Kerry, Edwards Engage In Racebaiting

Redbaiting was the discredited McCarthyite tactic of calling anyone who disagreed with you a communist, a tactic typically used by conservatives against liberals (although also employed by liberals against radicals). Racebaiting is the equally despicable practice of calling anyone who disagrees with you a racist, a tactic used today almost exclusively by liberals against conservatives.

After Iowa, Kerry and Edwards have been widely portrayed as the sensible, balanced, un-Dean Democrats, but the knee-jerk, racebaiting response of both of them to President Bush’s recess appointment of Charles Pickering to the Fifth Circuit shows that even the best of the Democrats are not very far removed from demagoguery where race is concerned.

As reported in the Los Angeles Times,

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) issued a statement calling it “outrageous” that “one day after laying a wreath on Martin Luther King’s grave, George W. Bush is unilaterally installing a man on a federal appeals court who advocated tirelessly on behalf of a cross-burner.”

Kerry echoed the Democrat’s point man on blocking judicial appointments, Sen. Charles Schumer, who, according to the same LAT article, charged that anyone “who defended cross burning does not deserve elevation to the bench.” (Schumer, in his froth, apparently forgot that Judge Pickering is already on the bench.)

Alas, Sen. Edwards was no better, as pointed out in an editorial in the Washington Times that also explains why the accusations of “defending crossburning” are patently false.

On his Web site, Mr. Edwards repeats a most egregious smear against Judge Pickering: that he “took extraordinary steps to reduce the sentence required by law for a man convicted of cross burning.” But the facts of the case are as follows. In January 1994, three hoodlums burned a cross on the lawn of a house. Two of the three — including the apparent ringleader and chief organizer of the cross-burning attack — received a sentence of six months of home detention and one year of probation. Judge Pickering urged prosecutors to reduce the sentence of the third, less culpable defendant, who had been sentenced to seven years in prison. [URL added]

Mr. Edwards thus falsely depicts Judge Pickering’s attempt to provide equitability in sentencing as an act of insensitivity toward civil rights. With this slander of Judge Pickering, Mr. Edwards (who as a trial lawyer knows better) reveals himself a politician who will say anything — no matter how damaging to a decent man’s reputation — to win the presidency.

I have no particular brief for Judge Pickering, just as I have no problem with the Democrats opposing him if they think he fails to meet reasonable standards. But I nevertheless find this particular charge — that Judge Pickering defends crossburning and crossburners — classic political posturing and pandering. I suspect Kerry and Edwards, in fact, know the charge is bogus.

As a young county prosecutor Judge Pickering literally risked his and his family’s life by openly testifying against a local Klan leader, whom he sent to jail. That’s one of the reasons most of the blacks in Judge Pickering’s home town support him so strongly, as the New York Times reported last year. As liberal journalist Nat Hentoff observed,

This, not insignificantly, is the man who, in 1967, testified against Sam Bowers, a Klu Klux Klan leader, on trial for the firebombing death of a black civil rights activist.

But the Democratic Senators brushed by that fact, let alone his record in the years since that has made him — as New York Times reporter David Firestone wrote from Laurel, Pickering’s largely black hometown in Mississippi — “widely admired by blacks” who have known him all these years.

Thomas Sowell has just made a similar point:

Senator Kerry followed the liberal practice of playing the race card. When President Bush appointed Judge Charles Pickering to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, Kerry denounced Judge Pickering as an advocate for a cross-burner.

In reality, the man whose sentence Judge Pickering considered excessive had not burned any crosses. That is precisely why Judge Pickering thought he should not have received a longer sentence than a man who did, when the one who was punished more severely had driven the car that the cross burner traveled in.

What makes Senator Kerry’s race card truly despicable is that Judge Pickering not only fought against the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi, back when it was dangerous to do so, he sent his own child to a newly integrated school with black children — which is more than most liberal politicians will do, even today.

It is not necessary to argue that Judge Pickering is a world class jurist — or, for that matter, even to argue that he should be confirmed — in order to be disappointed at just how quickly and easily Kerry and Edwards descend to racebaiting when it suits their own interests.

UPDATE

Disappointed in the state of the union address, Andrew Sullivan writes:

If you’re a fiscal conservative or a social liberal, this was a speech that succeeded in making you take a second look at the Democrats. I sure am.

During his second look, I hope Sullivan looks closely at the Dems’ abandonment of the equality principle and the resulting racial pandering exemplified here.

UPDATE II

Walter Olson has a couple of older posts on Edwards on his terrific overlawyered.com, here and here. The latter has an interesting quote from Byron York on National Review Online describing Edwards’ grilling of Judge Pickering at his Judiciary Committee hearing:

Edwards’s performance was almost a parody of the bad-guy trial lawyer. In an aggressive cross-examination, Edwards relied on misleading questions, misrepresented premises, and unfounded conclusions as he tried to force Pickering to admit wrongdoing. Although Edwards’s style was extraordinarily smooth and polished, it was precisely the kind of exhibition that reinforces the worst images of trial lawyers – whether they are running for president or not.