Political courage is a scarce commodity

Too many pressures push against the kind of bravery that we say we like in politicians

It takes courage to drive in New York City — and apparently even more to try to reduce the traffic congestion and pollution. (Photo by Kevin Lee on Unsplash)

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Courage drove the troops who stormed ashore on D-Day 80 years ago, President Biden was saying this week at the Normandy American Cemetery. Indeed, it was only “because of their courage and their resolve,” he said, that Europe was freed from tyranny.

Courage is surely one of the most admirable of human virtues, so we tend to encourage its appearance — cheering athletes who courageously push back likely defeat, supporting patients who courageously confront life-threatening illnesses and egging on young people who courageously step into unfamiliar challenges. We exhort children to learn to be brave.

But when it comes to public life, we admire courage more in the abstract than in practice. There’s a reason, of course, that courage is rare in politics: it usually doesn’t pay off. Courageous politicians tend to lose votes, campaign donations and friendships. So who can blame them for generally just going along? Since courage is typically needed only when an unpopular cause is on the line, we shouldn’t expect anybody whose career depends upon the support of others to queue up eagerly for a chance to offend.

The rarity of political courage makes it stand out when we see it, and its absence a rather constant pain.

Take, for example, the story of George Michaels, who might be remembered by few beyond his descendants these days, surely, except for a singular act of courage he displayed in 1970. Michaels had been elected to represent a conservative area around the Finger Lakes in the New York State Assembly in the years before the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, and he had twice honored his constituents’ preferences by voting against lifting state restrictions on abortion rights. But the more he learned, the harder he found it to hold to that stance.

One night near the end of the legislative session, a bill to decriminalize abortion was brought up for another vote, and the initial tally showed a 74-74 tie, with Michaels voting against. Absent a majority, the bill would have gone down to defeat. Michaels rose to his feet.

“Mr. Speaker, I fully appreciate that this is the termination of my political career,” he said. “But what’s the use of getting elected or re-elected if you don’t stand for something?” He then switched his vote, setting the stage for Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s signature the next day. Before the month was out, Michaels’ law partners decided to split up the firm, and his county party organization declined to endorse him for re-election. Friends shunned Michaels and his wife. He never held political office again. But the state law passed by his vote helped pave the way for the Supreme Court’s affirmation three years later of a constitutional right to abortion, which was law nationwide for a half-century and remains the majority view of Americans today.¹

Michaels’ story is like those of other principled politicians that were laid out by John F. Kennedy in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Profiles in Courage, published in 1957. Kennedy’s introduction to the book cited three types of pressures that pull politicians away from courageous acts: the pressure to be liked by both colleagues and political supporters; the pressure to win re-election; and the pressure to serve constituencies and interest groups. It’s not that politicians should ignore those pressures, Kennedy wrote; it’s that a courageous politician knows when to disregard them and instead “exercise their conscientious judgment.”

Kennedy asserted that a democracy depends upon “faith that the people will not condemn those whose devotion to principle leads them to unpopular courses, but will reward courage, respect honor and ultimately recognize right.”²

But, of course, those words were written in a time when Americans were more idealistic, or at least more willing to believe that people in politics could rise to the challenges of the time. Nowadays it’s tempting to look at JFK’s sentiments as naïve at best, or, less charitably, as manipulative. Did he really think voters would honor principled stands that differ from their own — did voters do that in the 1950s, in fact? — or was Kennedy just advancing his own political career by making readers feel good about one of Americans’ supposed virtues?

Even asking that question probably marks just how far advanced is the cynicism that now threatens to help disable our democracy. Or maybe we’ve just seen too many examples of the failure of courage in the face of challenges lately.

This week produced a shining example in the latest big story in New York state politics: Gov. Kathy Hochul’s abrupt turnabout that blocked a plan to launch congestion pricing in New York City at the end of this month. Until this week, the nation’s largest city was on course to impose a toll of $15 a day on vehicles entering Manhattan’s central business district. Hochul was enthusiastic about the plan, even bragging about it when she traveled to the Vatican for a meeting with Pope Francis on climate issues this month. Her advocacy made it shocking that she would so abruptly announce, just as the Legislature was about to adjourn for the year, that congestion pricing would be “paused indefinitely.”

