Celebrating Black History Month With Harold Ford Jr.

Editor’s Note: When former U.S. Representative Harold Ford Jr. visited Lewis & Clark to kick off the institution’s celebration of Black History Month on February 1, a staff member from the Office of Public Affairs and Communications attended his discussions of electoral politics and social justice, and wrote the following article.

This side of John Kerry, few people know better than Harold Ford Jr. what it is like to be “swift-boated.” Ford, now the head of the Democratic Leadership Council, was on the receiving end of some notorious eve-of-election personal attacks during his 2006 run for the U.S. Senate, attacks that may have made the difference in his extremely narrow defeat.

But the former U.S. representative from Tennessee had nary a word of complaint about his campaign experience while discussing politics with Lewis & Clark students on February 1. “You have to be grown-up about it,” Ford said in a question-and-answer session. “You can’t allow your feelings to get hurt until after the election.” About the attacks he faced, Ford said matter-of-factly, “We didn’t have a good enough strategy [to respond], and we lost.”

Electoral politics, he told students, “is all personal. But if you run for political office, you can’t take it too personally. And you have to throw an elbow every once in a great while and hope the refs aren’t looking.”

Ford, an avid basketball fan, extended the sports analogy to the presidential primary elections: Pointing out that there was “still a lot of time on the clock,” he added that he did not mind seeing the Clinton-Obama race continue because he believes it “will keep the candidates in shape.” He said later that he had no issue with “a few elbows being thrown” by Hillary Clinton and Obama, because “we want our president to be tough.”

Starting his day at Lewis & Clark, Ford breezed into a classroom accompanied by his host, Associate Dean of Students and Director of Multicultural Affairs Lisa Webb, grabbed a chair in front of about 50 students, and declared himself ready to open up a conversation. By way of an oral resume, Ford mentioned his background as a five-term U.S. representative and his senate bid. “I’m 37 years old,” he said, “and my appetite for public service has not expired.”

In addition to leading the Democratic Leadership Council — a nonprofit Democratic think tank — Ford is vice-chair of Merrill Lynch and a contributor to Fox News Channel, serving as one of the station’s nonconservative voices.

One person in the audience briefed him on the previous day’s Focus the Nation activities at Lewis & Clark and 1,500 other colleges and schools around the country, voicing disappointment that the issue was receiving relatively little air time on the campaign trail.

“It’s been frustrating,” Ford agreed. “The press has tried to focus on areas of difference between the candidates. On global warming, alternative energy...[Clinton and Obama] pretty much agree. They’ve both consulted Al Gore. I do wish the candidates would go a little farther talking about the opportunities to create jobs” in alternative energy and other green pursuits.

Putting on his economist’s hat, Ford pointed out, “In capital markets, there is tremendous focus on clean-energy investments. [But] we haven’t seen it on the scale where it can make a dramatic difference.” The government, he added, “has to create incentives and let the market respond.”

Following his first interaction with students, Ford was off to the Manor House for a dinner hosted by President Tom Hochstettler. Along with the president and Webb, Ford dined with several students, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Julio De Paula, Acting Assistant Director of Multicultural Affairs Justin Leak, and others.

Ford finished his day on campus with a public address at Agnes Flanagan Chapel, in which he discussed social justice, equality, and the 2008 election. More than 100 people, mostly students, listened while Ford waxed idealistic about human commonalities and his dream of restoring America’s place as a principled world leader.

“People around the world don’t view Americans the way they used to,” he said. “They knew there was something special about this place. Our stature is not what it once was… We’ve helped some people, especially in the Middle East, get the wrong vision of America. If they grow up hating us, we have a problem.”

Just as he had at dinner, Ford used an anecdote about a snowball, of all things, to explore the potential for greater understanding between America and the Middle East. He explained that he found cause for hope in a recent newspaper photo of a child in Amman, Jordan, playing in freshly fallen snow and doing what any American child would do — making a snowball.

But Ford had an ominous point to make as well, one that tied the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to America’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil (and the insidious tendency of some of the revenue from that oil to end up in the wrong hands).

“You and I,” he said, “are the first generation of Americans ever sent to war while our country is subsidizing those trying to kill [us] and undermine our way of life. Never before has that happened… I do not want us to be at war the next 50 years over our need for oil.”

After the talk, audience members buzzed about the future possibilities for Ford’s career. He is widely expected to run for Tennessee governor in 2010, and it is not difficult to imagine him as a presidential candidate down the road.

“Harold Ford is a charismatic and esteemed leader,” Webb said after the event. “It’s not often that students get to interact directly with a national political figure of his magnitude. I’m thrilled that we have Lewis & Clark’s support in bringing such prominent African Americans to campus.”