In the days since last week’s debate between
candidates for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, some
commentators have suggested that Americans have seen enough, that no
additional Democrat debates are necessary. In one respect, those
commentators are right. In just a few seconds during the debate, the two
candidates who harbor the most extreme views on guns showed why they
shouldn’t be entrusted with our country’s highest elected office.
It happened when the candidates were asked, “which enemy are you most proud of?”
Of the five candidates onstage, the only supporter of the
right to arms, former U.S. senator and Secretary of the Navy Jim
Webb—who had already answered a question about gun control by saying
that people have the right to defend themselves—said that the enemy he
was most proud to have had was the one who wounded him with a grenade
during the Vietnam War. Webb didn’t elaborate, but he was referring to
an occasion on which, as a Marine Corps 1st Lieutenant, he
led an attack against a communist bunker system, an action for which he
was awarded the Navy Cross “for extraordinary heroism.”
However, the other four candidates—gun control supporters one and all—reflexively associated the word “enemy” not with America’s overseas adversaries, but with other Americans.
However, the other four candidates—gun control supporters one and all—reflexively associated the word “enemy” not with America’s overseas adversaries, but with other Americans.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and former Rhode Island governor
Lincoln Chafee tempered their answers, at least, Sanders saying only
that “Wall Street and the pharmaceutical industry . . . do not like me,”
Chafee saying that the “the coal lobby” is a group he’s “at odds with.”
By stark contrast, however, Hillary Clinton and former
Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, far and away the most extreme gun
control supporters running for president, showed no such restraint.
O’Malley said his enemy is the five million member “National Rifle
Association.” Clinton went further, naming not only “the NRA,” but also
the health insurance companies, the drug companies, Republicans, and
only one group of people who are not Americans, “the Iranians.”
How things have changed. In 2004, during the keynote
speech at the Democratic Party National Convention, then-Illinois state
senator Barack Obama said, albeit with questionable sincerity, “We are
one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, all
of us defending the United States of America.” In 2007, presidential
candidate Obama claimed that he wanted to unify the country and break it
out of what he called “ideological gridlock.”
Today, tempted with the opportunity to indulge herself in
the deadly sin of hate before a national TV audience, the leading
candidate for the same party’s presidential nomination did so without
hesitation or remorse. She gleefully said that she considers tens of
millions of Americans to be the “enemy.” She equated the NRA, American
business interests, and Republicans with those whose signature chant is
“Death to America.” And the party faithful in the debate hall cheered
her with the same enthusiasm Obama’s “one America” speech received 11
years ago.
It was an ugly moment, but it shouldn’t define the
character of our political disputes going forward. In deciding to whom
to entrust the presidency of the United States between now and Election
Day 2016, all Americans, regardless of viewpoint, should hold candidates
to a standard higher than what Hillary Clinton appears capable of
delivering.