Desiring Machine

All this discussion about votes for and against wars got me thinking a little. I just would like to point out a long time hero of mine. Oregon senator Wayne Morse. He lived and died before my time but I remember many years ago my grandfather telling me about Wayne Morse and the fact that he was one of two sentors to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964. That singular act of courage has stood out to me ever since my grandfather revealed it to me many years ago. It was one of those little factoids that deep down made me proud to be from Oregon. I was born in Portland, raised in La Grande, in north eastern Oregon.

In hind sight Senator Morse’s action seems courageous and correct. However, at the time things were just as complicated as they are today and Morse’s courage to vote his conscience is even more remarkeable when we recognize this fact. However, the lesson here is not one of political expediency. Morse’s actions had dramatic detrimental effects on his political career. In 1968 he lost his Senate seat to the infamous Bob Packwood who in my lifetime would be ousted from the senate in a political sex scandal when some of his secretaries came forward with charges of sexual harrasment. Morse never recovered his senate position and died before the general election in his race against Packwood in 1974.

Sometimes a vote is about poltical expediency but sometimes a vote is about being on the right side of history. And I don’t want to be on the wrong side of history and have to explain to future generations why I failed to act in such an obviously righteous way. But there’s the rub. We look back in time and everything is crystal clear. Looking forward righteousness is never self-evident. And that is THE moral and political question that we face in our time, in every time really. It is obvious to almost everyone that Slavery was wrong, that Hitler was wrong, that Stalin was wrong, and so on. But the challenge we face is always going forward, never back. It is often said that the victors rewrite history, but it is we who make history everyday. And at every turn in the road we have to ask ourselves, what kind of history am I making today? If that is not enough to keep one up at night I don’t know what is.

None the less I do think it is clear that we need more angry, obstinant cranks like Morse in the Senate not less.

Goldy over at horsesass makes some valid points in his blog post Progressives Need To Get Real. And I certainly understand the sentiment and frustration that motivates his point of view. We really do not know if the nation can stand a few more years of Bush and a Republican controlled congress. However I think he misses the larger issue, the more significant issue here.

Let me preface by saying this: I am a life long Democrat. I have voted the party line pretty much my entire life with the exception of Nader in 2000. And I love Maria Cantwell, I really do. I like her more than Patty Murray in a lot of ways. She has a lot of good ideas on energy policy, and if for no other reason she deserves my vote. The looming energy consumption crisis that faces this country is a significant, if not the largest, crisis this country and the world face. In some sense I think it is smart, forward thinking efforts of the likes of Cantwell and many others in this state that the Northwest finds itself with a “glut of green power” this year.

But I must also say no party, and I mean NO PARTY deserves the unquestioning assent of its people. Goldy suggests that the primary objective is seizing power:

“But No, we have to engage in our usual bullshit in-fighting over who is or is not ideologically pure enough? all the time losing sight of what should be our overriding objective: seizing power.”

I would suggest that this kind of thinking borders on unamerican. That “ends justify the means” kind of thinking worked well for the Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany but it is not baked into our DNA as Americans. Our political culture is certainly a fractured and painfully contentious one, but so what. That is the way it has to be. Our diversity while seemingly a weakness, is our greatest strength. And Goldy your willingness to let morons like MOMUS and JCH run unchecked in your comment forums is one of your blog’s greatest strengths. The willingness to embrace the free exchange of ideas is what makes us great. It is what makes us better than Republicans and moreover you win wars with ideas not by tactics alone. Go see V for Vendetta for great dramatisation of this principle.

Now to address a few points about Cantwell and her votes. According to Goldy there is

“all this wailing and gnashing over her failure to stop a war she couldn’t stop or her refusal to join a filibuster that could not win.”

It is a logical fallacy to argue for realpolitik and at the same time imply that certain votes don’t really count because the odds are just stacked against us too high. It is precisely in these moments that votes do count. If her vote for the war was that insignificant, then why not make the vote anyway? Well, because it was significant. It was 1 out of a hundred votes. And that is more power than any single citizen or protest march holds. Her colleagues in the Senate understand that the vote was significant and she understands the vote was significant. She probably did it for a number of reasons, a political calculation, an quid pro quo agreement with other members in the senate, maybe because she truly believed Bush and the WMD story. Who knows? The point is actions do matter. And they deserve to be accounted for. Is Cantwell’s vote for the war worth suffering a term with McGavick as senator? Probably not. Is the debate worth having? Absolutely. There are many, many, many poltically jaded and cynical people in our society. Many who have been looked over and forgotten by society and the political process. With voter turnout still hovering near 50% in this state we could do a lot worse than get people excited over a senate race. And to get people excited you have to speak to them and win their trust with real ideas, not simply harangue them into voting for voting’s sake in a camapign to seize power at all costs.