Answer me, yes or no

William F. Buckley, Jr.

NEW YORK, DECEMBER 16

The language they use! Convolution time.

Lani Guinier, President Clinton's nominee in 1993 to be the head of the civil-rights division at the Justice Department, seized exultantly on Mr. Clinton's question at the Akron forum on race. The question was directed to Abigail Thernstrom, the distinguished scholar and co-author, with her husband, of the epochal America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible. Mrs. Thernstrom is one of the forum sitting there, and the President wheels on her and asks, "Do you favor the United States Army abolishing the affirmative-action program that produced Colin Powell? Yes or no?" The inherent situation is intimidating. In the first place, the interrogator is the President of the United States, and people don't talk to the President in language they'd think appropriate in talking to their peers. Moreover, there's a demagogic echo chamber in most audiences which reacts delightedly to politically correct slurs.

Professor Guinier sighs, "Such an exchange could have influenced the fate of Proposition 209, which passed with 54 per cent of the vote, yet the President was strangely silent. . . ."

What might Mrs. Thernstrom have replied?

Well, she could have taken the bull by the horns and asked, "Yes or no, do I favor the electoral system that produced President Clinton?" That would have been an entirely excusable quid pro quo. If Mr. Clinton had stuttered out a response, she'd have had to make good her ultimatum. "No no, Mr. President. Just say Yes or say No."

The quite incidental victim of the exchange was Gen. Powell. He entered the Reserve Officers' Training Corps in 1954 as a student at the City College of New York, and what do you know? He graduated at the top of the college's ROTC class of 1958 with the rank of cadet colonel, the highest rank in the corps. Was affirmative action responsible for that? No, dear, affirmative action began seven years later. George Washington Carver made it without affirmative action -- Yes or no? ANSWER ME THAT!!!

Language, language, the forlorn corpse of modern democratic exchange. Mr. Clinton is by no means the premier practitioner of verbal roadkill. Sen. Kennedy set a high mark in his declaration opposing Judge Robert Bork for the Supreme Court -- the famous remark promising that if Judge Bork were sent up to the Court, blacks would return to the back of the bus and abortionists to the use of clothes-hangers. Last Sunday, asked to characterize Republicans, Sen. Kennedy gave his straight-from-the-shoulder answer. "The Republican Party is basically anti-civil-rights, anti-immigration, anti-woman, and anti-worker." One likes to think that if such a statement had been made at one of the little seminars conducted by Socrates, everybody would have risen and followed Socrates out into fresh, wholesome air.

But people don't mind. They have got used to it. And Sen. Kennedy has acquired, in the plenitude of his uproarious career, a kind of creepy gravitas. His eyes shut just a little, his voice is level and calm and authoritative, and whatever issues from his lips is made to sound as if being escorted out by the National Academy of Arts & Sciences dressed in inaugural garb. What if in answer to a historical question he said, "The Nazis have been consistently misrepresented for the benefit of the merchants of death who got rich during the war"? Would you not agree there'd be a moment of silence before the little buzz of wonder?

What did poor Mrs. Thernstrom say? By the way, the President referred to her as "Abigail," as if she were the upstairs maid. She said, "I do not think it is racial preferences that made Colin Powell -- "

"Yes or no," had been the President's order. Now he interrupted: "He thinks he was helped by it."

Gen. Powell had been awarded 11 medals before affirmative action had got to first base. Mrs. Thernstrom tried one more time. "The overwhelming majority of Americans want American citizens to be treated as individuals," she said. She even tried to make a point ever so slightly distinctive. "These preferences," she said, "disguise the problem. The real problem is the racial skills gap."

But that was lost. Ward Connerly, the national leader of the fight for equal treatment under the law, has been granted a cameo appearance at the White House, at the next general forum on the race question.

What might he say in a world in which language is carefree and corrupt? Well, he might say, "Mr. President, the Democratic Party is basically anti-individual-rights, anti-white, anti-property, anti-American. Isn't that right, Mr. President? Answer Yes or No."

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