This column originally appeared in Human Events on Feb. 12, 2008

A Clinton Apology

By Jessica Peck Corry

The non-apology apology: Yet another relic of Bill Clinton’s eight years in the White House, and something we’re seeing a lot of this presidential election season. Ironically, the most interesting of the feigned regrets being offered up these days are being directed toward his wife’s own presidential campaign team.

The latest comes from MSNBC, where anchor David Schuster is apologizing after suggesting that Hillary Clinton’s campaign had “pimped out” her 27-year-old daughter Chelsea by having her contact celebrities and Democrat “super delegates” to urge their support for her mother.

Momma Clinton got mad. Really mad. She’s now threatening to boycott future campaign appearances on the cable news network. Her communications director, Howard Wolfson, is describing Schuster’s comment as “beneath contempt,” telling reporters, “I, at this point, can’t envision a scenario where we would continue to engage in debates on that network.”

Schuster has been temporarily suspended for his remarks. Network executives have eagerly apologized, fearful that Hillary will back out of a planned Feb. 26 MSNBC debate in Ohio. But this isn’t all that is angering the Clinton camp. Several weeks ago, MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews suggested that Hillary’s political career was only made possible by her husband’s philandering. Like Schuster, Matthews also apologized.

But why? Both men were expressing a viewpoint shared by many Americans.

In both cases, there was admittedly a better choice of words that could have been used. But the truth is the truth. And here, the truth is that it was Hillary — and not Schuster or Matthews — who injected her personal life into the national dialogue on her candidacy.

This is, after all, a woman who just last month went onto the “Tyra Banks Show” where she freely discussed her husband’s adultery. When asked by Banks how his affairs impacted her, she said, “I never doubted Bill’s love for me ever, and I never doubted my faith and my commitment to our daughter and our extended family.”

This was an attempt to soften the cold image most Americans have of Hillary. Long aware of this perception, she has never missed an opportunity to trot her daughter out at campaign appearances to remind attendees that there is a softer side to the angry woman that entered our homes through our television sets nearly two decades ago. The message is clear. Hillary can use her family for political gain, but no one is allowed to criticize her for it.

When it comes to the proper semantics of apologies, Hillary’s dear husband taught us the language of “regret.” He regrets when people are offended, he regrets when people get hurt. He rarely if ever, however, utters the three simple words, “I am sorry.”

In American politics today, apologies are thrown around so frequently that their sincerity must be questioned. If Schuster and Matthews believed what they were saying, they should have stood their ground instead of giving into the victimology of the Clinton machine.

If there is anything Bill Clinton has taught us, it’s that you can apologize without meaning it. So, in an effort to forgo this tempting legacy of our nation’s forty-second president, let me say just this to Mrs. Clinton. I am not — repeat — not sorry, if anything I have said here has offended you.

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Jessica Peck Corry (Jessica@i2i.org) is a policy analyst with the Independence Institute in Golden, Colo., where she specializes in land use, higher education, and civil rights policy.”

This article originally appeared in Human Events on Feb. 14, 2008.

In today’s America, Barack Obama is black. But he shouldn’t be. Born to a white mother and a black father, Obama’s prescribed racial identity is nothing more than a holdover from racist policies of the past. In a nation growing more racially diverse by the moment, we should see Obama for who he is: A man — like many Americans — who is beyond racial classification.

Throughout the Illinois Senator’s presidential campaign, he has been repeatedly asked about how his race will affect his prospects for the White House. When quizzed last year by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Obama responded, “Are there folks who might not vote for me because I’m African-American? No doubt.”

But why do we consider Obama black?

Earlier this week, I caught up with Ward Connerly, a conservative black civil rights activist who is pursuing ballot initiatives in several states this November that if passed, would ban the consideration of race in hiring and education.

When I asked him whether there was any part of him that was excited about Obama’s candidacy, he said yes. “A little part of me would like to vote for him, but there is too much at stake to vote for that symbolism of shedding the past. To close escrow on Obama totally undermines those who argue institutional racism but I would not want him to be president just to have that symbolism.”

To Connerly, Obama is far too liberal. But like Obama, Connerly comes from a mixed-race background. Connerly’s consists of Irish, French, Indian, and African. He emphasizes that the smallest portion of his ethnicity is African — an important fact in his personal story since he says he has been identified by others as black his entire life.

“Am I allowed to say I’m Irish?” he asks, recalling a time when he addressed a business lunch in Pittsburgh on a past St. Patrick’s Day. When he told the attendees that he would make his remarks quick so he could march in the Irish pride parade outside, many in the crowd chuckled. Connerly says he made the comment to prove a point. “Your eyes don’t see brown skin as the features of an Irishman,” he told them.

Connerly says he sympathizes with Obama’s attempt to racially define himself. “Why do we as a society force him into a specific category? If he said ‘I am white,’ he’d be looked at with disbelief.”

America’s history is marred by the one-drop rule, a series of Jim Crow-era statutes and policies that defined a person with any African ancestry whatsoever as non-white. State legislatures used the rule to prevent interracial marriage and it wasn’t until 1967 that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down such statutes as unconstitutional.

So why hold on to the rule? Why can’t we see Obama and Connerly as Americans beyond racial classification? After all, they are representative a thriving — and growing –segment of our population.

With the federal government’s recent addition of a “mixed-race” category to our national census, America is now home to nearly three million interracial marriages — nearly 5 percent of all unions nationwide. And these statistics represent just a baseline. Since “Hispanic” is not considered a race, but rather an ethnicity, the statistics do not include marriages between whites and Hispanics — a category certainly thriving in the Southwest. Likewise, a marriage between a Japanese wife and an Indian husband would not be considered interracial since both ethnicities are considered under the same Asian racial umbrella.

