|
An Open Letter to Karl Rove
Walter A. Davis
Dear Karl Rove,  I was deeply moved by your recent essay in Time Magazine (July 3, 2006) on the lessons we can learn today from the example of Theodore Roosevelt. Seldom have the principles that make politics an honorable profession been stated so succinctly and with greater force. Yours is an essay that all Americans should read and ponder. Many statements in it deserve to be committed to memory and then internalized as imperatives for anyone who wants to be a responsible citizen. One would be hard pressed today to find a better preface to Politics and the Ideals that must inform it than your essay. For all these reasons I want to call the attention of readers who may have missed it to this important essay. See: here.
I found especially compelling the following statement, which I isolate here because it deserves to be cited frequently as we move toward the elections of 2006 and 2008. “T.R. didn’t just love ideas, he loved to debate them as long as it was fair and straight. The ‘healthy combativeness’ of politics clarified differences and choices.” As you know, there are many forces in America that work to corrupt the democratic, electoral process so that rather than a debate of ideas on the most important issues of the day, we get the manipulation of an electorate on the basis of the crassest simplifications and the most transparent appeals to fear and resentment. Such is always the case, of course, when elections are made to turn on false issues that are used to deflect attention from the problems that both parties should have the courage to confront. Unfortunately, as you know, the simplistic scenarios are already attempting to frame the coming elections. Sloganeering—“stay the course, cut and run”—replaces any effort to create an informed public able to debate the war in Iraq in a responsible manner. But a far more serious consequence ensues. What should be the primary issue in the coming elections (2006 and 2008) is kept off the agenda. I refer to the crisis of global warming and all the changes we will have to make as a society in order to deal with that issue. I was saddened to learn that both our President and our Vice-President have said that they will not view Mr. Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth. I am also confident that given your role in the Administration you have seen the film or plan to see it; and that when you do you will find the case it makes convincing. As you know, you have it in your power to determine the agenda of the coming elections. And so in shared respect for the legacy of Theodore Roosevelt, I ask you to let the American people have the debate they need. That “spirited clash of ideas” that is “fair and straight” and thus something that ennobles all of us because it trusts not in what is basest in the electorate but what is best; on developing our intelligence rather than deepening our ignorance; on appealing not to people’s resentments and fears but to their fundamental decency. When such principles guide us we create debates that refuse to deliberately mislead the voters with pseudo-issues and false claims; as, for example, the claim that responsible scientists differ about the facts and consequences of global warming. We both know that deliberately misleading the people in this way is the antithesis of everything Roosevelt stood for. Rather than a pseudo-debate—whether global warming has been “proved”--what we need and deserve is a true debate. One that shares a respect for what we know to be scientifically true. The differences and choices that need to be clarified through “healthy combativeness” aren’t over whether or not global warming is a fact with dire consequences unless important changes are made, but what policies the two parties can offer as solutions to the problem. Who knows, perhaps your party has the better position. Perhaps it is the one willing to face the hard choices. And to let the populace know what those choices are. Perhaps it is the true party of courage and thus the one able to go to the people the way T.R. always went to them, with real ideas, not empty slogans; in an attempt to make them wiser, not more ignorant; in an attempt to call them to what was best in them, not what was weakest or greediest or most fearful. I write you in the confidence that given the principles you articulate in your essay you will do everything in your power to follow the course of action I describe in the previous paragraph. How else could you have said all the wonderful things you say in your essay about the political and moral legacy of Theodore Roosevelt? I’m thus confident that you will use your great influence to free us from the grip of a politics of fear, resentment and empty sloganeering and lead us toward the renewal of a politics grounded in ideals such as scientific truth and social, global responsibility and guided by “large, important ideas.” We are fortunate to have men such as you and Mr. Gore to help us in these difficult times find our way back to a politics of principle. Thank you again for your essay. Coming as it did on the day before the 4th of July, it was a timely reminder of how our noblest traditions live on in those who, like you, have dedicated themselves to a life of public service. Biographical: Walter A Davis, Editor in Chief at MWC News Contact Dr. Davis Recommend this article...
 Quote this article on your site | Views: 1115
Powered by AkoComment Tweaked Special Edition v.1.4.4
Tags: Walter A. Davis An Open Letter to Karl Rove Walter Davis
|
Commentary 
