April 29, 2010
The Candidate From Xenophobia
As primary elections approach across the land, the award for best bottom-feeding campaigner surely belongs to Tim James, an Alabama gubernatorial candidate who vows to put an end to that grave threat posed by driver’s license tests being conducted in any language but English. “This is Alabama. We speak English,” Mr. James warns in a make-my-day growl.
“If you want to live here, learn it,” he declares in a video ad attacking the simple fact that the test is now offered in multiple languages, the same as in other states.
Running in a four-way Republican nomination race, Mr. James, a business executive, is transparently intent on tapping into the anti-immigrant, anti-government mood of malcontent voters. “We’re only giving that test in English if I’m governor,” he promises.
A primary race, in which politicians compete to pander to the basest instincts of their party’s base voters, can be a fantasy universe. In the case of Mr. James’s version of Alabama, it ignores the fact that the state has been quite successful in wooing foreign automakers to take root with workers who speak Japanese, Korean and German. And English.
The state is now ethnically rich enough to offer tests in those languages plus Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, French, Greek, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Vietnamese and American Sign Language.
Mr. James’s spin on the Know Nothing Movement has a track history reflected in an English-only driver’s test amendment already in the State Constitution. This dates to an earlier xenophobic exercise, but the state wisely declines to enforce it because court rulings suggest that doing so could cost taxpayers considerable federal aid.
Mr. James insists that he is not pandering to voters partial to hateful rhetoric about alien newcomers. He’s worried about safety on the roads and the ability of drivers to understand signs, according to his campaign.
Alabama voters should be insulted. The ploy is right out of the playbook of Willie Stark, the fantasy gubernatorial candidate in Robert Penn Warren’s “All the King’s Men.” Stark heeded campaign advice to low-road the voters: “Stir them up and they’ll love it and come back for more, but, for heaven’s sakes, don’t try to improve their minds.”
