Bad Timing Kills Even Good Policy

I question Obama’s wisdom on rushing to reverse Bush’s anti-abortion executive orders. The Catholic Church and the so called “religious right” are going ballistic. That’s no surprise and, considering Obama’s stated positions during the campaign, he has to take them on sometime.
My question is, Why now? He’s got a stimulus package before Congress that faces a lot of conservative doubt both within and out of Congress. In fact, in some quarters it faces almost universal doubt and questions.
This package will work better if Obama can say that it is truly bi-partisan, that large numbers of conservatives support it too. That is precisely what he is endangering by stomping on conservative and religious toes at this early point—when his concentration is supposedly the economy.
Watching this brings back a memory of another American leader who blew his message and his program by being radical (and, in his case, right) at the wrong time.
It was 1965. After decades of filibuster, foot dragging, defiance and legal twists, Civil Rights was suddenly “in”. The Republican leader of the Senate called it an idea whose time had come. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was law—and it was being implemented. The Voting Rights Act of ’65 had the power of the Federal Government behind it. The world was changing.
A decade of Freedom Marching, bus boycotts, standing up against the Bull Connors of the South had seemingly won the day. It was an awesome moment in our history—one I am still proud to have been even slightly involved with. But then, … then … .
In March, 1965, Lyndon Johnson sent American combat troops into Vietnam. It was just like Afghanistan in 2001, Kuwait in 1991, Iraq in 2003. The vast majority of Americans cheered the troops on. We were stopping Communists back then, but they seemed as dangerous and evil as terrorists do today.
At this crucial moment—when the entire Civil Rights movement was poised to move on—Martin Luther King, Jr., single handedly blew it off the tracks. He did it by being absolutely right—at the wrong time. He proved he was a great Leader—but a lousy politician.
By that summer, when American enthusiasm for the war was still high, King began publicly to question our involvement. He questioned the morality of the war, the need for the war, the effectiveness of our intervention—he even threw in the fact that black soldiers were disproportionately at risk because they made up most of our front line troops.
If there was a toe to step on that summer, he stepped on it. (Completely incidental that every one of his points was valid—and that the bulk of the people he offended in 1965 would be anti-war in five years or less. His timing was wrong. The American people didn’t want to hear it THEN.)
The Civil Rights unity that had sent Episcopalian clergy from New York, the mother of the governor of Massachusetts, housewives from Detroit and college kids from all over down south to march for equal rights, and even die for them, quickly dissolved.
I remember sitting at my desk in downtown Washington, staring at the newspaper stories in front of me. “Why, Martin, why?” I kept asking myself. I wasn’t totally sure at the time that he was right (it would take me a year or two to conclude that Vietnam was a mistake), but I knew that speaking out against it was hurting his Civil Rights Campaign.
Former allies of his—in Washington and out—were outraged by his “unpatriotic” comments. After that year, the non-violent Civil Rights movement never had the momentum that created The Civil Rights Act again. Now people who, for whatever reason, did not like the movement felt free to speak up and even obstruct. They could do it in the guise of patriotism.
Following this came the impatience of the Black Power movement in which young black men flashed guns and threatened to use what they had learned in the Army to disrupt society. The Watts riots broke out that same summer. King had lost his grip on the movement.
By 1967 the map in the “war room” at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission showed riots in nearly every major American city. Two cities, Newark and Detroit, were surrounded by armored military vehicles that you had to pass to get in or out.
By early 1968, the Johnson administration concluded that there was no way it could hope to get re-elected without slashing back Civil Rights initiatives across the nation. Schedule C employees who had backed Civil Rights were fired outright. I was Civil Service—they merely called some of us in and told us to find other jobs. Immediately.
King’s supposed lack of “patriotism” was a fabulous gift to those who hated the notion of equality. To some minds, his killer was a patriotic hero.
Has Obama given a similar gift to the demoralized fans of Reagan/Bush conservatism? He might reflect on that possibility before he rushes in where even angels might hesitate.