President John F. Kennedy is the only president to have received a Pulitzer Prize. His award-winning work, “Profiles in Courage,” focused on members of the U.S. Senate who defied what was politically intelligent to do what was right for the country. If it were possible to take the antithesis of every facet of political courage and give them all to a politician, that politician would be Gov. Robert Bentley.
Nearly all politicians tell a white lie or two during campaign season, but Gov. Bentley’s entire campaign centered on “no new taxes,” a promise which he rescinded just months after being re-elected. There is no political reality in which the governor suddenly learned about our budget crisis after his re-election. I, like many Alabamians, gave him the benefit of the doubt during the recent legislative session and applauded him for doing the right thing, hoping to see the kind of second term resurgence we’ve seen with President Obama. We got the opposite.
The governor’s action to sever state ties with Planned Parenthood, which a federal judge has since ruled illegal, was a clear attempt to appeal to the worst political elements of our state. To defund an organization that provides essential women’s healthcare while many of our counties lack even a hospital that can deliver a baby is preposterous and was a clear ploy to distract from affair allegations that had shaken the media. The worst case of cowardice, however, is Gov. Bentley’s recent decision to bar Syrian refugees from entering Alabama. In the aftermath of the horrific attacks in Paris, Governor Bentley has made the unconscionable decision to refuse to accept people fleeing a country where the amount of people killed in Paris are killed nearly every day. There is no moral ambiguity here. There is no way one who considers himself a Christian can justify a decision that will certainly lead to many more innocent deaths. Even without the prospect of re-election, the Governor remains shackled to the chains of popular opinion, in a failure of democracy so severe that Chinese political scientists could use it to justify authoritarianism.
During the few instances of strength the governor has shown, however, Alabamians have been given a brief and depressing glimpse into what Alabama under Bentley might have been. His early endorsement of Gov. John Kasich for president demonstrates a desire to be a sensible conservative, who would not refuse to expand Medicaid with the federal government footing virtually the entire bill. His action to shut down the road projects in Sen. Holtzclaw’s district because he would not support tax increases reflected the tactics of strong governors of Alabama’s past, who have overcome the constitutional weaknesses of the office to push the agenda they were elected on. Unfortunately, those incidents proved isolated, and Alabama continues to be led without strength or predictability.
We as students have the power and responsibility to change the political culture of our campus, our state and our country. We re-elected Gov. Bentley over the pragmatic voices that warned tax hikes were necessary because he made us feel good. Abstract messages like unity and promises of no trade-offs for political decisions serve only to detract from the problems we actually face. We can’t always know when a politician isn’t going to deliver on his or her promises, but we can and should look at candidates’ records. If you want to avoid the mistake Alabamians made in 2014, when you vote in the primaries in March, SGA elections later that month, and the general election next November, avoid voting for candidates who have had every opportunity to do the right thing and refused to do it. There are few things more dangerous than a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Kyle Campbell is a junior majoring in political science. His column runs biweekly.
