Duckworth is the ideal running mate
I have known Sen. Tammy Duckworth for 11 years, since June 2009, when I joined the Department of Veterans Affairs as their chief technology officer. We worked together daily and have remained close friends ever since. Senator Duckworth has sacrificed more for our country than any one I know. She has demonstrated her commitment as a military officer with state-level service in Illinois, as a Senateconfirmed assistant secretary, a congressional representative, and now as a wildly popular senator.
She brings to any serious conversation the sterling credibility of a severely wounded veteran who is articulate, thoughtful, persuasive and fair. It is heartbreaking for meto see a respected journalist like Tucker Carlson of Fox News pervert her words, her skills and her background, never mind question her patriotism. Mr. Carlson earlier this month called Ms. Duckworth a “vandal” and “moron,”and said she hated her country after she suggested the U.S. needs to look at the histories of America’s Founding Fathers who owned slaves.
Mr. Carlson’s remarks are neither new nor original. Demonizing political opponents was not invented in 2016 and the dark art won’t be perfected this year. He is grinding a fetid powder of authentic policy difference and fabricated character boils, milled on the gerbil wheel of advertiser dollars, and enabled by the addicting obsession for external validation at volume and scale. It doesn’t have to be this way. Both major parties are to blame. Senator Duckworth knows this.
I hope that Joe Biden will pick Sen. Duckworth as his running mate. From my perspective, she offers him the perspective of a combat veteran, a detail-oriented operations partner, Midwest credentials, and — the most important attribute of all — a loyal team player who is ready to be president on Day One.
Sen. Duckworth has made choices that Mr. Carlson never considered. She volunteered to serve her country in uniform. She deployed to Iraq. And she got into a Black Hawk helicopter and flew into a combat zone. Her choices then were just like the decisions three million women and men who protect our country today, patriotic and heroic.
Most of us will be spared the violence she barely survived, the inconceivably painful rehabilitation, the daily challenge of attaching her prosthetics, and extra energy, effort, and commitment it takes to just get where she is going and be present when she arrives. No matter your political ideology, imagine tracking the arc of her career in public service, and the message of hope and resilience she has delivered to millions of people. Keep in mind that she is married and the mother of two small children. Now imagine doing this without your legs.
I hope that Mr. Carlson was just caught, like sometimes happens even to those of us not in broadcast journalism, in a bad moment. I hope he does not believe — and maybe regrets saying? — that Tammy Duckworth is unpatriotic or a coward. I recall the fabulous scene in the movie “Good Will Hunting” where some Harvard prick is trying to impress a girl at a bar, and the Matt Damon character intellectually demolishes him and then casually asks if he’d rather “settle this outside?” Mr. Carlson is too talented and too smart to not know that his best move, and his most honorable response, is to own what happened and apologize for it. Whether he does or doesn’t, Sen. Duckworth has his number. And she’s got mine too.
I spoke with her just before the latest episode of “Gotcha.”
It was a warm conversation between two deeply trustful friends. I observed, as dispassionately as I could, the flicker of possibility she might become vice president. We spoke about the good she could do, the perspective and balance she could provide, her warm relationship to the nominee. We reviewed her core policy alignment to his governing agenda. We smiled at the spectacular privilege and honor of it all. And then we gossiped about our friends.
What people like Tucker Carlson miss, what their predatory focus on ratings and advertiser-triggered frenzy completely obscures, is that people like Tammy Duckworth are not afraid of their bullying. It may seem like nostalgia at the moment, but facts always win in the long run, and we’re pretty close to the end of this short one. Mahatma Gandhi taught us not to cower in the shadow of invincibility of strongmen, or, in this case muckrakers looking for their next sugar high. Think of it, he said, they always fall. Always.
So while we grapple with the national public health crisis, the thunderous echoes of slavery and discrimination, the looming threat of economic seizure, and the reality of climate change, let’s encourage the Carlsons, and Hannitys, and, yes, the Maddows, to share their magnificent gifts in more truthful and constructive ways. We will come together again, as sure as the sun will rise, and as sure as Tammy Duckworth will, like cosmic gravity, attract to her the better angels of our nature.