The fee would have led fewer vehicles to travel the streets below Central Park — reducing traffic congestion, noise and air pollution in the city — even as it generated revenues to leverage $15 billion in capital investment in subways, buses and trains. It’s also true that it would have imposed a hardship on drivers, especially from the suburbs, and perhaps hurt businesses that still haven’t recovered from changes wrought by the pandemic. Those arguments have all been weighed thoroughly during years of state consideration; finally, a few years back the state made the decision to follow other major world centers where the fee is working. Planning has led to engineering and testing, and the system was ready to kick in.

The governor’s change of heart puts a $1 billion-a-year hole in the state’s finances. It also raises a question in some minds about her political courage — and whether she can be trusted when she takes a stand on an important public policy issue.³

Of course, you could argue that Hochul was acting upon a principled change of heart — a sense that she had been wrong to embrace it when she inherited the planning upon becoming governor. Too few politicians are flexible enough to concede that a stance they’ve taken is wrong, a fact that makes the example of George Michaels’ vote on abortion noteworthy.

Or maybe Hochul flip-flopped because it was politically expedient. Voters don’t tend to take a long view, and it’s undeniable that the short-term impact of congestion pricing would be inconvenience and expense for people accustomed to driving around in the city. Some news reports suggest that Hochul worried the fee could hurt the election chances of some Democratic congressional candidates, even though the federal government wasn’t involved in the issue.

Thoughtful people can argue about where true courage lay: in support of an unpopular position that would have benefited the community in the long run, or in abandoning a position that had become untenable in light of changed circumstances.

It’s usually easier to see where the weak-willed line up. Which brings to mind the spineless sycophants who once seemed to recognize the threat that Donald Trump poses to the nation, but who are now happily skulking on the soft path set out for them by his misguided true believers.

Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, told associates after Trump inspired his partisans to launch the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, “If this isn’t impeachable, I don’t know what is.” Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said on the night of the 2021 attack, “All I can say is, count me out. Enough is enough.” Former Attorney General William Barr described Trump’s actions as “nauseating” and “despicable,” and said he “shouldn’t be anywhere near the Oval Office.” All three are now supporting Trump, as is almost every elected Republican and every candidate on the Republican line. It takes courage to stand up for the values that Trump has abandoned; it requires none at all to go along with the candidate who has bullied and lied his way to prominence and political success.

And let’s put this into context: Politicians are asked to display courage in what may put their careers at risk, but what Joe Biden was talking about in Normandy this week was those whose courage cost their lives. And that part about the debt the world owes to those who bravely fought to stop the march of totalitarianism in Europe eight decades ago has a special resonance in light of those who now line up behind Donald Trump. Biden linked the stakes in World War II with the West’s defense of Ukraine now in the face of Russian expansionism. That stands in sharp contrast to Trump’s assertion that the United States shouldn’t defend its western allies unless they pay more for their own defense. He claimed in February that he had once told “one of the presidents of a big country” during his presidency that the U.S. shouldn’t come to the aid of attacked NATO allies under the present set-up, and that he would instead encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want,” including invading Europe.⁴

What do you suppose that remark represents: is it cowardice? ignorance? carelessness? It’s not entirely clear. This is, though: It’s not courage, not by a long shot. For that, we’ll have to look elsewhere.

1. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/06/george-michaels-new-york-abortion-vote-courage-granddaughters.html

2. https://www.jfklibrary.org/events-and-awards/profile-in-courage-award/about-the-book#:~:text=''%20He%20describes%20the%20three%20types,the%20constituency%20and%20interest%20groups.

3. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/06/hochul-new-york-congestion-pricing/678621/

4. https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/10/politics/trump-russia-nato/index.html

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