Four years ago, John McCain went to Cincinnati to address the ninety-ninth annual N.A.A.C.P. convention. In his opening remarks, he praised Obama, which was his wry way of acknowledging the futility of his task:
McCain seemed surprisingly comfortable in Cincinnati, perhaps because his predicament matched his temperament: he is unusually downbeat, for a lifelong politician, often drawn toward the role of tragic hero. He dutifully ran through some of his policy priorities: school choice, low taxes, tighter budgets, domestic energy. He also spoke, movingly, about how, as a prisoner of war, he had heard the news of Martin Luther King’s assassination. (He said that his captors eagerly transmitted any bad news from America, in hopes of demoralizing the prisoners.) Throughout the speech, McCain’s tone was deferential. “Whether or not I win your support, I need your goodwill and your counsel,” he said, at the end. “And should I succeed, I’ll need it all the more.” McCain looked somber, or maybe even doubtful, as he delivered these lines: he sounded like a guy who knew he was facing a tough crowd in Cincinnati—and, as it transpired, outside of Cincinnati, too.
Four years later, the new Republican candidate is no more likely to win the support of N.A.A.C.P. members than the old one was. Although the N.A.A.C.P. is officially nonpartisan, its agenda is indisputably liberal, and the organization is especially unpopular among conservatives. Two years ago, the group passed a resolution asking concerned citizens to “repudiate the racism within the Tea Party, and to stand in opposition to its drive to push our country back to the pre-civil rights era.” Partly as a result, it seems likely that these days white conservatives spend much more time thinking, and talking, about the N.A.A.C.P. than white liberals do.
So when Mitt Romney travelled to Houston, earlier this week, to address the group’s hundred and third annual convention, his task was, if anything, even more futile than McCain’s had been. But unlike McCain, Romney doesn’t seem to think of himself in tragic terms—he campaigns (and, so far as we can tell, lives) in a major key. He didn’t waste time praising the President; on the contrary, he asserted that the Obama campaign has declined to participate in a “healthy debate” about America’s future. Not only did he ask for the audience’s support; he suggested that, logically speaking, he deserved it.
“I believe that if you understood who I truly am in my heart, and if it were possible to fully communicate what I believe is in the real, enduring best interest of American—African-American families, you would vote for me for President,” Romney said. “I want you to know that if I did not believe that my policies and my leadership would help families of color—and families of any color—more than the policies and leadership of President Obama, I wouldn’t be running for President.”
This is the tautological dream of every politician: if only I could get you to agree with me, you would agree with me. (Obama shares this dream: he suggests that he would be more popular, if only he had done “a better job” of “explaining” his policies.) But Romney’s choppy delivery also underscored the tension between his task and his ideology. He doesn’t claim to be especially concerned about “families of color”; they would benefit from his Presidency just like everyone else. In fact, it’s not even clear whether Romney believes that the N.A.A.C.P. has a good reason to exist, at least in its current form. He ended his speech by quoting Martin Luther King affirming his “dependence on God”:
In fact, Romney surely hopes that the N.A.A.C.P. doesn’t win too many more political “victories,” and the group’s members probably feel the same way about him, for the same reason: because they tend to be politically liberal, and he is not.
Later that day, in Montana, Romney spoke at a fundraiser, where he reportedly talked about his N.A.A.C.P. appearance. “I gave them the same speech I am giving you,” he said. “I don’t give different speeches to different audiences.” That’s probably not exactly true—not unless the mainstream media has been concealing Romney’s daily paeans to Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass, and Benjamin Hooks—but it’s true enough. Romney didn’t pander to the “best interest” of African-Americans, because he doesn’t believe it diverges from the best interests of the country as a whole. The N.A.A.C.P. crowd had booed when Romney vowed to “eliminate every non-essential, expensive program I can find,” including “Obamacare.” But in Montana, Romney didn’t seem concerned. “That’s O.K., I want people to know what I stand for,” he said. “And if I don’t stand for what they want, go vote for someone else, that’s just fine.”
Obama declined to attend this year’s N.A.A.C.P. convention, perhaps because he had nothing to gain, and perhaps because he had plenty to lose—if he wants to win a substantial minority of white voters, as he did in 2008, he has to be careful not to seem especially concerned about African-Americans. (The parallel is inexact, but hard to ignore: Romney, for similar but different reasons, is not likely to be seen addressing a cheering crowd of Mormons.) So Obama sent Joe Biden in his place, who arrived accompanied by the exuberant sound of “Shining Star,” by Earth, Wind & Fire.
Biden made his task look easy, perhaps because it was—all he had to do was mention the President (and not even by name) and the crowd applauded. He gave a speech that echoed some of the themes in the week’s keynote speech by Benjamin Jealous, the N.A.A.C.P. president and C.E.O. In his speech, Jealous warned his audience about the danger of new voter-identification laws—he called them, “outrageous new voter suppression efforts.” Biden, likewise, warned of “efforts to suppress votes.” As the crowd shouted its assent, he said, “This is preaching to the choir.”
It certainly was: there was something odd about the ritual of two politicians addressing the same organization, one without any real hope of winning support, and the other without any real fear of losing it. Nancy Pelosi said, of Romney, “It was a calculated move, on his part, to get booed at the N.A.A.C.P. convention.” Maybe it was, but so what? Would it be preferable for him to skip the event, or to play down his opposition to Obama’s health-care reform? Better, surely, for him to show up, speak up, and move on.
In his speech, Jealous reminded listeners that his group had worked with some conservative politicians, including Governor Nathan Deal, of Georgia—“Tea Party member, and Republican,” he said. (Deal recently signed a prison-reform law designed to both save money and reduce the state prison population.) But this week’s campaign ritual only underscored the segregated state of Presidential politics. There are plenty of reasons why African-American voters might be unhappy with the Obama Administration, but there’s little chance that they will express their unhappiness in November. A reporter from BuzzFeed talked to an attendee—a longtime N.A.A.C.P. member—who was disappointed about Obama’s absence, and perhaps his Presidency, but was realistic about the group’s ancillary role in the campaign. He said, “We have to re-elect him, but I pray that his second term will be different from his first term.”
Photograph by Eric Kayne/Getty Images.
