Tag: hope
Jeb Bush’s Optimism School

Jeb Bush’s Optimism School

NEW YORK — The Republican Party faces a long-term challenge in presidential elections because it is defining itself as a gloomy enclave, a collection of pessimists who fear what our country is becoming and where it is going.

The party’s hope deficit helps explain why there’s a boomlet for Jeb Bush, a man who dares to use the word “love” in a paragraph about illegal immigrants.

The flurry doesn’t mean that the former Florida governor is even running for president, let alone that he can win. But Bush is being taken seriously because his approach to politics is so different from what’s on offer from doomsayers who worry that immigrants will undermine the meaning of being American and that the champions of permissiveness will hack away at our moral core.

No wonder Bush’s statement that immigrants entering the country illegally were engaged in “an act of love” was greeted with such disdain by Donald Trump and other Republicans gathered at last weekend’s Freedom Summit in New Hampshire.

Let’s stipulate that people oppose immigration reform for a variety of reasons. Some see any form of amnesty as a reward for breaking the law. Others believe the country would be better off if the flow of future immigrants tilted more toward the affluent and skilled. Still others worry that immigration pushes wages down.

But it’s not just the immigration issue as such that separates Bush from so many in his party. It’s the broader sense of optimism he conveys when he describes an increasingly diverse nation as an asset. He even, on occasion, speaks of active government as a constructive force in American life. And while he is critical of President Obama — he’s a conservative Republican, after all — he does not suggest, as so many in his party do, that because of the 44th president, the United States is on a path to decline and ruin.

Bush is occupying this space because New Jersey governor Chris Christie has lost it for now. His administration’s role in causing traffic Armageddon on the George Washington Bridge last fall and the rapidly multiplying investigations this episode has called forth created Bush’s opportunity.

At least before his immigration comments, Bush seemed to have more appeal than Christie to the party’s right. A Washington Post/ABC News poll last month asked Americans if they would “definitely” vote for, “consider” voting for, or reject various candidates. Among Republicans and independents leaning Republican, Bush drew acceptance across the board from moderate, somewhat conservative and very conservative Republicans. Christie appealed more to moderates. But Christie may be better positioned for a general election contest than Bush in one respect: Christie demonstrates higher levels of minimum consideration among Hispanics and African-Americans.

Three Republicans — who, by the way, also manage to convey some optimism — ran close to Bush in acceptability: Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. But all three were much stronger with the “very conservative” group than with the others. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Governor Rick Perry of Texas and Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin trailed because they were weaker in the moderate and somewhat conservative camps. (Thanks to Peyton Craighill, The Washington Post’s polling manager, for running these numbers.)

These findings point to Bush’s potential not only with a donor class that clearly likes him but also with rank-and-file Republicans. Still, there are many reasons why he may never be the GOP nominee. He’s not the ideal pick for a party that might more profitably choose a younger, forward-looking candidate who could challenge a Hillary Clinton campaign that would inevitably be cast as a combination of restoration and continuity. A Clinton-Bush choice would necessarily prompt comparisons between the Bill Clinton years and the George W. Bush years. Outside Republican ranks, the Clinton era would win rather handily.

But if Jeb Bush doesn’t make it to the mountaintop, he could usefully offer his party lessons on how to avoid being seen as a convocation of cranky old (and not so old) politicians whose most devout wish is to repeal a couple of decades of social change.

For there is a rule in American politics: Hope and optimism nearly always defeat fear and pessimism. Franklin Roosevelt understood this. Ronald Reagan stole optimism from the Democrats, Bill Clinton stole it back, and we all remember who had a 2008 poster carrying the single word, “Hope.”

Republicans need to realize that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” works better than “the only thing we have to offer is fear.”

E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne@washpost.com. Twitter: @EJDionne.

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Our Trust Survives

Last month, I was reading a newspaper in a coffeehouse in downtown Providence, R.I., when a stranger walked over to me and pointed to a nearby table.

“Would you mind watching my laptop while I run to my car?” he said.

I returned his smile and said, “Sure.”

I must look pretty harmless, because it’s not unusual for strangers to ask me to guard their stuff. Over the years, I’ve kept watch over lots of luggage, purses, newspapers and, on one memorable occasion, a Chihuahua sleeping in a hot-pink pet carrier.

This time felt different, probably because I was thinking about the upcoming anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Every newspaper in the country was planning special commemorations.

For the first time, it struck me as quite remarkable that most Americans still want to trust one another in this post-9/11 world. So many predicted otherwise, you might remember. So many thought our grand experiment was over.

Certainly, we’ve stooped to unthinkable lows. We’ve made a blood sport of stereotyping and targeting Muslims, most of whom are good and decent people. Fear-mongers now dominate talk show airwaves, fueling the worst among us. They are loud, but they are outliers.

True, we have constant reminders of that horrible day. A lot of us think about it every time we throw our shoes into a bin at the airport or produce a passport to cross the Canadian border. But we still get on planes, many of them bound for faraway places. We board trains, buses and subways. We slide into cars and share the highways with thousands of strangers every day.

