In politics, a little integrity goes a long way
No politician will do the right thing every time. We should give them credit when they do.
“I was wrong, and now I want to be right.”
So said Illinois Republican Congressman Henry Hyde in 1981, following a subcommittee hearing on voting rights that took place in Montgomery, Alabama. As Ari Berman recounts in his important book, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America, Hyde, then the senior Republican on the subcommittee, was opposed to a key provision of the Voting Right Act (VRA), believing it no longer necessary.
But while Hyde traveled to Montgomery already holding a strong opinion, he also traveled with an open mind. He came home convinced he’d been wrong. As Berman writes, “the conversion of Hyde, one of the most conservative members of the House, marked a critical turning point in the VRA reauthorization debate.”
Today, Hyde is most remembered for the amendment that bears his name, which prohibits federal funding for abortion. But this column isn’t about that legacy, or about any other part of his career. It’s about how one moment of open-mindedness, of integrity, of fundamental decency, can have an impact on millions of people — and maybe even inspire a little hope in the democratic process itself.
It’s the type of moment of which American politics is almost entirely devoid today.
In recent months, Republicans in Congress have been rightly mocked for expressing “disappointment” or “deep concern” about things Donald Trump says or does, all while continuing to support his agenda and oppose efforts to constrain him. Even Republican senators like Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake, or Ben Sasse, who refused to endorse Trump during the campaign, often seem to go out of their way to praise the president when they can, as if to offset any halfway-critical comments.
Politicians whose actions don’t back up their words deserve castigation. But occasionally Republican tweets of disappointment and concern have precipitated moments of genuine integrity — moments that deserve real praise.
Take the drama that unfolded on the Senate floor in the early hours of July 28th. The vote on the Obamacare repeal bill was a culmination of the years-long capitulation of Republican leaders to the same forces that enabled Trump’s rise.
The Senate vote — on a bill that had been released just hours earlier, that had been written without hearings or markups or public scrutiny, that was so unpopular that a sizable share of Republicans would only vote for it on the condition that it not become law — was the product of a deeply broken political and legislative process.
For nearly a decade, that process — led by Mitch McConnell but sustained by countless others in his party — has been defined principally by impulsive, visceral resentment of anything affiliated with Barack Obama. That process enabled the election of a president whose White House is willing to discard even the pretense of acting based on facts or evidence. It manifested itself in stunning, shameless hypocrisy at the highest levels of legislative leadership, from spineless capitulation to Donald Trump in hopes of finding his signature on long-sought-after tax cuts, to the craven denial of a hearing or a vote on President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court.
Late last month, all of these toxic factors brought us to a rare moment on the Senate floor in which the outcome of a vote wasn’t already known. It was a dramatic, unscripted moment that cried out for a few senators willing to put any core value — institutionalism, integrity, or simply basic decency — before their party.
And for those of us still looking for a reason to believe that those core values matter in American politics, we found that reason in the “no” votes of Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and John McCain.
That these three senators voted against an abysmally unpopular bill that even many of their colleagues (secretly) opposed shouldn’t be remarkable, but it was. It shouldn’t take courage to vote against a bill that would force millions of Americans to lose their health insurance, but it did. It shouldn’t surprise us that a bill written in secret by Mitch McConnell and his staff didn’t have unanimous, instinctive, no-questions-asked party-line support, but that’s where we are.
More than 30 years earlier, after that 1981 field hearing, Hyde returned to Washington and helped guide a strong reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act through Congress. Explaining his new perspective, Hyde said simply, “You’re being dishonest if you don’t change your mind after hearing the facts.”
Honoring Henry Hyde for his fact-based change-of-heart on voting rights doesn’t mean we support his career-long anti-abortion crusade. Nor does thanking John McCain for voting against the Obamacare repeal bill mean we forgive his selection of a running mate in 2008. It simply means recognizing them for doing the right thing when they did.
In evaluating our political leaders, we should strive to find people who meet standards as lofty as we can imagine them, and we should hold them accountable for what they promise, say, and do.
But no politician will do the right thing every time. That’s an admirable standard, but an unrealistic one. To hold our political opponents — or our allies, for that matter — to an impossible standard is to be disappointed every time. That’s a recipe for the same toxic, hopeless cynicism that gave us Donald Trump in the first place.
Instinctive condemnation won’t fix our politics, but making common ground safe again might at least be a step in the right direction. We have to celebrate those who do the right thing, even once, because it gives us a reason to believe in the process. Only by nurturing those moments of hope, integrity, and courage will we restore our political standards to their rightful place.
In the 1:00 am hour on July 28th, as McConnell and Mike Pence worked the Senate floor, trying to flip the votes of McCain or Murkowski, we were desperate for a flicker of political courage, for a sign of integrity. In their “no” votes, we’ve found a reason to be hopeful about the messy process of democracy.
That little moment of integrity can go a long way — but only if we let it.