Decency Is On The Ballot

It's time the press and the country realized it

I woke up this morning to a text from a friend alluding to the White House Correspondents’ dinner, which I confess I had forgotten was last night. Probably because most often it is forgettable.

I will spare you an examination of why I don’t think journalists, right-wing media hacks, politicians, and “celebrities” of all caliber yucking it up together when our democracy is teetering on the brink and desperately needs a commitment to holding the powerful accountable is something we should celebrate. But occasionally something comes out of the affair that is worth noting.

And that was the case this year.

It came courtesy of the comedian invited to give remarks, Saturday Night Live’s Colin Jost. After a comedy set that seemed short on actual comedy (The Hollywood Reporter said it was “marked with a notable amount of silence as the gags didn’t land”), Jost ended with a heartfelt personal story that rescued his performance and is leading the next-day headlines.

It is also a message that the journalists in the room, and outside of it, desperately need to hear as it should shape how they cover the presidential race.

Jost told the story of his late grandfather William Kelly, a firefighter from New York’s Staten Island who also took odd jobs to make ends meet for his family. Kelly helped raise Jost and after seeing his own father and brother die from alcoholism, was “another rare Irishman who didn’t drink.”

Jost, looking at Biden on the dais, told the president in a quiet tone of respect and seriousness that his grandfather voted for him in the 2020 election. It would be the last vote Kelly would ever cast for a president.

“The reason that he voted for you is because you’re a decent man,” Jost told the president. “My grandpa voted for decency.”

Voting for decency. What an important concept.

It struck me as remarkable that for all that has been said and written about this election, I can’t remember reading or hearing the word “decency” nearly at all. Webster’s dictionary defines the adjective “decent” as “marked by moral integrity, kindness, and goodwill.” Could there be a clearer word to exemplify the delineation between the two major party candidates for president?

Trump is in his constitution, actions, and words the epitome of indecent. Yet think about all the prominent Republicans who have said how unfit he is for office and yet they still will vote for him. His former attorney general William Barr just became the latest. It is obscene. And, frankly, indecent.

There was a time when Republicans lectured the nation about the importance of decency and moral integrity. Now they sell their souls for a grifter who has pledged to end American democracy as we know it.

It makes me think of another dangerous demagogue, Wisconsin Republican senator Joseph R. McCarthy. In 1954, McCarthy turned his red-baiting zeal on the U.S. Army and it led to one the most important rhetorical showdowns in American history.

In a hearing in June, the Army’s lawyer, Joseph Welch, took on the senator in front of the nation. When McCarthy smeared one of Welch’s attorneys for ties to communism, Welch struck back with indignity and the clarity of moral justice. “Until this moment, senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness,” Welch said. McCarthy continued his attack. And then Welch uttered his famous line: “Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”

According to a writeup on the United States Senate website, “Overnight, McCarthy's immense national popularity evaporated. Censured by his Senate colleagues, ostracized by his party, and ignored by the press, McCarthy died three years later, 48 years old and a broken man.”

This is how history, even from the body in which McCarthy served, now remembers one of the great villains in American political history. And let us not forget that he was “ostracized by his party,” Republicans of a very different era.

“Have you no sense of decency?”

It’s a question as urgent today and one that should be asked of every person who cravenly, cynically, or ignorantly supports a far greater threat to the United States than even McCarthy ever was.

Make no mistake, decency is on the ballot in November. And the press should cover this race accordingly.