We fill arenas for concerts and sporting events. We attend political rallies and town hall meetings and knock on strangers’ doors for campaigns and causes. We send our children off to school, to camp and to college. We stroll in shopping malls, feast at crowded festivals and throng to amusement parks. We gather every week in churches, temples and mosques around the country.

In the weeks and months after the 9/11 attacks, discussions on talk shows and across kitchen tables focused on what we had lost. Almost 3,000 innocent Americans died that day. I remember thinking for weeks that everyone must be scared to death, but I can speak only for myself: I was terrified.

Frantic phone calls that day — to my daughter, my son, my dad. I remember my father saying the same thing over and over into the phone: Jesus. Jesus, Connie. He was not a religious man, but he told me that day he thought he’d stop by the church where my mother used to sing in the choir.

“Just, you know,” he said. And I did.

I have often wished I’d met my husband sooner than 2003, but whenever I recall how I felt on the day of the attacks, I’m glad I didn’t know him then. He was a member of the House of Representatives at the time, and his two daughters — now my beloved stepdaughters — endured several anguishing hours when they couldn’t reach him. Even now, I fight the urge to walk away from my computer and shove that story out of my mind.

All of us have our own fears, our own worst-case scenarios.

This weekend, as a nation, we remember a moment in America when we huddled with those we loved, reeling from a collective shock. We mourn whom and what we lost, search for evidence of what remains. We will marvel at all that has come to pass, all that we’ve survived, in 10 years’ time. Many of us will bend our heads in prayer.

And then it’s onward, into tomorrow, where most of us will continue to believe in the good intentions of total strangers. How else to avoid becoming our own worst nightmares?

We are Americans.

We may not be fearless, but we refuse to be afraid.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and an essayist for Parade magazine. To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2011 CREATORS.COM

The New Pride of the Yankees

There still is, we learned this week, genuine hope for the human race.

It was not to be found here in Washington, where noisy public squabbling over whether to take the United States into Chapter 11 or to raise the nation’s legal debt limit has continued to dominate. No, hope came to us in the unlikely and hefty 6-foot, 5-inch form of a young cell-phone salesman named Christian Lopez of Highland Mills, N.Y.

The reason Lopez’s name may sound at least vaguely familiar is that he, a lifelong Yankees fan, was in the bleachers where he snagged Yankee captain Derek Jeter’s 3,000th career hit, a home run. The red-blooded, free-market thing for Lopez to do next was to auction the historic baseball on eBay, where even in this dismal economy, he could have expected to get well over the $220,100 Andrew Morbitzer was paid in 2006 for the baseball Barry Bonds hit for his 715th home run.

But Lopez, a 2010 graduate of St. Lawrence University and carrying more than $100,000 in student loan debt, announced immediately that he would forego any six-figure financial windfall. “I’m going to give it to Derek,” Lopez announced during the game. And as he later explained to reporters: “It wasn’t about the money — it’s about a milestone. I mean, Mr. Jeter deserved it. … Money’s cool and all, but I’m only 23 years old, and I have a lot of time to make that. It’s his accomplishment.”

These, I submit, are the refreshing words of an exceptionally classy young man. Oscar Wilde once defined a cynic as someone who knows the price of everything and knows the value of nothing. By that standard, Christian Lopez — who simply did the right thing as he saw it — may qualify as the most uncynical human being in the Western Hemisphere.

He was immediately criticized in print and on talk shows for being a sucker and not cashing in on his big chance. For me, an unreconstructed Boston fan, the New York Yankees have always inspired an unadulterated hate. The gifted Bill Mead put it well: “Most all good Americans hate the Yankees. It’s a value we cherish and pass on to our children like decency, democracy and the importance of a good breakfast. “Asked why, Mead explained: “They’re spoiled rotten. They think they’re such Hot Stuff. Their owner is obnoxious. Their fans are gross and rude.”

Of course, neither Mead nor I ever met Yankee fan Christian Lopez, to whom the open-handed Yankees organization did give four luxury seats to every game for the rest of this season — including the playoffs — and a bunch of Yankee attire and memorabilia.

Here is where the decency of Lopez becomes infectious. Because he could face a tax bill of up to $13,000 on the expensive seats he was given and because “Miller High Life believes you should be rewarded for doing the right thing, not penalized,” that brewer publicly offered to pay whatever Christian owes to IRS. Then Brandon Steiner of Steiner Sports and Mitchell Modell of Modell Sporting Goods each pledged a minimum of $25,000 toward paying off Christian’s student loans. Just maybe, as St. Thomas Aquinas taught us, goodness really is diffusive of itself.

At this dreary time when runaway greed and organized selfishness are epidemic — in both public and private life — the spontaneous, natural generosity and class of Christian Lopez, a new Pride of the Yankees, lift my spirits and rekindle my hope.

To find out more about Mark Shields and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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COPYRIGHT 2011 MARK SHIELDS