Michael Moreland raises an interesting question over at Mirror of Justice today -http://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2012/02/mitt-romney-conscience-and-the-boston-globes-mistakes.html. He implicates, I think, an even more interesting one.
Michael references a recent Boston Globe story, to which he helpfully links. The story concerns certain putative discrepencies between Mitt Romney's current campaign trail condemnations of the HHS's recent decision requiring insurance coverage of contraception for employees of religiously affiliated schools and hospitals, on the one hand, and Mr. Romney's own enforcement of a Massachussetts law requiring abortion coverage back in 2005, on the other hand. Michael takes the story for evidence that the Globe is aiming to draw a spurious equivalence between Messrs. Romney and Obama, and in so doing both to 'impugn' Mr. Romney and to 'defend[ ] the Obama Administration's attack on religious freedom in the HHS decision.' I take Michael's story itself for possible - though only possible - evidence of something else.
To set the stage for what I have in mind here: I read the piece that Michael takes to task and, somewhat to my surprise, found it to be much more balanced than his post had led me to expect.
First it seems clear in the story that it is not the Globe that is suggesting any Romnobama equivalence, but C. J. Doyle of the Catholic Action League. Mr. Doyle figures prominently in a large photograph accompanying the story and is quoted, quite early on, as saying that '[t]he initial injury to Catholic religious freedom came not from the Obama administration but from the Romney administration.' Of course we hear like remarks all of the time from other conservatives, who routinely note 'Obamacare's' precedent in 'Romneycare,' and surely are not taken on that account by anyone for defenders of Mr. Obama, let alone of attacks on religious freedom.
Second, and in keeping with that last observation, there is no evident defense in the article of Mr. Obama, let alone of the recent HHS decision, at all. Mr. Doyle himself indeed goes on to say, in the paragraph just cited, that 'President Obama's plan certainly constitutes an assault on the constitutional rights of Catholics.' It's just that Mr. Doyle is 'not sure Governor Romney is in a position to assert that, given his own very mixed record on this' (emphasis supplied). So far as I can tell, Mr. Doyle looks to be neither 'impugning Mitt Romney' nor 'defending the Obama Administration's attack on religious freedom in the HHS decision' here. He's simply invoking a variant of the Clean Hands Doctrine and, again, is far from the only conservative doing so these days where Mr. Romney is concerned.
Thirdly worth noting, it seems to me, is that the Globe story also makes plain at the outset that Mr. Romney first sought to veto the legislation upon which he was acting in requiring Catholic hospitals in 2005 to provide emergency contraception to victims of sexual predation, and that he 'angered reproductive rights advocates' in so doing. That almost reads like a defense of Mr. Romney in face of the now well familiar conservative line taken against him.
Fourth, the story (a) notes conspicuously that plenty of conservative Catholics as prominent as Mr. Doyle give Mr. Romney the benefit of the doubt where his positional shifts on life questions are concerned, and (b) leaves the distinct impression - surely accurate - that the weight of American Catholic opinion is very much opposed to the Obama HHS's recent decision. If there's any 'negative focus' at work here, then, it seems to me it is fixed at least as (or more) directly upon Mr. Obama as (or than) it is upon Mr. Romney.
Finally the Globe story also, near its end, quotes the reliably and, it now seems, obligatorily quotable 'zany' new Catholic Newt Gingrich, who levels charges agains Mr. Romney more or less identical to those leveled by the Catholic Action League's Mr. Doyle and other conservatives. The only surprise occasioned by this particular quote is its not turning up until near the end of the story. Were the story meant for a hatchet job on Mr. Romney, a puff piece on Mr. Obama, or an equivalence piece on both, one might have expected the characteristically incendiary Gingrich quote to figure more prominently. Indeed one might have expected the Globe to play up the now familiar 'Romney hypocrisy' narrative and picture Mr. Gingrich, mouth open as ever, pointing or wagging a finger toward the camera lens in the generally expected 'J'accuse' manner.
On balance, then, it doesn't seem to me that there is any reason to be indulging suspicions of the Globe on the basis of this story. Indeed if anything, it is rather refreshingly more balanced than much of what we find in the more familiar news organs, and surely worthy of praise on that account. Certainly it rides far lighter on the oft-purportedly opportunistic Mr. Romney than most 'liberals' and 'conservatives' tend to do. Why, then, does the story elicit the reaction it does from Michael?
Here is my worry, which is of a type I am sure many now share: In times like the present it is just all too easy to fall prey to paranoia in interpreting the words and actions of those with whom we are accustomed to disagreeing. We are, after all, moving through troubled and unfamiliar waters right now, and accordingly prone to a bit more than the usual measure of fear and loathing that modern life can induce. Economic and social conditions are such as we'd thought locked in the history books. People speak of 'decline' in a way that they used to do only of other 'lost empires.' And all the while urgently needed restorative action is blocked, always and everywhere, by all-the-time frowning and sneering, ignorant yayhoos elected a bit over a year ago by scared angry voters. If the (in the main) shockingly ill-informed, ill-educated, ill-tempered cranks recently seeking the Republican nomination for President are any indication, moreover, it would seem we are in for far worse even than we find on their side of the aisle in Congress right now. (Let us pray they're a tiny minority in Congress itself come next year.)
Against this backdrop, I'm inclined to think it a good idea for us with the charity of heart and clarity of head requisite to the task to read newspaper stories with a good dose of trust in good faith - defeasible trust, sure, but trust nonetheless. A piece covering some matter associated with some candidate might get it wrong, or might lend itself to some false impression or other, sometimes. But surely few authors intend that. Yes, there's a widespread tendency to notice, and then write about, things that play into some popular narrative, and that can admittedly be harmful and is in any event a manifestation of mediocrity. But mediocrity isn't bad faith. It is more like 'the mean' than 'mean spirit' - a sort of arithmetic mean among popular media. Let us induce a rise in that mean, then, by critiquing laze and cliche where we find them, rather than eliciting unhelpful defensiveness by imputing bad faith where it's dubitable. That'll be my resolution, anyway.
A final, more personal plea in respect of my own motives here, for what little it might be worth: I am, as it happens, among those inclined to take Mr. Romney at his word when he speaks of his relatively recent 'life issues epiphany,' and even find the story moving. That is so even as I literally pray Mr. Romney be far less sincere in his profession of new faith in the 'old religion' of 1928-style economic policy, which would be absolutely calamitous for our nation and the world and must - absolutely must - be prevented. I am also among the many who were surprised by the recent HHS decision, which I believe Mr. Obama soon will recognize for the uncharacteristically oafish and destructive blunder that it was. I am not, then, myself trying in this post to 'impugn' Mr. Romney or 'defend' Mr. Obama. There'll be occasion enough for that soon, I am sure.
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