“I touch the world with hands too
weak, frail as the words that I speak. I hear the sounds, dragging with
pain…Nothing to gain, nothing to lose, why should I bother to choose?
Mind cannot know, lips shake to spare, but when I sing with my heart
you are there..”.-Alan Keyes in a self-written song, “You Are There”
There are many roads Alan Keyes’ life could’ve taken. With a PhD from
Harvard and a brilliant speaking voice, the possibilities are endless.
Those who suggest he become a preacher forget that as he is Catholic
that would not be a vocation favored by his wife and three children.
Certainly there were other options. He could’ve been a successful state
political leader in the right state and under the right circumstances.
He could’ve been successful working in Academia. He spent 1 year as a
University President and could’ve spent many more at any number of
schools. Of course, Keyes could’ve pursued his musical ambitions, but
that may not have put the food on the table.
Keyes could be enjoying an easier life but has made choices that have
set him on a different path. He chose to be a Republican and a
Conservative one at that, thus going against the grain of his family’s
staunch Democratic roots and forever setting himself up to be viewed as
nothing more than an Uncle Tom by fellow African Americans. Few of us
can understand how it feels to be attacked as a race traitor, a
sell-out, and an enemy of Civil rights, but Alan Keyes could fill a
book with the insults that have been heaped upon him.
Keyes joined the Reagan Administration in Washington as an Assistant
Secretary of State. Moving to Washington, he could’ve chosen to move to
Virginia where a Conservative Candidate had half a chance of winning,
but instead moved to Maryland for his own reasons. It was where his
family had lived for 200 years and it was important to him that his
children have those roots, even at great political costs to his own
ambition. In 1988, he was nominated for the Senate and won only 39% of
the vote in one of ten states that Dukakis won. In 1992, with no
national financial support, he did even worse.
Keyes spent his time working around Capitol Hill. He was a foreign
policy expert who became a powerful player on Economic issues when he
headed Citizens Against Government Waste. He started a talk show that
was mildly successful and gained stations.
With this, most people would simply enjoy the good life. A steady
paycheck, a growing national talk show audience, and a spot as a
Washington player, who’d risk it? Alan Keyes.
Keyes had never been a great spokesman on Social issues. This began to
change in the 1990s as he became more concerned about issues of moral
decline and began to talk about them out of that concern, which itself
is refreshing as most political leaders discuss issues when they
believe there is some electoral advantage to be gained from doing so.
Keyes has instead earned the scorn of the media and much of the party
leadership.
In 1995, he launched an exploratory committee to raise issues before
the presidential election. Keyes had no intention of running for
President but delivered a speech that lit up his phone lines for weeks.
He found himself in the race, never having been elected to office. In
the long campaign, he only hit double digits once (in the Minnesota
Caucuses).
He went back to radio and began to build a large number of affiliates,
but once again abandoned a successful show for another Presidential
run, raising issues of moral priority that he believes weren’t being
addressed by the other candidates and on a shoestring budget managed to
win 1 of 7 votes in the Iowa Caucuses and won more than 1 million votes
in the 2000 primary season.
The Keyes political career was defined by one moment more than any
other. Near the end of the Iowa campaign, Michael Moore was pulling a
stunt where he offered his endorsement to the candidate who’d jump into
a Mosh pit. Keyes honestly didn’t care about the endorsement but his
daughter had come out on the trail and he wanted to look cool for his
daughter, so he was the first and only candidate to take the mosh pit
challenge.
If you think about it, it was an extraordinary moment. Many politicians
suspend their humanity for the campaign, yet Keyes chose to remember
his daughter instead of worrying about how it’d play in the press or
what voters would think.
He went to South Carolina to speak at Bob Jones University. Unlike
Senator McCain who declined an invitation and President Bush, who came
and said nothing about the college’s discriminatory rules against
inter-racial dating, Keyes came to the school and challenged them to
change. It cost him support from people at Bob Jones, but Keyes had
done what he knew to be right.
He went on the Tonight Show and sang. While Bill Clinton played the sax
in 1992, and John Kerry played the guitar this campaign season, those
were merely cases of showing off. When Keyes went on the Tonight Show,
he sang a song he wrote, expressing his own heart about issues of
justice and truth. Few political leaders would make themselves so
vulnerable in that venue.
After the 2000 campaign, with the exception of a brief TV show, Keyes
lived the life of a political crusader, fighting for causes that
national GOP leaders wouldn’t touch. He fought President Bush’s
appointment of Paul Celluci as Ambassador to Canada. He went up to
Vermont and fought Civil Unions, over to Massachusetts to fight Gay
Marriage. He went to Alabama to fight for the Ten Commandments and then
took the battle to the nation. He went to Israel to support our allies
in their fight for national survival. Like early American patriots,
each battle seemed to hold another loss, but he’s been undeterred, more
than willing to play the role of Statesman-streetfigher, willing to
lead when others ducked the tough issues. The Motto of Keyes and
Company has always been, “No Retreat, No Surrender.”
Keyes, the Harvard educated Catholic diplomat has found himself a fiery
prophet revered by Evangelical Christians, leading lonely battle after
lonely battle. Rallying ragged and beleaguered locals to fight for
their heritage in cities and hamlets across the US, Keyes has come
ready to do battle against the ACLU and their cohorts.
Now Keyes is taking on the battle of his political life. He has thrown
himself into a campaign that most analysts call unwinnable as he enters
the Illinois Senate race. As Keyes said in his announcement, other
leaders in other states have invited him to run in what has to be
considered greener pastures than the harsh and cold political climate
of Illinois.
Some people say that Keyes is far too intellectual and pedantic, but
Keyes speaks about the meaning of words and the source of principles
and history because it matters, because these things are part of who he
is. Plus, one has to say that by the standards some raise, James
Madison and Thomas Jefferson could’ve never been elected to anything as
they were obsessive, bookish students of history who talked about great
ideas and principles.
Others will say that Keyes must moderate, he must somehow be less
Conservative, but they miss the point. Keyes can moderate his views,
but be will not win. The hope for Keyes is that after more than a
decade of made for TV candidates, elections decided based on
meaningless personality issues, and politicians who will become whoever
you want them to be to win the election, people will decide that it’s
time to put someone in Washington who is who he says he is and who will
be honest about what he believes.
If Illinois is tired of plastic politicians, cogs in corrupt political
machines, it has a choice this fall. Being an outsider in a State that
produced crooks and goons like Carol Mosebly-Braun, Dan Rostenkowski,
and Richard Daley isn’t a bad thing. You can find fault with many
things about Alan Keyes, but one thing you can’t say about him is that
he’s trying to make people believe he’s something he’s not.
If Keyes wins, it’ll be a rejection of the phony politicians that have
come to dominate our national political scene. If Keyes loses, he’ll
keep doing what he’s been doing all his life, going against the grain,
fighting for what he believes to be right. While other political
leaders do battle for the next election, he fights for the Republic
that was the dream of America’s founding, the future of American
Civilization, and freedom for all Americans, never retreating from the
principles that made America great, and never backing away from the
hard road before him.