“If the United States is to deter a nuclear attack,” then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara said in a 1967 speech in San Francisco, “it must possess an actual and a credible assured-destruction capability.”
McNamara was elucidating a long-established defense concept known as “mutually assured destruction,” meaning that if one side has the ability to destroy its enemy but knows that it cannot do so without being destroyed itself, and that its enemy can and will act to do precisely that, stability is the result.
Something like that argument is being applied to gerrymandering, which is applying nuclear-level destruction to American democracy at both state and federal levels. And it is proliferating.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom used the phrase “fight fire with fire” when he said he planned to work with the California legislature and congressional representatives on a plan that would temporarily set aside California’s independent redistricting commission. The aim is to draw a map that would offset any gains the GOP makes in Texas, where President Donald Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott are trying to force a gerrymandered, mid-decade congressional map through the Texas legislature with the aim of maintaining Republican control of the U.S. House.
The problem with applying the language of assured mutual destruction is that democracy does not die in a nuclear flash, to be avoided at all costs. It dies progressively, eaten away by incremental loss of trust.
We’ve railed against gerrymandering on both state and federal levels before.
And we’re back on the topic today to say that the events of the last few days only have deepened our conviction that gerrymandering is a real and present threat to American democracy that must be stopped before, yet more damage is done. We also are here to say that phrases like “fire with fire” and “all’s fair in love and war” are nothing more than lazy, partisan thinking, tempting as they may be to utter.
So we were glad to hear Rep. Mark Lawler of New York say on CNN Tuesday that he thought what his fellow Republicans were doing in Texas was “wrong.” A voice in the wilderness perhaps, but a voice nonetheless.
“We have to actually have neutral districts across this country,” Lawler told the news outlet. “It would serve the country better.”
Ya think?
In a separate interview with PBS, Lawler allowed that “both sides have been guilty” of gerrymandering. “We should have competitive districts based on communities of interest, and ultimately the voters, not the politicians, should decide who is in the majority,” he said.
Such a novel concept.
Lawler has said he plans to introduce legislation that would “outright ban gerrymandering.” Good for him. We hope to be able to support that. We think all Americans with a sense of fairness should do the same.
Erudite cynics like Karl Rove have written that gerrymandering has been around as long as there have been politicians and districts and that public officials invariably become inured to their own hypocrisy.
Perhaps. But such is the frighteningly rapid deterioration of structural fairness within the American political system these last few months, thanks mostly to a craven administration that sees everything as a zero-sum game and its singular ability to bring out the worst in its opponents, that surely some who have failed to see the clear and present dangers might wake up. Even if that means acting against their own short-term interests.
This isn’t about one side laying down its arms, or refusing to do so. It’s about building a structure with bipartisan buy-in so both are able to do so at once. We like to believe that could still be done in America.