http://slate.com/id/2115879/
Deathbed Conversion
The lesson of Tom DeLay's mortal hypocrisy.
By William Saletan
Posted Monday, March 28, 2005, at 11:23 AM PT
In 1988, Tom DeLay's 65-year-old father, Charles DeLay, suffered
catastrophic brain damage and went into a coma. He had no hope of
recovery but evidently reacted when his son entered the room. Although
Charles DeLay had no living will, his family concluded that he would
be better off dead and wouldn't want to go on living this way. Tom
DeLay joined other family members in deciding to withhold dialysis.
His father died.
That story, pieced together from interviews and medical and court
records by Walter F. Roche Jr. and Sam Howe Verhovek of the Los
Angeles Times, defies Tom DeLay's pronouncements 16 years later. In
the Terri Schiavo case, DeLay condemns the reasoning he and his
relatives followed when the tragedy was theirs. Which is more
honorable: what DeLay says as a politician, or what he did as a son?
And what does that tell us about the wisdom of families and
politicians in matters of life and death?
Physically, Charles DeLay was in far worse shape than Terri Schiavo.
He needed dialysis, not just nutrition. He was 65, not 41. His body,
unlike hers, was failing. But mentally, his condition was similar.
According to his sister-in-law, doctors told the family that Charles
DeLay would "basically be a vegetable." A neighbor who had visited him
in the hospital said he "did a bit of moaning and groaning, I guess,
but you could see there was no way he was coming back." Tom DeLay's
mother told the Times that her husband seemed unconscious except that
"whenever Randy [his son] walked into the room, his heart, his pulse
rate, would go up a little bit."
Friends and relatives considered Charles DeLay's quality of life and
concluded he'd be better off dead. "He was all but gone," said the
neighbor. "He would have been better off if he'd died right there and
then." According to Charles' sister-in-law, his brother "prayed that,
if [Charles] couldn't have quality of life, that God would take
him—and that is exactly what [H]e did."
God may have taken Charles, but his family held the door open. They
inferred, without written evidence, that Charles wouldn't have wanted
to go on living in this condition. "Daddy did not want to be a
vegetable," said Vi Skogen, who at the time was Charles'
daughter-in-law. Tom DeLay's mother told the Times, "There was no
point to even really talking about it. There was no way [Charles]
wanted to live like that. Tom knew—we all knew—his father wouldn't
have wanted to live that way."
That was then. This is now. At a press conference on March 18, Tom
DeLay denied that quality of life could be valid grounds for
withdrawing Schiavo's feeding tube. "It's not for any one of us to
decide what her quality of life should be," he said. "It's not any one
of us to decide whether she should live or die." Congress, DeLay
explained, was intervening against Schiavo's husband "to protect her
constitutional right to live."
In the absence of a living will, DeLay argued, Schiavo's spouse
couldn't legally vouch for her wishes, as DeLay's mother had done—on
less apparent basis—for DeLay's father. When a reporter noted that
"Terri Schiavo's husband has said that she expressed a verbal desire
that she not continue in this sort of state," DeLay replied, "The
sanctity of life overshadows the sanctity of marriage. I don't know
what transpired between Terri and her husband. All I know is Terri is
alive. … And unless she had specifically written instructions in her
hand and with her signature, I don't care what her husband says."
A day later, DeLay told reporters that Congress had to intervene
rather than "take it from just a few people that have decided whether
she lives or dies. For one person in one state court to make this
decision is too heavy. That's why it does take all of us to think this
through, think about the Constitution and its protection of life."
DeLay hasn't confined his condemnation to the principles on which his
family acted. He has condemned the character of people who now apply
or defend those principles. On March 18, he charged, "Senators Boxer,
Wyden, and Levin have put Mrs. Schiavo's life at risk to prove a
point—an unprecedented profile in cowardice." A day later, he said of
Schiavo's husband, "I don't have a whole lot of respect for a man that
has treated this woman in this way. … My question is: What kind of man
is he?"
Why the difference between then and now? Maybe because DeLay saw his
father as a human being. He speaks of Schiavo as something more—and
less. "It's more than just Terri Schiavo," DeLay told the Family
Research Council on March 18. "It is a critical issue for people in
this position, and it is also a critical issue to fight the fight for
life, whether it be euthanasia or abortion. And I tell you, ladies and
gentlemen, one thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to
elevate the visibility of what's going on in America."
This is what happens when you approach a tragedy as a politician
rather than as a family member. You see quality of life as a
slippery-slope abstraction, not as a reality affecting someone you
love. You find it easy to impose a standard of documentation that
would have forced your family to break the law. You second-guess a
spouse in a way you would never second-guess your mother. You
challenge people's competence and impugn their character. You perceive
the afflicted person more as God's tool than as God's child.
I don't have a lot of respect for a man who treats a woman this way.
But to dismiss him as a hypocrite would further politicize a case he
has already politicized too much. My question is: What kind of man is
he? My answer is: He's a better child than politician. So are we all.
That's why families should make these decisions, and Congress should
stay out.
William Saletan is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of
Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War.
"[The Bill of Rights is] designed to protect individuals and minorities against the tyranny of the majority, but it's also designed to protect the people against bureaucracy, against the government." -- Judge Lawrence Tribe
.
|
