More Image Over Substance

The Social Security system still faces insolvency problems not too many years down the road, but apparently no reforms will be passed this year.

There are still a number of judicial – and other executive branch – nominees awaiting confirmation by the Senate, with no indication of when, if ever, said confirmation will be forthcoming.

Despite the steady, and rather rapid, rise in energy costs, the energy bill still languishes in Congress.

But thank goodness! At least we got an apology for lynching passed by the United States Senate.

An article in this morning’s Tennesseean notes that Tennessee’s Junior Senator, Lamar Alexander, was one of sixteen senators – all Republicans – who did not sign on as a co-sponsor for the resolution apologizing for the Senate’s refusal to right a wrong some sixty-five years ago – around the time the good senator was born. And, as could be expected, despite the fact that his office has confirmed that he would have voted in favor of the resolution had a roll call vote been taken – it passed on a voice vote – he, and others who weren’t “on board,” is being subjected to criticism from the usual suspects.

Speaking about Senator Alexander and his colleagues who didn’t bother to join in the Senate’s exercise in window-dressing, Hilary Shelton of the NAACP stated that, “An apology begins with an acknowledgement of wrongdoing. For those who weren’t willing to do that, you have to pause and take wonder as to why they’re here in the first place.”

Frankly, this writer has to wonder the same thing about the members of the “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body” who can’t be bothered to pass meaningful legislation that actually accomplishes something and addresses real needs, but are all too happy to take up floor time to debate and pass a resolution that accomplishes nothing and reveals nothing that wasn’t already known – Why are they “here”?

That it was a failure on the part of the United States Senate to pass the legislation when it had the opportunity in the first half of the twentieth century is not disputed, and I am sure that Senator Alexander and the others would agree. But the fact is that such legislation has been passed since that time, which is a far more meaningful expression of that acknowledgement of wrongdoing that Mr. Shelton so desires than any non-binding resolution could ever be. This resolution did nothing to strengthen such legislation. Nor did it do anything to solve any of the social ills being faced by that community that suffered the most at the hands of lynch mobs. It merely apologized for the past failures on the part of the Senate to act. A classic case of image over substance.

Because the apology itself is meaningless gesture. Virtually the entire generation of Americans that had the power to stop the practice at the time it was going on is gone. Certainly, there are no members of the Senate from that era that still serve – all jokes about Robert Byrd aside. The resolution passed by the Senate is roughly equivalent to me apologizing to my neighbor because the guy who lived in my house before me once smashed his mailbox. I have nothing for which to apologize, and my predecessor in the house has not been absolved of his malice.

But the resolution does manage to make members of the Senate feel good about themselves – a skill that has been honed to perfection in the “Upper House” of Congress. But one has to wonder how much comfort that will be to Americans, whether of African descent or otherwise, who pump their $3.50-a-gallon gas while pondering what standard of living their retirement income will afford them.

Frankly, my hat is off to Senator Alexander, as well as his fifteen colleagues, who had the presence of mind to stand up and declare that the emperor had no clothes on, while preferring to put their hands to other legislation that would actually work to alleviate the problems facing the minority communities in the United States. Just one more example of the truth of the statement: “It matters who governs.”