In the Adlai Stevenson Tradition: Senator Chuck Schumer

I once was an unqualified admirer of New York’s Senator Chuck Schumer. I maintained my personal admiration for him even after I drifted apart from him ideologically.

Now, he is under attack from both left and right.

I need not go into the attacks, partly orchestrated by the White House press secretary Josh Earnest, by Move-On. Org, that come close to charging him with dual loyalty. More remarkable from my perspective are the attacks, including by Jonathan S. Tobin in Commentary, that—despite Schumer’s opposition to the Iran nuke deal—he is nevertheless still a cynical partisan waiting for too long to condemn the deal and urging his Democratic Senate colleagues to “vote their conscience.”

Schumer’s opposition to the deal seems to me to be a model of measured, reasoned argument. Why question the time he took to study the deal and issue a long, hand-written critique? As to his supposed failure to try to “whip” his Democratic colleagues in line behind his position and against that of the White House, what was he supposed to do: demand that they vote his conscience?

Adlai Stevenson, once the idol of Democrats in general and Jewish Democrats in particular, prided himself in the teeth of the Joe McCarthy era on “talking sense to the American people.” Now, this has apparently become a sin on both right and left.

What’s the new standard for public debate in America: Donald Trump on one side and Black Live Matter seizing Senator Bernie Sanders’ microphone on the other?