The Democrat deserves an honored place in history. But Trump has a point about what he’s done lately.
If Donald Trump had been referring to Rep. John Lewis’s civil-rights record when he wrote on Twitter Saturday that the congressman was “all talk” and “no action,” the president-elect might need a refresher course in U.S. history. One of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s closest allies, Mr. Lewis was on the front lines of the successful fight to end Jim Crow.
But for anyone who bothers to check out the full tweet, it’s clear that Mr. Trump was referring to Mr. Lewis’s record as a lawmaker. “Congressman John Lewis,” wrote Mr. Trump after the lawmaker questioned the legitimacy of the election, “should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk—no action or results. Sad!”
Mr. Lewis, a liberal Democrat from Georgia, was first elected to Congress in 1986, and he has spent much of the past three decades reminding people what he did before he got there. “Lewis has worked to commemorate the civil rights revolution in which he played such a large part,” explains the Almanac of American Politics. “He got a federal building in Atlanta named for King and won historic trail designation for the demonstrators’ route [for the 1965 march] from Selma to Montgomery [Ala.]. . . . Since 1998, he has led members of Congress on pilgrimages to civil rights sites.”
All of which should further secure John Lewis’s rightful place in U.S. history. But to Mr. Trump’s point, what do Mr. Lewis’s mostly black constituents in Atlanta have to show for his time in Washington representing them? Atlanta has one of the widest gaps in the country between high- and low-income households, according to the Brookings Institution. A 2015 report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that although Atlanta “is considered an economic powerhouse and ‘black mecca,’ its wealth and promise don’t extend to many of its residents, particularly those of color, who struggle to make ends meet, get family-supporting jobs and access quality education.” The study found that incomes for Atlanta’s white residents were more than triple those of blacks; the high school graduation rate was 57% for blacks and 84% for whites; and black unemployment in Atlanta was 22%, versus a city average of 13% and a white rate of 6%.
Atlanta also hasn’t avoided the surge in violent crime that has hit other major cities in recent years. Last summer the mayor announced the creation of a task force to reduce gun violence, and in November the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the city had been named “one of America’s top 25 murder capitals, according to the latest data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report.”
Mr. Lewis’s poor record is not unique among black politicians with large black constituencies. Atlanta has had black Democratic mayors pushing liberal policies for decades, and blacks have been well-represented as city councilmen and in the top echelons of the police department and school system. Much the same is true of other major cities with large black populations—Baltimore, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Washington—which are lagging economically, notwithstanding black political clout from Congress down to the local school board. This is what Republicans mean when they say black voters have been getting little in return for their steadfast loyalty to Democrats.
Mr. Trump’s willingness to highlight the actual record of black politicians like John Lewis is refreshing, though it remains to be seen whether the president-elect himself is “all talk,” or whether his incoming administration will follow up with policies that could help narrow racial disparities that liberalism has exacerbated. One good sign is Mr. Trump’s nominee for housing secretary, Ben Carson, who said last week that he would use the post to help curb reliance on public assistance. Another is Mr. Trump’s pick for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, a longtime champion of school choice for low-income families.
Education choice is an issue that once animated younger black Democrats like Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey. As mayor of majority-black Newark, he expanded charter schools and backed school vouchers. He even served on the board of Mrs. DeVos’s school-choice advocacy group, the American Federation for Children. But Mr. Booker may have since gone wobbly on education reform. In December he announced that he has “serious” concerns about Mrs. DeVos’s nomination.
Last week Mr. Booker testified against Jeff Sessions, the attorney general nominee, citing Mr. Sessions’s supposedly insufficient support for civil rights. It was an excellent impersonation of Rep. Lewis, who Mr. Booker apparently believes is the model for a black politician wanting a future in today’s Democratic Party. Perhaps he’s right. Mr. Lewis won re-election in November with more than 84% of the vote.
This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal
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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator.
This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal