Representative Steve King is a Lunatic

Ok, perhaps it’s not as subtle a title as I’d like, but it does sum up my feelings about the man!

In case you missed it, the Des Moines Register on Sunday (10/9/05) led off its Opinion section with the following headline: “Spare us more embarrassment: Replace King.” You may recall that the Register had twice previously endorsed King for Congress -- in 2002 and again in 2004 – but apparently is now beset by feelings of great remorse. “Like a citizen who can’t recast a vote,” the Register’s Editorial Board confessed, “an editorial page can’t take back an endorsement. But we can express regret and urge voters in the 5th District to replace him in the next election.”

The Editorial Board went on to warn of King’s increasing drift towards the furthest fringes of right-wing politics, and pointed to an ever growing list of alarming acts on King’s part: his dismissal of the torture used against Iraqi prisoners as simple “hazing,” his central role in attempts by Congress to insert itself into the Terri Schiavo case, his patently bigoted promotion of “English Only” bills and an anti-immigrant fence along the U.S.-Mexican border, his pointless battle against naming a California post office after a local community activist, and his recent characterization of the late Senator Joseph McCarthy as “a great American hero.”

As the editorial noted rather pointedly: “If [King] had been as successful in promoting the interests of the 5th District as he has been in establishing himself as an ideologue, western Iowa would be a garden of prosperity. Unfortunately, King’s antics sooner or later will make him a marginal player, of little value to his district or to Iowa [emphasis mine].” THIS is the message we 5th District Democrats need to start repeating again and again publicly, until it takes on a life of its own.

As for the Lunatic himself, we were treated to yet another of King’s special screeds in the Sioux City Journal’s own Opinion page that same Sunday. “What defines a hero?,” asked King. And what was his self-serving answer? A hero is someone who doesn’t deviate from his or her mission. If you support the mission, then you support the man or woman (tellingly, no women appear among King’s heroes), regardless of tactics employed to further that mission. As King wrote in defense of McCarthy: “His tactics were relentless, his personality invidious, and his habits were sometimes excessive. Nonetheless, he was a central figure in the movement to remove communist spies and sympathizers from our most sensitive government positions.”

Better King should have written of McCarthy: “His tactics were outrageous and bullying, his personality arrogant and spiteful, and his habits were often embarrassing even to his own supporters.”

Read between the lines, however, and you may notice the sheer lunacy of King’s hero-worshipping. What King is arguing quite vociferously, in effect, is that ‘the ends truly justify the means.’ It’s not important to King that McCarthy repeatedly lied and used smear tactics indiscriminately for personal political gain, or that the reputations of good Americans were ruined due to mere allegations rather than any proof of wrongdoing. Guilt, for McCarthy, lay in the very accusation itself, and not its ultimate verification (here it’s important to keep in mind that McCarthy’s ubiquitous ‘witch hunts’ failed to convict a single Communist of spying). Ironically, McCarthy’s tactics probably did the U.S. more harm than good in the long run, such as by helping enforce a stifling (and distinctly un-American) brand of ideological conformity at home, while gutting the Foreign Service (especially the China specialists) of competent officers whose earlier, honest reports no longer fit the nation’s preconceived notions of reality.

It is no wonder that McCarthy’s overreaching and recklessness finally compelled Congress (a body not often prone to self-reflection) to vote 67 to 22 on December 2, 1954 to “condemn” McCarthy for his conduct and for damaging the dignity of the Senate. McCarthy, having lost the support of his party and the adulation of the press, effectively drank himself to death by May of 1957.

No, what matters most to King is that McCarthy “stayed the course!”

King’s argument is one bred of arrogance. “This is the way things out to be,” he seems to be saying, “and anything I can do to further the cause is acceptable.” But when are the tactics used simply unacceptable? Could there be times when the “means” are simply excessive and therefore counterproductive? For instance, yes, the United States could have won the Vietnam War. We had the obvious advantage in technology and firepower. We had the ultimate weapon in the atomic bomb. But at what price victory? Would it have been the moral choice to “bomb North Vietnam back to the stone age,” as one top American military officer suggested, despite the cost in countless innocent lives?

As the Register’s editorial inferred in passing, King has already shown evidence of his reckless hubris and disregard for the normal workings of the democratic system in his actions regarding the late Terri Schiavo. “In King’s world,” the Register’s Editorial Board warned ominously, “Congress would prohibit the Supreme Court from reviewing any law, giving Congress unchecked power.”

But in the worldview of Representative Steve King, “might makes right,” and any means are permissible so long as the desired end is reached.

Perhaps it is time to really get serious about deposing our King!

Peace!
Historian