06:47 PM CST on Thursday, February 11, 2010
(WEB EXCLUSIVE)
If I had not developed considerable respect for Debra Medina, I would not bother to offer urgent advice on how to save the political future she may have torpedoed Thursday morning.
Talk show host Glenn Beck asked if she was a "9/11 truther" – that is, a member of the deranged community that says the World Trade Center towers were brought down not by terrorists hijackers but rather a U.S. government hungry to spark a nation to war by killing its own people.
Her answer was an unmitigated disaster. What we have to figure out now is what she has revealed. Was it just a profoundly clumsy misstep on the path of a neophyte candidate, or was it a genuine willingness to give benefit of the doubt to one of the most demented beliefs of our day?
"I don't have all of the evidence there," she answered, using breath she should have used to instantly dismiss the insane ravings of people so far gone that they believe the jetliner impacts into the towers are diabolical concoctions meant to hide the truth: government sabotage.
It got worse. "I think some very good questions have been raised in that regard, there are some very good arguments, and I think the American people have not seen all of the evidence there."
In the dampened quiet of the morning snowfall, two sounds rolled across the Texas prairie: the collective gasp of sensible people who thought they were backing a sensible candidate, and the sickening thud of a once-promising campaign dashed against the rocks.
Can it be saved?
Only if she stops the bleeding immediately with a tourniquet fashioned from deep humility and skillful self-correction.
That presumes that she is not in fact tolerant of the 9/11 "truth" psychosis. If she is, then she has little business in polite society, much less high elected office.
But I'm going to give her benefit of the doubt. She has not struck me as a lunatic in any other way, and we have spoken often. That leaves the only other possibility, which is the nightmare combination of an unexpected question about something she was wholly unprepared to address, leading to an unthinking ramble into unintended territory.
Problem is, given time to examine the hole she had dug, she issued a statement that contained precisely none of the contrition her supporters desperately needed to hear.
Her press release should have contained about 30 words: "I am so sorry. I was exhausted and my brain had turned to jelly. Let me make clear today and forever that in no way do I share the inexcusable conspiratorial fantasies of these people."
Instead, after offering perfunctory comfort that she did not harbor their beliefs, she said the question was a "surprise" because it is not relevant to the campaign. Wow. One hopes that someone seeking to run a state is not so easily bamboozled by a subject plucked from the topical periphery.
Then: "The real underlying question here is whether or not people have the right to question the government."
No, that is most certainly not the question. Despite its execrable views, the truther cult has every right to spew its pathological delusions. The question is whether Debra Medina has committed political suicide.
"She is not a 9/11 truther" was the single-sentence reply to the e-mail I immediately sent her campaign. Fair enough, but not good enough. Rationality requires not just a certificate of non-membership in that disturbed subculture. It requires instant and clear condemnation for a set of beliefs that are an unparalleled combination of baseless venom, stunning gullibility and juvenile stubbornness.
If she is of the proper mind on this, why did she not say so immediately? Since newcomers to the punishing world of campaigning often make stupendous mistakes, she needs to own up to this one and make it right. The people who viewed her as a worthy voice for courageous, populist conservatism are waiting.
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