Burning Down the "Plantation" Statement
By Thomas Lindaman (01/20/06)
While Mayor Ray Nagin was playing the race card in New Orleans on Martin Luther King Day, another prominent political figure was doing a little card shuffling of her own. During a speech in Harlem, Senator Hillary Clinton compared the way the House of Representatives is run to a plantation because, as she put it, "nobody with a contrary view has had a chance to present legislation, to make an argument, to be heard." In statements the day after the "plantation" comment, she stood by her statements, saying she was referring to the "top-down" way the House of Representatives is run.
Republicans and conservatives have jumped on the "plantation" comment as racist, and certainly there's merit in that line of thinking. It was undoubtedly a planned move, given that Hillary was speaking in front of an African-American audience at the time she referenced plantations. But they're conceding an important point by focusing on the surface racial issue.
As of the date of this writing, few if any conservatives and Republicans have challenged Hillary's statement and asked how the House of Representatives resembles a plantation. I'll admit I'm not a Civil War scholar and I know I haven't been around long enough to remember what plantations were like, but I'm pretty sure the plantations didn't have anything to do with passing or debating legislation. Sure, there was a top-down structure, but that's no different than the way most companies are run. And in politics, the party that has the majority sets the schedule.
But to say that no one of an opposition party can propose and debate legislation is nothing short of silly. As a member of Congress, any Representative can propose legislation, and they can certainly debate it. Anybody who watches C-SPAN during the day knows this. A bill can be proposed, but it may not be voted on or debated right away because of the volume of bills before it. Some bills don't get out of committee because of the makeup of the committee, but that's not the same thing as prohibiting debate and introduction of bills. So, Hillary played fast and loose with the truth.
I know. It shocked me, too.
But you don't even have to get that deep to figure out Hillary's full of it. She was talking about conditions in the House of Representatives...when she is serving in the Senate! Granted, they work in the same building, but they don't often work together.
And since Republicans control the Senate, too, why didn't Hillary mention the Senate being run the same way as the House? That would be dirtying her own nest, in a manner of speaking, and she would have to go back and explain herself to the Republicans she serves with to avoid future problems.
Especially, if she's trying to court Republican votes by appearing to be more moderate than her past suggests.
The backdrop of Hillary's "plantation" comment cannot be overlooked either because it puts it into a particular context. Remember, she was speaking in Harlem during a Martin Luther King Day celebration. And also remember that politicians have speechwriters whose job it is to craft speeches. Very little of what goes on in public involving politicians is off the cuff and unscripted. Not to belabor the obvious, but the "plantation" reference was planned.
And what she is banking on is that the Republicans and conservatives are going to let the comment slide without comment, thus giving the charge credibility. It's a trick the Democrats utilize against Republicans and faux liberals use against liberals and conservatives with frequency: make an absurd charge with a controversial part designed to attract your attention so you ignore the charge itself. Remember Dick Durbin's comments last year about guards at Gitmo using tactics like Nazis, communists, and Pol Pot. The charge was that the Gitmo guards were mistreating the detainees, but since Durbin invoked Nazis, communists, and Pol Pot, that's what we focused on, myself included.
Fortunately, there is a drawback to using tactics like this: the more outrageous the distraction, the less likely the charge will be believed. With the Durbin comments, the public didn't pick up on them because we didn't believe Durbin, partially because we didn't believe our soldiers would do something like what Durbin was suggesting they did, and partially because we've heard the "Nazi" claim from Democrats so often since President Bush was elected that we tune it out. Then again, the audience wasn't tailor made for people to believe him because his comments were made before Congress.
Hillary's comments, on the other hand, were made to a sympathetic audience. If you get a chance to listen to an audio tape or watch a video tape of the speech, you will hear people agreeing with Hillary. When you have people agreeing with you at the point when you make your charge, it lends credibility to it. Combine that with the fact that the audience was African-American, a group whose ancestors worked on plantations, we tend to give them credibility on the issue.
This is why the Republicans and conservatives need to focus on the charge and not on the racial elements of the "plantation" reference. Asking for Hillary to prove her statement about how the House is run will put a torch to the notion because Hillary can't maintain the analogy in the face of the truth. Once challenged, the "House is run like a plantation" charge will crumble like burnt paper in a clenched fist.
But the crumbling won't begin until someone makes the challenge.
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