Doing the light fantastic
Posted on Tuesday, November 25, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/244630/
HERE IS Blanche Lincoln’s latest
non-stand on whether
American workers should retain their right to a secret ballot when it comes to unionizing their plants: “I know it’s a big concern among the business community,” she told Little Rock’s chamber of commerce the other day, “and I know it’s a big concern among the labor community. I hope what we don’t do is to allow that discussion to become a distraction to the very critical issues that are facing this country right now.”
What could be a more critical issue than preserving Americans’ right to the secret ballot, Senator Lincoln didn’t specify. She was too busy ducking and covering. Somebody who didn’t know better might suspect, perish the thought, that our senior and ever-politic U. S. senator was just wheeling out some preparatory excuse for not doing the right thing.
The best description of the senator’s sideways two-step came from AFCO Steel’s vice-president, Dean Wallace, who was at the breakfast meeting of the chamber: “She’s an awful good dancer.” Especially when she disappears in a fog of politicianspeak rather than take a stand.
The wording of Senator Lincoln’s nonstand on this issue brings to mind the congressman—was it Wilbur Mills?—who, when asked where he stood on a key issue, replied: “Some of my friends are for the bill, some are against, and I always stand with my friends.”
This isn’t leadership, and it’s certainly not a stand for principle. It’s just waffling. Here’s hoping that Senator Lincoln will finally summon the courage, or just the sense of responsibility, to come out against the union bosses’ latest attempt to deprive American workers of their right to a secret ballot. And if she can’t do that, to at least tell her constituents here in Arkansas where the heck she stands.
The other senator from Arkansas, Mark Pryor, isn’t quite as smooth. He doesn’t dance around this issue so much as slouch around it: he describes this power grab of a bill as “not perfect, and while I have been supportive in the past, I will consider amendments to make it better if and when it is considered by the Senate.”
What’s that supposed to mean, exactly ? That he’s hoping the issue will go away before he has to cast his vote fir or agin ? The senator’s last great service to hardpressed workers in this state—when he was still Arkansas’ attorney general—was to allow payday lenders, a nice term for loan sharks, to charge hard-pressed borrowers usurious rates on small loans.
If and when our two U. S. senators make up their mind on this issue—perhaps they have and just don’t dare tell the rest of us—it would be nice to get a straight answer out of them.
Should they decide that Americans should be denied a secret ballot at their workplace, their votes would not be without irony.
Having just participated in the Democratic caucus in the Senate, which allows senators to cast their ballots in secret for their leaders, they would have tried to deny the same right to American workers.