Where does political courage come from? It's hard to know exactly. Science isn't quite ready to give us a definitive answer. I'd bet if you get ten psychiatrists in a room, you would get at least a dozen different answers. But there is one simple thing that I do know. To paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson, "I know political courage when I see it."

In times when partisan fervor is particularly acute, it takes courage and character to constructively criticize your own political party. On June 1, 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine) - the first woman to be elected to the Senate in her own right - directly challenged Senator Joe McCarthy's tactics of exploiting the people's legitimate fears of communism and the way he was using the U.S. Senate, the greatest deliberative body in the world, as a "rendezvous for vilification" and "for selfish political gain at the sacrifice of individual reputations and national unity." On that day, Senator Smith delivered, in her plainspoken style, what would soon become known throughout the nation as the "Declaration of Conscience" speech.

Senator Smith was certainly no apologist for the Truman Administration. She told her colleagues that the "present Democratic administration has provided us with sufficient campaign issues without the necessity of resorting to political smears." But in the spirit of the founding generation, she chose in her "Declaration of Conscience" speech to rise above mere party considerations and to speak forthrightly about the way in which the U.S. Senate had become "debased to the level of a forum of hate and character assassination sheltered by the shield of congressional immunity." She objected to the "reckless abandon in which unproved charges have been hurled" from the Republican side of the aisle. She said that it was "high time that we remembered that we have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution," a document that "speaks not only of the freedom of speech but also of trial by jury instead of trial by accusation." Senator Smith believed that "the nation sorely needs a Republican victory" in the next elections but did "not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny - fear, ignorance, bigotry, and smear."

Senator McCarthy would waste little time in retaliating against Senator Smith. Soon after the "Declaration of Conscience" speech was delivered, he had Senator Smith removed from a key investigation subcommittee. And then, three years later, he attempted to defeat Senator Smith in her 1954 re-election bid. The voters of Maine resented the outside interference in their election and he failed. Later that year, Senator Smith rushed back from a foreign trip where she was meeting many of the world's leaders such as Winston Churchill and Charles DeGaulle to vote on the censure of Senator McCarthy. When McCarthy started to make wild accusations that there were communists in the U.S. Army, he was finished. The censure motion passed. His political career was over.

Times have changed in the last fifty years, but I believe that our political system is still plagued by the Four Horsemen of Calumny - fear, ignorance, bigotry, and smear. I am appalled by the fact that in only a week's time, on March 5th, we will, for all intents and purposes, elected a Congressman, but without the benefit of a single candidates' forum. Real political debate has disappeared in our community. I am a registered voter in Placer County and I will not have a single opportunity to ask the candidates a question or hear them talk about their records and present to us their proposals on health care, education, Social Security, water, national defense , and other important problems. Instead, the Four Horsemen of Calumny - fear, ignorance, bigotry, and smear - comes to us in the form of fat cat-funded "hit pieces" delivered to our mailboxes or the trading of charges by staff through the newspapers. When I think about quality of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates and the fact that we will not have a single debate here in Placer County, I get a pit in my stomach.

We can't have a healthy and vibrant representative democracy without freedom of speech and full debate of the problems that face our nation and community. We need full and fair debate ultimately to find the truth. Otherwise, we get the campaign consultant's edited version of the "truth" through glossy fliers. As the noted columnist Walter Lippmann once said, "the creative principle of freedom of speech is not that it is a system for tolerating error but that it is a system for finding the truth." Are consultant-designed glossy fliers getting us closer to the truth? A candidate standing toe to toe with an opponent, responding dynamically to constituent questions or points made by the opposing candidate is the best way to reveal their substance and character. We are being denied our rights as citizens of this Republic.

In July of 1989, President George Bush presented former Senator Margaret Chase Smith with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her distinguished service to the nation. She had advanced the nation's cause in many ways but in particular medical research and the space program. And on May 29, 1995, Margaret Chase Smith died at the age of 97. She is no longer with us, but for all those in our community who demand real political debate, her spirit and example lives on. On June 1, 1950, Senator Smith showed her generation the importance of political courage. To build a stronger Republic, we, as citizens and voters, must reassert our rights to full and fair debates from candidates who are vying to be our representatives.

Copyright 2002 The Auburn Sentinel