What’s the difference between a hockey mum and a pit bull?, asked the Republican candidate for vice president at the convention in Minneapolis St. Paul this week.
Sarah Palin had introduced herself as a “just your average hockey mum.”
Pit bulls don’t wear lipstick, she answered.
The congregation roared its delight.
The author of this revealing self-deprecation was Matthew Scully, who was special assistant and senior speechwriter to George W. Bush and author of Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy.
What is the significance of Scully, a Christian Republican animal advocate, writing the national debut speech for Palin, a Christian Republican hunter and opponent to animal protection legislative programs? How will this conjunction of similarities and differences impact the moral and legal status of animals in American public policy?
Proceeding from the perspective that animal protection is not an issue of visibility and prominence within the American political arena, it has yet to be conclusively proven that either a Republican or a Democrat administration will take animal issues seriously. Clearly, there are outstanding advocates for animals from both sides of the political aisle (e.g., US Senator Robert Byrd (Dem.) and US Representative Christopher Shays (R-CT) and some significant opponents.
What is more abundantly clear is how far either party and their candidates and elected representatives go to promote themselves as users of animals. Blatant association and shameless promotion of themselves as hunters, for example, signal more than anything else what they think and feel about animal issues or, rather, what they don’t. Both President Bill Clinton and Senator John Kerry made sure the media reported on their hunting activities in order to promote their machismo and woo supporters of the National Rifle Association. Whereas for others the pleasure and, indeed, the right to hunt is unashamedly enjoyed, as in the case of US VP Dick Cheney, and Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin.
Since her nomination and subsequent crash landing onto the political stage this week, Palin, whose extreme Christian beliefs reinforce indifferent attitudes toward animals, succeeded unwittingly in placing animal protection in America in the crosshairs of her much-loved rifle.
Since her election as governor of Alaska in 2006 Palin’s perspective on wildlife management consists of making it easier to kill such predators as wolves and bears so that there are more moose and caribou for hunters to shoot. Palin is a lifelong member of the National Rifle Association and supports Safari Club International. Her administration recently spent $400,000 of public funds to help defeat Measure 2 in August, which would have prohibited aerial shooting of wolves and grizzly bears. Actor Fred Thompson, who officially introduced Palin at the Republican Convention, said she was the “only nominee in the history of either party who knows how to properly field dress a moose.” This may have delighted the GOP conventioneers but it will have shocked all those who care about animals and the environment. Further, photographs of Palin in her office on a couch with the skin of presumably an Alaskan bear with her head wistfully looking out toward the wilderness and another showing her with one of her children on the blood-splattered snow by a moose she shot will have sickened many Americans as well as people throughout the world.
Even more alarming is Matthew Scully’s role in writing the script that introduced Palin to the American people.
Scully’s book, Dominion, is an articulate and thoughtful account of one man’s passionate concern for animals and his journey to the annual convention of Safari Club International, the annual International Whaling Conference and a factory farm. As a Christian he draws from his understanding of dominion to challenge the cruel treatment of animals. To his credit, Scully’s voice ended the silence on animals on the social and religious right. For the first time such political magazines as National Review and The American Conservative either favorably reviewed Dominion or gave Scully the opportunity to write about animal protection. Even conservative columnist George F. Will wrote that it was our “duty” to read Dominion.
How is it possible that two Conservatives with polar opposite views on animals came together to produce an historic speech that may prove to be the beginning of the end of public policy for animals before it has even started?
In short, why did Scully do it?
The money?
The commitment to Conservative values and the desire to see the McCain/Palin ticket win election in November?
A belief that he could influence Palin on her attitudes toward animals?
We will never know unless and until Scully explains why.
It is surely a difficult position to defend. To knowingly write the speech for the Republican Vice Presidential candidate — branded by The Humane Society of the US as having “more harm to animals than any other current governor in the US” — at a make or break point in her political career when he must have known so much is at stake for animals and the environment.
The tragedy, of course, is that the animals will lose out. They already lost out in Alaska in her brief time as governor. They will lose if the Republicans win the White House. (How much better would it would have been under the Democrats is, of course, debatable.)
And the animals will lose out because of the action of one of their most articulate and uniquely placed spokespersons. Scully, writing in Dominion, is a pit bull who goes after those who would abuse such a wonderful creature. Tragically, now, the case for animals is now severely discredited among the social and political right. Or am I wrong? Is it that principles count for nothing among Republicans? And none of this matters anyway? Or is that blood on Palin’s lips?
