The reign of sentimentality.
By Ramesh Ponnuru, NR senior editor. National Review May 22, 2000 Issu.
The Clinton administration and its allies like to depict the controversy over Elián González as a conflict between reason and emotion. The cool, dispassionate workings of the law, they say, should not be disrupted by a mob of Castro-hating Cuban-American hotheads. And it is
obviously true that the González family in Miami has sometimes let its emotions cloud its judgments-although it would be nice if its critics would acknowledge that those emotions include love and concern for the child as well as (justified) hatred of Castro.
It is true, as well, that the conservatives in Washington who have taken up Little Havana’s cause can reasonably be charged with sentimentality. Some of them have treated a six-year-old’s expressed wishes about where he should be raised as authoritative. One wonders, also, whether a
pimply teenager would have inspired the same devotion that the undeniably cute Elián has. The administration, then, would seem to have a point when it suggests that the people who want Elián to stay in America have lost sight of the proper impersonality of the rule of law.
And yet, and yet. There is also a flood of images that belie the selfpresentation of the send-him-back crowd. The INS agents who broke down the González family’s door broke down when they handed Elián over to his father. If these are "storm troopers," as the
hotheads have said, they are storm troopers who cry. Janet Reno, too, wept during the raid. Dan Rather, a de facto press secretary for Reno, asked Juan Miguel González whether he had cried watching the video of his son asking to stay in America. And Rather himself teared up while
contemplating the reunion of father and son. These tribunes of reason are quite a weepy bunch. No doubt if Greg Craig has tear ducts, they’ve gotten a good workout too.
It is hard to picture, say, J. Edgar Hoover needing to reach for the Kleenex after ordering a deadly assault-let alone an assault where no shots were fired. It is tempting to conclude that the change is a reflection of a feminized America. But it might be better to use less loaded language and
say that the entire debate over Elián has unfolded in an America whose sensibility is softening.
This softness manifests itself, above all, in sentimentality. Sentimentality is a kind of willful self-deception. Our culture is so sunk in it that it hardly even knows it is lying to itself by refusing to regard sentimentality as a vice at all. Our culture is also increasingly uncomfortable
with crisp logic, stark choices, and hard realities. Given a choice between removing a president and leaving him untouched, it will seek censure-a basically meaningless act. Even more, it will want to "move on" from unpleasant thoughts. It is impatient with politics, with the demands of
public life.
It is, unsurprisingly, a culture that makes a fetish of compassion. As C. S. Lewis remarks in The Screwtape Letters, every age indulges its characteristic vices by exalting the virtues nearest to them. We may think it is compassion that moves us to want to save a distant people from slaughter;
but it is sentimentality that tells us we can secure that objective without risk or sacrifice. When we thus delude ourselves about our motivations, we can be capable of extraordinary callousness. We may, with a mad mercy, drop bombs on the objects of our charity.
The softness of contemporary Ameri ca has affected both sides of the debate over Elián. But it seems to have worked to the overall benefit of the send-him-back side. The parallel to the impeachment debate may be instructive. In each case, the public’s conservative instincts led
it to conclusions opposite those of most conservatives. A concern for stability made people worry about removing the president; a concern for public decency made them long for an end to the Lewinsky chatter. In the González case, the public’s pro- family and pro-law-enforcement
instincts are arrayed against conservatives.
In both cases, however, the public also had less flattering reasons to hold its opinion. People are bored with Elián, as they were with the Lewinsky scandal. They are eager to flip the channel. Never mind that flipping the channel might mean allowing presidential lawlessness or destroying
a boy’s future. The public has no tolerance for "partisan bickering"-i.e., congressional oversight of executive agencies. This may sound like a pretty damning indictment of the public. And so it is. But even more blame should attach to those influential Americans, from Hollywood to
Washington, who have done so much to make politics a dirty word.
How many times in the last few months have we heard that family ties ought to matter more than a "mere" difference in political systems? One might have thought that Reno was trying to send Elián to a monarchy, perhaps Denmark. With the Cold War over, most Americans find it hard
to conceive of what totalitarianism is. It doesn’t help that most of the repression takes place off-camera. What coverage of Cuba there has been during the Elián controversy has either interviewed the man on the street as though he could speak his mind fearlessly or, worse, romanticized
the poverty in which Castro has kept the island.
The Clinton-Reno rhetoric about the "rule of law" has also lulled Americans into torpor. The administration applies the phrase to its own discretionary acts. For example, the Gonzálezes had no legal obligation to deliver Elián anywhere; they had only to be willing, as
they said they were, to turn him over if INS officials came for him. They were in violation of no law-only Reno’s wishes. Yet the administration said it had no choice but to raid their house because the rule of law was at stake. The rule of law is based on the concepts of moral agency and
responsibility. As used by Clinton and Reno, however, the phrase "the rule of law" is a denial of both. Americans are not inclined to insist on accountability, since that would require looking more closely at the matter.
It is enough, for a sentimental country, that the administration’s intentions are pure. And purity of intentions, particularly concerning children, is something this administration is a proven master at faking. At every step of this drama, we have been invited to ponder how administration
officials feel. Network anchors said that the standoff must be "tearing Reno up," given her deep concern for children; her deputy, Eric Holder, told us that he held her as she cried. Afterward, there was endless talk about the patient, compassionate attorney general. The INS agents who did
the dirty work were also available to the press. They said they had never encountered such resistance before, citing the couch that had been placed against the door.
Let us hope this administration’s mercy is never deployed against us. If that happens, we will be reassured that we are being pummeled and jailed for our own good. Our punishers may be psychiatrists, as Elián’s are likely to be.
For now, though, the style of government licensed by our carelessness does not touch us. We send a child to suffer tyranny for his own good, and to get him off the evening news. Like Winston Smith, we weep and realize that we love Big Brother.
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