Julia Carson (July 8, 1938-December 15, 2007)

I know this post is belated, since Julia Carson passed away a few days ago. But I still want to take the time to commemorate this interesting woman.

Julia Carson was the Democratic representative from Indiana's seventh Congressional district. I first heard of her in the summer of 1996. Campaigns were going on throughout the country, and one of them was the race for Congress in Indiana's seventh district. Julia Carson was running against Virginia Blankenbaker, a stockbroker and pro-choice Republican. Maybe the label that best fit Blankenbaker was "country club Republican," though I'm not an expert on political labels.

Anyway, I was an intern for a right-wing political organization, and my boss wasn't exactly thrilled about Blankenbaker. He compared her to Hillary Clinton because she wanted to require military doctors to perform abortions. Being a Republican, he didn't agree much with Carson either, but he thought she'd make a good posterchild for the extreme left. On one occasion, Carson compared not supporting affirmative action to ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia, or something bizarre. You know how the left always looks for extreme Pat Robertson statements and argues that they reflect the views of everyone to the right of Hillary? Well, my boss wanted Julia Carson to be the Pat Robertson of the left, if that makes any sense.

To be honest, I've not followed her career all that closely, but what intrigued me about her was that she occasionally did well on the John Birch Society Congressional scorecards. The John Birch Society has a reputation for being an ultra-conservative organization. It supports lower taxes and less government. What's more, it doesn't believe that the federal government should do anything that isn't specified in the U.S. Constitution. It wants the United States to leave the UN. It is generally skeptical of international organizations and treaties because it fears a one world government.

Interestingly, the John Birch Society's constitutionalist, conservative worldview often leads it to embrace positions that many would call "liberal." It believes that greater government entails less freedom, so it opposes the Patriot Act. It is against international organizations and any move to bring the nations together, so it is critical of NAFTA, GATT, CAFTA, and the World Trade Organization. It dislikes the UN and the "new world order," so it opposed the Gulf war under Bush I. It doesn't really care for the Iraq War under Bush II, for that matter.

Who usually does well on the John Birch Society Congressional Scorecards? Ron Paul is its favorite (of course). If I'm not mistaken, he even has the JBS's endorsement in the Presidential race. Tom Tancredo gets high marks. So does Jeff Flake, a libertarian Republican from Arizona. And the Republican Congressman from my hometown, John Hostettler of Indiana, got honorable mention (before he lost his seat in 2006). But what is amazing is that many conservative Congressmen get really low marks. My own representative, Steve Chabot of Ohio, would be considered by many to be a true blue (or true red) conservative, but there are scorecards in which the JBS only gives him three checkmarks. The same is true for Dan Burton, who called Bill Clinton a moral scumbag. And they don't always get the low grades for supporting free trade or the war in Iraq. If they voted for a federal nutrition program for children, for example, they got an "X" on their record. Contrary to liberal rhetoric, most Republican politicians believe that the government should perform some domestic function. But the JBS is pretty purist when it comes to limited government, and it grades accordingly!

And yet there were times when Julia Carson received high marks. On one level, this is not surprising, since, like many Democrats (and the JBS), she opposed No Child Left Behind, the prescription drug bill, free trade with Communist China, and the Iraq War. But she also opposed federal appropriation bills for HUD, HHS, Americorps, and special education. Why? Her voting record indicates that she is a big government liberal, so maybe she felt that the bills did not spend enough. Or perhaps she had a conservative streak that occasionally manifested itself. Read what the wikipedia article says:

"In 1990 she was elected as a Trustee for Center Township (downtown Indianapolis), and was responsible for running welfare in central Indianapolis. Carson served six years as a trustee, creating a $6 million surplus from the office's $20 million debt.[2] [Democratic Congressman Andy] Jacobs has said Carson 'not only took cheats off the welfare rolls, she sued them to get the money.'" Sounds like my kind of woman!

So what did I learn from Julia Carson? Something profound about political labels and how the political spectrum of left and right doesn't always work. I'll still use those labels, but life is not always as simple as Crossfire and Hannity and Colmes.