Fatal Overreach

Writing and talking about Michael Brown, whom police officer Darren Wilson killed on Aug. 9 in Ferguson, Missouri, people have a tendency to leave out one of two details: Either that he had just committed a robbery or that he was unarmed. Wilson's critics describe Michael as an unarmed teenager. Wilson's advocates say robbery suspect. It's harder to argue that Michael is an innocent victim if you mention that he was the criminal suspect about whom Darren had just heard from his dispatcher. Saying Darren's innocent is a harder sell if you acknowledge that Michael wasn't carrying a deadly weapon.

Put the two together, and you get "unarmed robbery suspect." Google it and see how few hits you get. There's too much ambiguity in the phrase given the emotional freight that's being conveyed by the preponderance of the commentary about the case. We're naturally tempted to overlook gray areas while using a narrative to prove a larger point. It's especially in the nature of politicians, pundits, and interest groups to turn those caught in tragedies such as Michael's and his grieving family's into object lessons. But Darren Wilson didn't deserve to be indicted because of the existence of institutional racism. By the same token, he doesn't deserve to be absolved just because most police officers do the best they can under difficult conditions while running the risk of being turned into scapegoats for broad inequities and injustices for which virtually none of them is individually responsible.

At the core of our common life is the principle that a person suspected of committing a crime is judged strictly by the facts. In this case, after an a violent struggle over Wilson's weapon in his car, Michael fled and then turned and lunged toward Wilson. Was the officer expected or entitled to shoot him? That would seem to be a question that any number of police academy instructors should be able to answer.  If I were writing the rule book, I'd be inclined to say, "Do whatever you can to avoid discharging your weapon until you see that the suspect is armed." Of course I've never been in such a situation myself. The experts, many of whom have been, disagree with me. Wilson probably shouldn't have confronted Michael while he was still seated in his cruiser. He should've made sure he had access to mace or a Taser before trying to detain Michael.

But once the confrontation reached the street, even the New York Times called Wilson's use of deadly force "standard police procedure." If that's really the case, it's hard to second-guess the Ferguson grand jury. If Wilson had been tried, he probably would've been acquitted. Michael's advocates might have been less outraged by an unfavorable jury verdict than they were by the grand jury's decision. But again, the facts of the case, not the motive of managing public moods and opinions, are supposed to govern whether someone is charged or convicted.

Still, I'm troubled by something that Wilson claimed in his interview with ABC News: That he saw Michael reach inside his waistband. The youngster had no weapon. Pretending to go for one while moving toward an armed officer whom you've already assaulted would be tantamount to committing suicide.

So we should consider another possibility. In the ABC interview, Wilson said he wouldn't have done anything different. It would be reckless to say otherwise with a federal civil rights lawsuit pending. But a normal person would be prone to anguished second thoughts, wondering if his ten shots were justifiable. The St. Louis County DA claims that those who testified that Michael raised his hands over his head in a gesture of surrender were misremembering, their imaginations stimulated by their anguish at the tragedy of his death. It seems more likely that Darren similarly imagined Michael's threatening gesture than that the college-bound young man committed suicide by cop.

By speculating as I have, I'm not accusing Wilson of lying. Just of having a heart in pain.

More Nixon Racism: He Even Bashes Whites

Richard Reeves:

During a two-hour conversation [in 1982], [Nixon] said a confrontation was coming -- probably economic rather than military -- and that "yellow" (his word) Asians were simply genetically superior to Caucasians. The job of a Western leader, he continued, was to hold off that confrontation for as long as possible.

In Need Of One Good Book

It's easy to understand people's revulsion at the racial and ethnic commentary on the newly opened Nixon White House tapes, especially the exchange between Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger about a hypothetical Soviet holocaust against Jews. As his chief of staff, library director, and legal co-executor, I cringe myself.

That being said, during thousands of hours of conversations with me over a 15-year association, he rarely if ever talked this way. Even as a former president, he devoted most of his time and energy to substance -- articles, books, and speeches, as well as his voracious consumption of and commentary about political and policy news.

Having spent plenty of time with the Nixon tapes, my sense is that their 4,000 hours embody a comparable disproportion between substance and triviality. But today's snarling editorial in the New York Times goes out of its way not to take a balanced view. Again, anger about racism and anti-Semitism is understandable. But I'm sure the Times also realizes that Nixon was a serious person of considerable accomplishment whose legacy of foreign policy innovation and domestic pragmatism can still teach us a lot in our era of terrorist threats from abroad and ideological warfare at home.

But frankly, I really shouldn't be picking on the Times, which has been left a clear field. With the exception of the measured insider's perspective at Maarja Krusten's new NixoNARA, it's astonishing how few people have piped up for 37 since the new tapes were opened. Pleased finally to find some relatively friendly commentary about Nixon on another, unfamiliar blog the other day, I went to the home page and realized it was operated by white nationalists. The Nixon White House aides who have devoted so much effort to trying to block the Nixon library Watergate exhibit in which some of them play starring roles appear to have gone home for Christmas now that the tapes beg for friends and associates to stand up and say, "That's not the totality of the man I knew."

