OPINION:
The deadline for nominations for this year’s John F. Kennedy Library Foundation’s annual Profile in Courage Award is Feb. 15, and there are two nominees who, by any objective measure, should be the hands-down winners of the 2022 honors.
On the foundation’s website, the invitation to submit nominations reads:
“In times of partisan divide and political gridlock, uplifting stories of political courage from across the country is how we can inspire leaders to work together for the common good.
“These acts of courage are happening on every level of government, and the Profile in Courage Award is how we honor them.
“Which elected official do you think deserves to be recognized for a recent act of political courage? Nominate them today!”
The nomination form stipulates that “ordinarily, the award will be made to living Americans who are or were elected officials. Individuals at all levels of government — federal, state and local — are eligible for the award. An emphasis will be placed on contemporary acts of political courage.”
Measured against that latter criterion, this shouldn’t even be open to question, much less debate: The 2022 Profile in Courage Award clearly should go, by acclaim, to Sens. Joe Manchin, West Virginia Democrat, and Kyrsten Sinema, Arizona Democrat.
In the face of disgraceful ad hominem attacks by their fellow Democrats in and out of Congress and from the party’s phalanx of left-wing special-interest groups and media pleaders, Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema showed commendable courage in refusing to be complicit in brazen efforts that would have irreversibly blown up the Senate for the chief purpose of benefiting the Democratic Party.
Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema together stopped what 50 Senate Republicans otherwise would have been powerless to prevent without them, given that, had they marched in lockstep with the other 48 Senate Democrats, the 50-50 tie would have been broken by Vice President Kamala Harris in Democrats’ favor.
The two stood alone as bulwarks against cynical efforts by their fellow Senate Democrats attempting to abolish (or failing that, make a one-time carveout to) the long-standing Senate filibuster rule so they could ram through shamelessly partisan election “reforms” whose true purpose was to all but cement permanent Democratic control of Congress and the White House.
It’s hardly hyperbole to say that Senate Democrats’ end-justifies-the-means totalitarian impulse, had it come to fruition, would have resulted in what remains of Senate comity and bipartisanship being permanently destroyed.
“The ability to debate and do the hard work to find consensus between two parties is more important for our country now than ever before with the Senate evenly divided,” Mr. Manchin rightly noted in a Jan. 22 statement reaffirming his support for preserving the Senate filibuster.
That would be the same filibuster, incidentally, that his fellow Senate Democrats used with hypocritical gusto when Republican former Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump were in the White House. In 2020 (the final full year of Mr. Trump’s presidency) alone, Senate Democrats deployed the filibuster a whopping 327 times to block legislation and nominees they didn’t like.
The same day Mr. Manchin reaffirmed his support for retaining the filibuster, the Arizona Democratic Party voted to censure Ms. Sinema, who had done likewise nine days earlier on Jan. 13 on the Senate floor.
“While I continue to support [the bills being filibustered], I will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country,” the Arizona lawmaker explained.
Helmed by Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, JFK’s daughter and the foundation’s president, the Profile in Courage Award historically has favored liberals in its choice of recipients. That’s the foundation’s prerogative, of course, so when a Republican has won the award, typically it’s been a “maverick” who defied the party. For example, Sen. Mitt Romney, Utah Republican, won it last year for twice voting to impeach Mr. Trump (despite both cases being predicated on largely unsupported charges).
While it obviously would have been easier to just go along with their party, Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema courageously held their ground, so it will be interesting to see whether “maverick” status is also the award-winning formula for Democrats.
But for standing up for principle in the face of withering pressure from within their party, and for standing up for the preservation of (lowercase-r) republican government, we can think of no other elected officials more deserving of this year’s Profile in Courage Award than Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema.
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