the American public. Perhaps Lehrer will get beyond prescription costs and tax plans in the upcoming debates, but it’s still hard to imagine that he’ll get beyond speaking as an affluent white male. Christine Cupaiuolo is editor of PopPolitics Comment on this article Related Sites
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