Profiles in Courage for Our Time (Review)

PROFILES IN COURAGE FOR OUR TIME

Edited and Introduced by Caroline Kennedy

Hyperion 352 pp. $23.95

Reviewed by Colman McCarthy, whose new book is “I’d Rather Teach Peace.”

Given the heights to which the human spirit can rise, political courage in the United States is the least demanding way to ascend, if demanding at all. Bucking party lines, defying accepted political dogma, going it alone: the consequences are mostly minor. Grave personal risks—losing your life, your job, your health or good name—are rare in the way they are not when physical courage or moral courage are rallied.

Gerald Ford’s 1974 pardon of Richard Nixon displayed a measure of spine, but the former president lives now as a man of wealth and leisure, with petals of praise and honors flowering his path through retirement. Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold displayed political courage to crawl into the political sewers to unmuck them with campaign finance reforms, but their congressional paychecks and privileges keep coming. After winning election in 1989, James Florio roused the ire of the gun lobby by calling for stricter controls of the weapons. It cost him reelection. Florio now has a legal practice in New Jersey.

The stories of these and some dozen other political figures are told in 14 essays by authors edited and introduced by Caroline Kennedy. Bob Woodward writes about Gerald Ford, Albert Hunt on McCain and Feingold, Anna Quindlen on James Florio. The profiled also include Charles Weltner, Carl Elliott, Sr., Michael Synar and Henry Gonzalez—all members of Congress no longer living. They received the Profile in Courage Award, established in 1990 and overseen by a selection committee that works with the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation . Caroline Kennedy, the late president’s daughter, heads the foundation.

With a throwback to the original “Profiles in Courage,” written a half-century ago by then Sen. John Kennedy, this current volume is well-intentioned but ill-conceived. Bandying the word courage is one flaw. Public servants are paid—and paid well—to take difficult stands. Should awards be given when they do? Labeling it courage is a dilution of the real thing. Such international politicians as Lech Walesa of Poland, Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma and Srdja Popovic of the Serb Republic practiced deeds of defiance that risked a bit more than scowls across the buffet line at the congressional dining room or a tsk tsk from an overheated columnist.

A second problem is that nearly all of the profilees here are political liberals or moderates who mostly took stands that the Kennedy wing of the Democratic party would find worthy. No courageous conservatives could be found? Conservatism has no people of conscience? Where, too, are the women? Only Hilda Solis, a Latina state senator in California, is included. Only four of the 14 essayists are women. Even less represented among the profiled are blacks: Rep. John Lewis, the Georgia Democrat and Charles Price. The latter, an Alabama judge, ruled that another judge had violated the constitutional separation of church and state by displaying the Ten Commandments in his courtroom. Price did have some tense moments: death threats from Alabama Christians. Only two or three others of the profiled endured genuine grief.

In her selections, Caroline Kennedy hasn’t looked hard enough. She might check with her cousin, Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, who oversees the Robert F. Kennedy human rights awards which go to people who have been tortured, jailed and exiled. In other words, people of true and costly courage.