Judge Sarbanes’ proposal on merit, not partisan advantage

The Baltimore Sun | Monday, March 8, 2021

There has always something essentially quixotic in Rep. John Sarbanes’ “For The People Act,” its title as idealistic as anything found on its nearly 800 pages of content. In sum, what H.R.1 attempts to do is fix much of what is broken in this nation’s election system, chiefly by making voting more accessible, ending partisan redistricting, raising ethical standards, and exposing and reducing the influence of big money in politics.

Americans should be celebrating its passage in the U.S. House of Representatives late Wednesday and giving thanks to the 58-year-old Maryland Democrat, the eldest son of the late Sen. Paul Sarbanes, who has made this worthy cause a personal crusade. Don Quixote may have tilted at windmills, but John Sarbanes went after something real and far more daunting: a political system that runs on money and disenfranchises far too many Americans.

Yet, this remarkable achievement has, unfortunately, if predictably, fallen into partisan tooth gnashing and gross over-simplification. Republicans have reduced these sweeping reforms to one unifying idea — that it’s a reckless power grab by Democrats. And they have done so by returning to the same prevarications about the last election that have been completely and utterly disproved, yet fueled an assault on the U.S. Capitol just two months ago that tested the very foundations of this democracy. Incredibly, just hours after the commanding general of the District of Columbia National Guard testified in the Senate about the horrors of that day and the delay in Pentagon approval of a military response — and even as Capitol Police were still warning the public of yet another such potential plot on Thursday — Republican House members were blindly returning to the same old false rhetoric about rampant election fraud, rejecting H.R. 1 in a near complete party-line vote.

Like most political theater, there was no surprise here. For years, Republicans have followed a fairly conventional political wisdom that they do best in elections with the lowest participation rates. Nonwhites, younger and educated adults? They tend to vote Democratic. And, indeed, overall, more Americans identify as Democrats than they do as Republicans (33% to 29%, according to the most recent Pew Research Center survey). So Democrats see advantage in higher voter turnout. But in this case, they also happen to be correct. There is an undeniable public good in removing barriers to voting and establishing national voting rights standards. No-excuse mail voting, early voting, automatic voter registration, returning rights to felons who have served their time, these have broad societal benefits. And, as the last election demonstrated (and was confirmed by dozens of legal challenges), they do not give rise to rampant voter fraud.

Marylanders understand this better than most. With the notable exception of non-partisan redistricting, many of these reforms have already been successfully adopted here. And H.R. 1 gives the best path forward on redistricting, removing the power to gerrymander from all state legislatures whether they are controlled by Democrats, as is the case in Maryland, or by Republicans who claim majorities in most.

The sad reality is that after passing in the Democratically controlled House, the legislation’s chances in the evenly-divided Senate, where matters of consequence face a 60-vote threshold because of the filibuster rule, are between slim and none. At least, they are if red state Americans don’t get wise and start questioning why GOP senators are so unanimously against more people voting or tracking “dark money” contributions or requiring presidential candidates to release their federal tax returns. Polls show all these measures have broad support from the public. To whom do Republican lawmakers answer? To their constituents or to deep-pocketed special interest groups or fellow career politicians who might be disadvantaged by ethics reforms?

Granted, democracy is difficult. Politics are tough. But if Republicans are going to continue to look at the last election as some kind of scandal because so many more Americans were able to participate or, worse, make outrageous and false claims about fraudulent voting schemes (the kind that some people take seriously enough to stage an assault on our most sacred temple to democracy), they are going to encounter a lot worse problems than how their own congressional districts are drawn. Mr. Sarbanes may not defeat any ferocious giants on this day, but perhaps he will inspire others to take up the worthy cause of voting rights. They are certainly plenty of state houses where these essential democratic ideas are under attack from those who would benefit from turning back the clock and returning (or retaining) power among the privileged.

I love America, but the love has changed. I started out with the child version: America is the greatest and most powerful country on earth.

That emotion doesn’t generally survive into adulthood, especially in times like these. That kind of patriotism tends to play down shameful truths. It tends to bloat into touchy and overweening pride.

These days it’s hard to be blithely confident in the core American creed we used to be so proud about — e pluribus unum. Out of many one. We don’t seem like “one” today if you look at the facts.

This general disillusion with e pluribus unum has caused many people to give up on patriotism altogether. On the right, people who often call themselves patriots are actually nationalists, a chauvinism that is an entirely different emotion. Nationalists believe that America is bitterly divided between themselves and internal enemies who betray it. Nationalists base their loyalty not on our common creed but on common clan, in which you’re either in or out.

To a much smaller degree, the disillusion with e pluribus unum has caused some on the left to also conclude that America is permanently divided between oppressor groups and oppressed groups. To them, Joe Biden’s insistent call to unity seems naïve.

The problem is that if you abandon shared patriotism, you have severed the bonds of civic life. We talk about how people have grown more passionate about their partisan identities. Maybe the problem is people have grown less passionate about a shared American identity.

And yet, like you perhaps, I still regard myself as an extremely patriotic person. Which is why I so admired Yale political philosopher Steven B. Smith’s book “Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes.” It explained my emotion to me.

The concept that opened the door for me is the idea that American patriotism is both rational and emotional, irrational.

It draws from a cerebral root. We’re a people of texts. We tend to study and restudy just a few key texts, including the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address and Letter from a Birmingham Jail. These texts contain ideas we assent to, but also ideals that warm our hearts.

The core cluster of American ideals would certainly include equality, inclusion, self-government, and aspiration, the idea that to be an American involves climbing upward to something. We also have this unusual assumption that America is not just a plot of land but also a project. We don’t just live here. We have goals.

We seek to express American ideals, and when we do, it turns out we don’t agree! This conflict takes place not only in marches but also in school boards, in the humdrum daily acts of civic participation. Wartime heroism is not the high-water mark of American patriotism. Writing a dissenting comment about this column is.

This kind of patriotism “is the first virtue of social institutions.” It’s what keeps everything together and functioning. It is the decline of this loyalty that has tended to make our institutions falter.

Out of this activity, a certain sort of emotional state arises. As we argue over something, we develop an empathy for it, a level of care. We develop a steady loyalty and a gratitude for how it has made us certain sorts of people.

Sometimes caring for America brings moral shame. As Sen. Cory Booker has remarked, “If America hasn’t broken your heart, then you don’t love her enough.”

But this a very resilient, strong yet unflamboyant form of national love. This kind of love Mr. Smith argues is best conveyed by the Yiddish term

mishpocheh. It means family but more than family, but also extended relations and people from the same place:

Somehow, they are just of us, and we of them.

Feed your eyes on your city until love of her fills your heart, Pericles commanded in his famous funeral oration. He was speaking in wartime when national unity was forged by foreign threat. We, on the other hand, are living in a time of domestic strife when our love has to be powerful, patient, merciful, forgiving.

Mr. Smith ends the book with one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen lyrics:

This train carries saints and sinners, this train carries losers and winners, this train carries whores and gamblers, this train carries lost souls,

I said, this train dreams will not be thwarted,

this train faith will be rewarded.