Our featured Presidential candidate for today is Republican Alan Keyes.
To be honest, I didn't even know he was running until I saw him on the Tavis Smiley debate on PBS. When he was standing among the other candidates, I thought he was one of the hosts. It turned out that he was one of the candidates. I wonder why he hasn't been in the other debates. He usually makes a big splash when he runs.
I don't know where I first heard of Alan Keyes. I know that when I first heard of him, I was mystified that there was an African-American who was actually a Republican. Before my exposure to Alan Keyes, I didn't know that there were African-American Republicans. I was a kid, and this was before Clarence Thomas and Ward Connerly became famous. I wondered why African-Americans would support a party that opposed civil rights in the 1960's (yes, I accepted the liberal stereotype of the GOP). I've learned that African-American Republicans have good reason to conclude that liberalism has not benefited their community, but has actually made matters worse in a number of areas. The sexual revolution and the welfare state have not exactly encouraged responsibility, in any racial community.
My attitude towards Alan Keyes has always been rather mixed. Part of me gets annoyed with how he ties every problem to abortion and the disintegration of the family. While I am pro-life, I suppose that I have always sympathized with the Ronald Reagan approach to governance: prioritize the economy over social issues. I thought that a President Alan Keyes would try to ban abortion right off the bat, an impossible goal because of the polarizing nature of the issue. I figured that a President should try first to get the economy going through tax cuts and fiscal responsibility. Moreover, I wasn't entirely clear about what Keyes wanted to do to restore the family. He mentioned using the bully pulpit and eliminating the marriage penalty. "Does he seriously think that this will solve all of America's problems?" I sarcastically thought.
At the same time, Keyes has a point: abortion and family disintegration have contributed to other national problems, which have cost Americans a lot of tax money. Family disintegration has made poverty and crime much worse. And I remember Keyes in a 1996 interview connecting abortion with the Social Security crisis. The crisis was that there would not be enough people to support the baby boomers once they became senior citizens. According to Keyes, this was because many potential taxpayers have been aborted. I suppose that we cannot make a clear demarcation between economic and social issues, since the two are heavily intertwined. I still don't think that a President should make banning abortion his top priority, however, but that he should do what he can to support the pro-life cause. This would include appointing conservative judges and opposing federal funding of abortion, as President Bush has done.
On a personal level, there are a few scandals associated with Alan Keyes, particularly concerning how he handled his campaign finances (see Alan Keyes). Moreover, for whatever reason, staffers who worked on his 1992 Senate campaign did not support him in his Presidential runs. I'm not sure what to make of him as a father. His daughter Maya is a lesbian activist, yet she is pro-life and pro-school choice. She has spoken highly of her father, calling him a principled and religious man. Her parents accepted her when they found out about her sexual preference, yet they made clear that they did not approve of her lifestyle. Her father fired her from working at his Illinois office, however, because she attended demonstrations opposing President Bush, and he also cut off her college funding because he did not want her to become a leftist activist. So he's probably a lot more stern than I would be as a father (if I ever have children and face that situation), but he has managed to pass on to his daughter some of his values, and that speaks volumes.