Campaigns Amid the Ashes of Unrest

Riots can bring out the best in politicians -- and the worst.

The Watts riots in Los Angeles 50 years ago, among other civil disturbances of that period, led President Lyndon B. Johnson to pass the Fair Housing Act of 1968. They also led him secretly to look for possible communist conspiracies behind the uprisings.

Michigan Gov. George Romney, Mitt Romney's dad, marched with civil rights leaders through downtown Detroit to help restore order after Detroit's 1967 riots. Republican candidate Richard M. Nixon got tough, making "crime in the streets" a big theme in his 1968 campaign.

But by 1992, President George H.W. Bush and his Democratic challenger Bill Clinton gave little attention to the Los Angeles' riot that followed the videotaped police beating of Rodney King. Both visited the riot zone long enough for a photo op or two before high-tailing it back to the mother lode of swing votes waiting to be wooed in the suburbs.

Optimism about government's ability to solve urban problems was running low. It seems to be even lower today, after the recent unrest in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man in the custody of Baltimore police.

In the new presidential landscape, Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul's reaction stands out as his first major gaffe. He launched his presidential bid in early April, you may recall, amid a heartwarming group of racially diverse faces. He eloquently vowed to broaden the Grand Old Party's base of support among those who "experience a daily ugliness that dashes hope and leaves only the fatigue of despair."

But alas, three weeks later as unrest raged in Baltimore, Paul's tin ear showed itself.

"I came through the train on Baltimore last night," he told host Laura Ingraham on her radio show. "I'm glad the train didn't stop."

Har, har. He also blamed the violence on "the breakdown of the family structure, the lack of fathers, the lack of sort of a moral code in our society." He sympathized with "the plight of police," but said nothing about the suspicious circumstances surrounding Freddie Gray's death.

In short, he reverted to a default position among today's political conservatives: Treat the inner city as a no-go zone, devastated by the lack of fathers and a loose moral code, a sad victim of liberal policies.

That's a winning argument among people who don't want to talk about bigger realities, such as the collapse and flight of industrial jobs that vigorously used to nourish traditional family life among all races.

Even conservative scholar Charles Murray shows in his underappreciated 2012 book "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010" how unemployment and out-of-wedlock birth rates climbed among white families since the 1950s, too, particularly in the lower education and income brackets.

Yet it's hard to beat racial stereotypes with dull, dry facts. Sometimes you have to quell other people's stereotypes before they can begin to hear your ideas.

Bill Clinton pulled that off in 1992. He broke his party's losing streak distancing himself from the Rev. Jesse Jackson, appealing to "the forgotten middle class" and promising to "change welfare as we know it." Since then, Democrats have won the popular vote in five of the last six elections. Even President Barack Obama knew better than to be "too black," even as others tried to paint him that way.

Ironically, Bill Clinton also endorsed the tough sentencing policies with his 1994 crime bill that his wife, today's Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, wants to roll back.

She's not alone. So do Rand Paul, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and a growing number of other fiscally conscious Republicans.

In her first major policy speech as a candidate, Clinton outlined an agenda "to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice." She proposed to overhaul the criminal justice system, increase the use of police body cameras and expand alternative punishments for petty drug crimes, among other ideas.

Each of these ideas also happens to have growing bipartisan support.

Just don't let Republicans' supporters know it. Agreement on anything with Hillary Clinton could be a kiss of political death.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)