Today, the U.S. Census recognizes 63 unique racial categories. These include some traditional races, including white and black, but 57 others are merely combinations of other races. How should we define the children born to such marriages? Obama married a black woman and Connerly’s wife is white. How should their children be racially classified?

Obama talks at length about our nation’s future. In the four mail pieces that have arrived at my central Denver home in the last month (I’m a registered Republican), he talks about “change we can believe in.” I want to believe in an America where racial discrimination –including the one-drop rule — becomes a thing of the past.

By continuing to force Americans, including Obama and Connerly, into stagnant race boxes, we do a disservice to every citizen seeking to be seen as an individual, and not simply for his or her skin pigment. In doing so, we only give credit to failed racial policies of the past.

This column originally appeared at The Denver Post’s PoliticsWest.com on February 7, 2008.

Why Ron Paul Matters

Jessica Peck Corry

Donating to Ron Paul’s presidential bid is like paying homage to that part of you that will never forget what it was like to be the last one picked in third grade kickball. In a country of self-loathing former underdogs, it’s no wonder that Paul’s long shot campaign for the White House managed to rake in nearly $20 million from eager contributors in the last quarter alone.

At a Friday campaign stop in Denver, the Texas Republican Congressman spoke to a standing room only crowd of 2,000 supporters—nearly double the number that came out earlier in the day to cheer on ordained front-runner Mitt Romney.

Paul’s speech was greeted with the eagerness of a religious revival. One supporter broke down in tears at the microphone as she described Paul as her “hero.” Sitting next to me in the front row was a 61-year-old lifelong Republican. She said she had never missed an opportunity to vote in her four decades of eligibility. Without Dr. Paul (this is how the obstetrician’s supporters affectionately refer to him) she said she would have sat this election out. She says she is most motivated by his anti-war stance. When greeted by a 20-something activist, they both nod in unison about their frustration with the drug war.

The interaction is a familiar one. This is not your father’s Republican party.

Dred-locked hippies stand united with Christian homeschoolers. Democrats and independents also pepper the crowd, proclaiming our need for renewable energy initiated within the private sector. There are no staged applause lines. On multiple occasions, an impromptu chant begins, “Ron Paul Revolution! Give us back our Constitution!” On stage, Paul is greeted by a drum line dressed as Revolutionary War soldiers.

Outside such venues, it’s tempting to write Paul off. Despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of voters supported him in this week’s “Super Tuesday” caucuses and primaries, he still failed to register on the national radar. His exceptional support in Western states, including Montana, where he came in second only to Romney, and Arizona, where he garnered nearly 20,000 votes, pales in comparison to the millions of votes the GOP’s other candidates, including Romney, John McCain and Mike Huckabee, received.

So why pay attention to Paul?

The people are listening. In the fourth quarter, he topped all other GOP candidates in fundraising. His $19.9 million was trailed by Rudy Giuliani’s $14.4 million, Romney’s $9.1 million, Fred Thompson’s $8.9 million, McCain’s $6.8 million, and Huckabee’s $6.6 million.

People are writing checks as a way to tell the establishment to stick it. They are also sending in their dollar bills because Paul has managed to communicate a message that his party has long failed to articulate. While once the GOP proudly touted its mantra of individual rights and responsibility, it has succumbed to the sucker punches of liberals of late who preach that conservatives don’t care about the poor, the disenfranchised or - at times - even our nation’s children.

Liberals are, of course, wrong. But in this election, Dr. Paul is the only one willing to take them on. In the aftermath of George W. Bush’s failed presidency, he is, ironically, the shot in the arm many Republicans need to help build back up their confidence.

He believes—as all Republicans should—that government is an impediment to growth, liberty, and progress—not the provider of it. Also important in an era when Republicans are torn about social issues, including gay marriage and abortion, Paul believes we can have morality without government forcing it upon us.

When asked what makes him so popular, Paul shrugs his shoulders. “Freedom is popular,” he responds, obviously humbled by the crowds who gather to greet him in city after city.

While the message is appealing, the messenger is not always as polished as he should be. At times, Paul comes off like an angry grandfather at Thanksgiving dinner. The other candidates try to nod and smile politely at his conspiracy theories on U.S. foreign policy. Someone then passes the gravy. Both literally and figuratively, as Paul’s fellow candidates eagerly outline their agendas for an ever-larger federal government.

Republican insiders will tell you that Paul can’t win. At this point, they’re right. But his actual support is largely downplayed due to the fact that many Republicans who say they identify with his values are scared to support his candidacy. They hold back because they believe he’s too radical to win a general election.

This is a sad indictment of the era we live in. A push for smaller government is considered radical. Indeed, a closer look reveals that Paul is a revolutionary not because the content of his libertarian ideas are extreme. It’s because the time in which he is espousing them in is plagued with bi-partisan apathy toward our ever-growing federal debt and deficit.
[0]Jessica Peck Corry is a public policy analyst with the Independence Institute in Golden, Colo.

While a growing number of Americans are identifying consistently with Paul’s message, it would be naïve to suggest that his candidacy could lead to the emergence of a viable third party. Just ask Green Party candidate Ralph Nader and Reform Party candidate Ross Perot about that. Third party candidates are, plain and simple, spoilers.

Paul’s chances for victory may be non-existent, but his impact could still be immense. Libertarianism will no longer be relegated to the side stage. It is front and center as Americans become increasingly frustrated with the nanny-statism propagated by both the Left and the Right.

On an optimistic day, perhaps we can hope Paul’s candidacy will remind his fellow Republicans of the values they proclaim on their party platform. Regardless, in the aftermath of his great adventure, each of us—well, at least the third-grade versions of ourselves—can say a little cheer for the kid who made it past the first cut.