“You can’t be too rich or too thin,” Wallis Simpson is reported to have said. Or too cynical. Especially about politicians.
But you can see too quick to see politicians’ actions as primarily political when they’re not. That’s what has happened in the reaction to Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris’ decision to ask a court to block the Sodomite Suppression Act.
Media and political types – even Harris BFF Willie Brown — have described as political Harris’ decision to ask a court if she really has to process an initiative that calls for the killing of gay people. Their reasoning is: she’s running for U.S. Senate, and she doesn’t want to have to do something objectionable – processing and summarizing the initiative for circulation — herself. The supposedly political logic: If a court makes her do it, who could blame her?
I don’t doubt that that basic political calculation was taken, but pinning this decision on politics seems daft.
For one thing, legal opinion has been so uniform that Harris will have to give the initiative a title and summary that if she had done so (while saying it offended her and that the law should be changed to give her discretion), she would not have faced significant criticism. The politics on this weren’t very dangerous – people understand the law, and they understand this initiative is nuts.
For another thing, I strongly suspect Harris – or any attorney general – would have reacted in a similar way to an initiative this crazy. I mean, how can you reconcile your role as a law enforcement official, as someone who is sworn to defend the constitution, with an initiative that calls for murder and violates the constitution?
It says here that any attorney general who didn’t try to stop such a thing wouldn’t be doing her job. Put yourself in her shoes. Wouldn’t you try to figure out if there was some way to not process such a measure? Why wouldn’t you see if a court would enhance the a.g.’s power by letting her opt out of circulating this kind of measure? Any attorney general would want to see if more power could be found over the process in such a situation.
I don’t know enough about Harris to have a strong opinion about her. I haven’t liked how she and previous attorneys general have used the tool of title and summary writing to further their own political interests. And I certainly have little sense of her as a U.S. Senate candidate. But c’mon, trying to stop something that is obviously awful should not be reflexively called political.