FACES AND PLACES: Dole should pick Dole... or Keyes (08/04/96)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Dole should pick Dole... or Keyes

Since practically all of the pundits are advising Bob Dole about his vice-presidential choice, there is no reason I can't join in the fun.

My first choice would be Elizabeth Dole. An articulate, bright, vivacious Harvard Law School graduate with years of administrative experience who runs circles around her husband on the campaign trail, Mrs. Dole would make an excellent vice-president. As Bob Dole's wife, she is intimately familiar with the Senate and would preside over it with flair. As a former Cabinet member in two Republican administrations, she knows the ins and outs of White House politics. She could serve as President Dole's trusted right hand. Finally, I can think of no other person more qualified to succeed Mr. Dole when his first term is over in the year 2001.

Should Mr. Dole choose his wife as more than just his roommate, there would be the expected cries of nepotism. They would die down, however, as the American people took stock of this remarkable woman.

If Mr. Dole doesn't select his wife, he should pick Dr. Alan L. Keyes, a conservative Afro-American who ran in the primaries but, in contrast to previous runs by Jesse Jackson, was almost totally ignored by the media.

A former president of Alabama A & M University, Dr. Keyes is a columnist, lecturer and the host of a radio talk show. Again, in contrast to Jesse Jackson, who has no visible means of support but can afford to send his children to expensive private schools, Dr. Keyes works for a living.

If you're looking for an inspiring book to read this summer turn to Dr. Keyes' excellent "Masters of a Dream: The Strength and Betrayal of Black America." Once you begin reading it, you'll understand why the liberal literati dislike this man.

Dr. Keyes doesn't believe that the reason so many black Americans are failing is the sole result of racism. "Among black Americans," he writes, "racial discrimination prevented many men and women from succeeding no matter how hard they tried. But it could also provide a convenient excuse not to try. For most people, life involves a constant internal battle between inclination and obligation... When people have reason to feel that they are systematically abused [something the media-anointed black leadership never tires of addressing], resentment, anger and self-pity can give self-destructive impulses an edge in those everyday crises of will and determination."

That much of the black community has succumbed to the sirens of self-pity is obvious. Some black leaders are calling for a Congress of the Oppressed to be held within the next few months. For Dr. Keyes, this is self-defeating. "If we define the enemy as non-black American society, it is clearly an enemy blacks aren't strong enough to defeat by violence. So the impulse stirred by the rhetoric of hate feeds on black-on-black violence instead."

Dr. Keyes argues that "despite the degrading vicissitudes of life in bondage," blacks rejected the dehumanizing values inherent in slavery. "Against the economic determinism of the slavery system of values, the enslaved blacks asserted the idea of intrinsic worth and personal moral autonomy embodied in the Christian worldview." The key to moral rejuvenation tomorrow, he believes, is a revitalized black Church today.

Dr. Martin Luther King adopted the strategy that moral responsibility is the basis for true freedom. In his famous "I Have a Dream" sermon, he favored total integration of blacks into American mainstream society. The present black leadership no longer accepts Dr. King's ideas. "Jesse Jackson [whose earlier efforts focused on economic empowerment] abandoned the strategy of organizing black people to push more effectively into the private sector, and into the local power structure," writes Dr. Keyes. "As a national leader, Jackson has become a shill for the usual establishment agenda - more government programs, more federal spending. he abandoned the agenda of local development and power-sharing."

Dr. Keyes is also a vigorous opponent of abortion, another reason he is disdained by the liberal media. "Two black babies are being aborted for every three born," he writes. "A pogrom that caused that many deaths in any ethnic or racial population would surely be considered genocidal." This seems to have been the goal of Margaret Sanger, founder of the Planned Parenthood organization who, admitting that "we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population," urged her followers to convince black ministers to join her so-called "Negro Project." Despite the fact that polls show "strong anti-abortion feeling in the black community," the black liberal establishment is unanimous in its support of unrestricted abortion on demand.

Dr. Keyes is also a strong advocate of local control. "As a matter of tangible, daily reality, people don't live in a nation," he advises. "They live in a neighborhood. How they feel about the nation depends to a large degree on how they feel about their neighborhood. If they play no role at all in governing their neighborhood, democracy is a cruel deception."

Finally, Dr. Keyes decries the decline of family life, arguing that it is a recent phenomenon among blacks. Citing various historical and sociological studies, Dr. Keyes points out that even during slavery and the worst days of the Depression, "the typical black household...had in it two parents and was not 'unorganized and disorganized,'" as some scholars would have us believe.

Like a growing number of black conservatives - Shelby Steele, Ken Hamblin, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams and Clarence Thomas - Dr. Keyes feels at home in a Republican Party that is pro-life and pro-family, a GOP that is true to the ideals of tax reform, less government control, and more personal responsibility.

Bob Dole should stop courting Colin Powell, who is a moderate (defined by columnist Linda Bowles as "a liberal still in the closet"), and seriously consider Alan Keyes as a running mate, not to win black support (the GOP rarely gets more than 12 percent of the black vote in national elections no matter what it does), but because Dr. Keyes is the right person for the job. America is ready.

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