One Nixon family member who was especially prone to defeatism repeatedly expressed a fear to me that Nixon's reputation would never recover from the rancor of his times and racism on the tapes. With each new records opening, I can see why someone could feel that way. The Times notes the devastating irony of tapes Nixon thought would cement his reputation instead having the effect of cement wingtips, dragging his historical standing further down. Having helped negotiate a three-party settlement that envisioned all the tapes being opened by 2000, I regret that the National Archives has taken this long to open the whole collection. The library now says it will take until 2012. Scholars used to blame us Nixonites for holding up the tapes. But we waved the white flag in 1996. Why will historians have had to wait at least more 16 years?

And yet all is not lost. The Nixon Center in Washington continues to promote Nixon's living principles of enlightened national interest as the foundation of the U.S.'s role in a changing world. Not only the thousands of hours of opened tapes but all the records are finally housed or available at the Nixon library -- the richest presidential collection about one of the most momentous eras in modern history. Thanks to my elder daughter Valerie, last Monday I had dinner with a young scholar from Italy who's studying relations between the U.S. and Brazil during 1971-73. She said there were four other readers working at the library last week alone.

If Nixon were still here and I could call to buck him up, I'd actually be the first to mention the Jews. I'd remind him that they wandered in the wilderness for at least 40 years. I'd say, "Mr. President, you've still got a shot at the promised land. All you need is a few historians and biographers who are willing to take the sweet with the bitter. Just one good book from an independent voice: Manna from heaven."

Making Paranoia Rational

Mickey Kaus:

The more I think about it, the more the townhall anti Obama anger isn't explained completely by the issues....There's also something about Obama himself-. But that something (or the main something) isn't his race. It's that he's a relative newcomer, as Presidents go--an unkown quantity, an enigma, with a relatively short track record and patches of that record left fuzzy. That means opponents can fill in the blanks with ominous possibilities. It makes paranoia more rational, if you will.

I buy that. But race is also an issue, especially for Republicans.

Repudiate The Racists, And Mean It

Townhall.com, the conservative web site, circulates a daily e-mail offering links to its columnists and other resources. This morning's edition includes the picture at left (advertising something called the "National Republican Trust PAC") as well as a column by mainstream conservative Steve Chapman, who writes:

Obama may be a "post-racial" figure, but there is still a significant slice of the electorate that has never gotten past his skin color.

For anyone who regards blacks as irredeemably alien or inferior, Obama is a nightmare, not just because he is black but because he so thoroughly confounds racist stereotypes.

But that's a minor factor, not a decisive one. It is Obama's party and policies that are the real source of the opposition.

This strikes me as an important concession that there's a virtually unprecedented and potentially dangerous factor in the national political mix as the result of Obama's election that has nothing to do with his policies. Whether the racist fringe is "significant," "minor," or "not...decisive" (all different things; Chapman seems a bit conflicted) begs the question of whether conservatives and Republicans must become vigilant about repudiating rhetoric and tactics designed to attract and perhaps even inflame racists.

It's a difficult problem for any candidate. Political coalitions and blocs of voters are assembled across a broad spectrum. A Republican candidate knows that she gets votes from pro-choice fiscal conservatives and gun show attendees with Confederate flags and Birther bumper stickers on their pickups. The Democrat gets votes from world-government lefties and suburban moderates. Neither candidate wants to offend the fringe. The Townhall e-mail itself reflects the tension, presenting Chapman's column as well as a picture of Obama that is obviously intended to make him look like Nation of Islam security guard.

Let's be perfectly clear about this stuff. Appeals to the racist fringe are unacceptable. The racist fringe is unacceptable. Responsible Republicans should condemn it, and candidates should say they don't want their votes. You know who did it in 1962? Richard Nixon, when he spurned the Birchers. It helped him lose the California governor's election that year. But it couldn't be helped. It needed to be done. As a matter of fact, the propriety of the move notwithstanding, it prepared the GOP for the mainstream. It's time to get out the Nixon playbook again.

Wisdom From A Good Episcopalian

As reported in the New York Times, Colin Powell puts his finger on the problem with associating all conservative criticism of the President with race:

Former officials who served under President George W. Bush have been quick to recall this week that protesters frequently compared him to Hitler and that the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, called him a “loser” and a “liar.”

In an interview Wednesday shortly after meeting privately with Mr. Obama in the Oval Office, Colin L. Powell, secretary of state under Mr. Bush, said: “You can find pictures where Bush was called all kinds of names, with all sorts of banners being held up and burned in effigy. I’ve seen it in every presidency.”

Mr. Powell said he believed that Mr. Obama might be facing even more apparent hostility but that the blame lay not necessarily in racial bias, but instead with the partisan culture of the Internet and cable news and the way they amplify the more extreme voices.

“The issue there is not race, it’s civility,” Mr. Powell said. “This is not to say that we are suddenly racially pure, but constantly talking about it and reducing everything to black versus white is not helpful to the cause of restoring civility to our public dialogue.”

Blessed Are The War-Preventers

Noting my passing reference to Dr. King earlier today, a friend who discerningly studies leadership (and pretty much everything else) shared his jewel of a precis:

The courage, charisma and eloquence of Dr. King may have prevented a racial war that would have left history's greatest country divided and weakened. If wars can change history, so can those preventing wars. Dr. King was a peacemaker appropriately awarded the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, and uniquely honored with an American national holiday. Following in the footsteps of Gandhi, King demonstrated the courage it takes to be a peacemaker. He kept his eye on the prize despite being stabbed in New York, stoned in Chicago, and bombed in Montgomery. His tragic Memphis martyrdom underscored the threat of racism and the depth of Dr. King's courage to give his last full measure of devotion.