The key moment of Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate was not about toe-to-toe slugging or one side making a more exaggerated claim than the other. The crux of the debate was a question about African-American women and AIDS.
Moderator Gwen Ifill posed the question to Vice President Dick Cheney. She said, “I want to talk to you about AIDS, and not AIDS in China or Africa, but AIDS right here in this country, where black women between the ages of 25 and 44 are 13 times more likely to die of the disease than their counterparts. What should the government’s role be in helping to end the growth of this epidemic?”
The question and the statistic that preceded it were startling. When Ms. Ifill finished speaking, the question hung in the air for a long moment as a blank expression settled over Dick Cheney’s face. Then he found his politician’s voice and began to speak of “great tragedy,” “enormous cost,” “millions of lives lost, millions more infected and facing a very bleak future.” He didn’t address the human cost of AIDS, choosing instead to focus on the economic cost of a lost generation.
Mr. Cheney spoke of international AIDS, even though he had been specifically invited not to do so. When he finally got around to the U.S., he admitted he had “not heard those numbers with respect to African-American women.” He threw in some boilerplate about “progress,” “education and public awareness” and the development of drugs. He used perhaps 70 of the 120 seconds he was allotted before lapsing into silence.
Ms. Ifill turned to Sen. John Edwards for his rebuttal. Now we would see the difference between the tickets, we would see the compassion of a Democrat and the eloquence of an attorney who represented so many victims.
After listening to Dick Cheney stammer and flounder, John Edwards did the same thing. First he promised Kerry-Edwards would spend twice as much on international AIDS as Bush-Cheney, then he wandered off to Africa, spoke of “millions and millions” of people dying, throwing in a non sequitur about the “genocide we’re now seeing in Sudan.”
Love me, love me, I’m a liberal. Gee, Gwen, you’re black, you asked a question about black Americans, blacks come from Africa, Sudan’s in Africa — I’ll talk about Darfur. It’s all in the ghetto where white people file everything under the general heading “black.” Mr. Edwards finally arrived “here at home,” muttered three vague sentences about health care and stopped.
“OK, we’ll move on,” Ms. Ifill said, but there was a catch in her voice.
The central story of American history is race, racial inequality and our failure to overcome it or – as in Tuesday’s debate and Wednesday’s news coverage – even recognize it. Gwen Ifill pointed out a shocking injustice to two of the most powerful men in America and not only did they draw blanks for answers, they didn’t understand what she asked.
It’s not surprising in Mr. Cheney’s case; perhaps not in John Edwards’s either. If there is truth to Ralph Nader’s assertion that there is still no difference between the two major parties, perhaps the exchange about – or not about – black women and AIDS proved his point.
Maybe they’re right. Maybe the politicians’ instinct is correct, telling them callous disregard for African-American women will not cost either of them the election. America deserves better than Dick Cheney or John Edwards. America deserves a candidate who would have said something like:
“Gwen, I’m ashamed to be an elected official in a nation where the statistic you just quoted can be true. That such rates of death from AIDS can be present in America at this late date represents a profound failure of my opponent and my own.
“This administration has taken sex education – and AIDS education – out of American classrooms; that is wrong. This administration has cut funding for public health programs; that is wrong. This administration has ruined our economy, taken away people’s jobs and insurance and replaced them with the kind of despair that leads people to inject drugs. That is wrong.
“Some people say AIDS is a behavior-induced disease, but I don’t believe the behavior of black women is 13 times more extreme than that of other Americans. I do believe African-American women lack access to education, to prevention, to condoms, to clean needles and once infected, to proper treatment.
“The Bush-Cheney administration bears a great deal of responsibility for this and so do I. I sit in the United States Senate and I have not made this a priority. I have been talking to Americans about issues for over a year and I have not made this a priority. At this point, all I can do is apologize and ask for a chance to redeem myself.”
Missing the Point
The key moment of Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate was not about toe-to-toe slugging or one side making a more exaggerated claim than the other. The crux of the debate was a question about African-American women and AIDS.
Moderator Gwen Ifill posed the question to Vice President Dick Cheney. She said, “I want to talk to you about AIDS, and not AIDS in China or Africa, but AIDS right here in this country, where black women between the ages of 25 and 44 are 13 times more likely to die of the disease than their counterparts. What should the government’s role be in helping to end the growth of this epidemic?”
The question and the statistic that preceded it were startling. When Ms. Ifill finished speaking, the question hung in the air for a long moment as a blank expression settled over Dick Cheney’s face. Then he found his politician’s voice and began to speak of “great tragedy,” “enormous cost,” “millions of lives lost, millions more infected and facing a very bleak future.” He didn’t address the human cost of AIDS, choosing instead to focus on the economic cost of a lost generation.
Mr. Cheney spoke of international AIDS, even though he had been specifically invited not to do so. When he finally got around to the U.S., he admitted he had “not heard those numbers with respect to African-American women.” He threw in some boilerplate about “progress,” “education and public awareness” and the development of drugs. He used perhaps 70 of the 120 seconds he was allotted before lapsing into silence.
Ms. Ifill turned to Sen. John Edwards for his rebuttal. Now we would see the difference between the tickets, we would see the compassion of a Democrat and the eloquence of an attorney who represented so many victims.
After listening to Dick Cheney stammer and flounder, John Edwards did the same thing. First he promised Kerry-Edwards would spend twice as much on international AIDS as Bush-Cheney, then he wandered off to Africa, spoke of “millions and millions” of people dying, throwing in a non sequitur about the “genocide we’re now seeing in Sudan.”
Love me, love me, I’m a liberal. Gee, Gwen, you’re black, you asked a question about black Americans, blacks come from Africa, Sudan’s in Africa — I’ll talk about Darfur. It’s all in the ghetto where white people file everything under the general heading “black.” Mr. Edwards finally arrived “here at home,” muttered three vague sentences about health care and stopped.
“OK, we’ll move on,” Ms. Ifill said, but there was a catch in her voice.
The central story of American history is race, racial inequality and our failure to overcome it or – as in Tuesday’s debate and Wednesday’s news coverage – even recognize it. Gwen Ifill pointed out a shocking injustice to two of the most powerful men in America and not only did they draw blanks for answers, they didn’t understand what she asked.
It’s not surprising in Mr. Cheney’s case; perhaps not in John Edwards’s either. If there is truth to Ralph Nader’s assertion that there is still no difference between the two major parties, perhaps the exchange about – or not about – black women and AIDS proved his point.
Maybe they’re right. Maybe the politicians’ instinct is correct, telling them callous disregard for African-American women will not cost either of them the election. America deserves better than Dick Cheney or John Edwards. America deserves a candidate who would have said something like:
“Gwen, I’m ashamed to be an elected official in a nation where the statistic you just quoted can be true. That such rates of death from AIDS can be present in America at this late date represents a profound failure of my opponent and my own.
“This administration has taken sex education – and AIDS education – out of American classrooms; that is wrong. This administration has cut funding for public health programs; that is wrong. This administration has ruined our economy, taken away people’s jobs and insurance and replaced them with the kind of despair that leads people to inject drugs. That is wrong.
“Some people say AIDS is a behavior-induced disease, but I don’t believe the behavior of black women is 13 times more extreme than that of other Americans. I do believe African-American women lack access to education, to prevention, to condoms, to clean needles and once infected, to proper treatment.
“The Bush-Cheney administration bears a great deal of responsibility for this and so do I. I sit in the United States Senate and I have not made this a priority. I have been talking to Americans about issues for over a year and I have not made this a priority. At this point, all I can do is apologize and ask for a chance to redeem myself.”
(c) Mark Floegel, 2004