IF SEN. Sam Brownback does run for president — he has formed an exploratory committee — he obviously intends to offer voters a choice that is moral as well as political.
The senator announced last week that he has decided to pull his family’s money out of any investments in Sudan. It was a principled decision.
Sudan is the nation that continues to allow the genocide in Darfur. Brownback’s has been one of the few voices in the U.S. Senate that have consistently called for more action by the United States and the rest of the world to end the suffering in Darfur.
The Brownback divestment by itself will not apply that much pressure on the Sudanese government. Divestment activists estimate that the family has between $186,000 and $565,000 investing in companies doing business in Sudan. The investments are in holdings in various mutual funds.
But Brownback is also encouraging others — individuals and state governments — to follow his example. If he is successful, companies could decide that profits from Sudan are not worth the cost of investor resistance. It is worth remembering that the decision by leading U.S. companies to end investment in South Africa was a large factor in the end of apartheid.
The Sudan decision is not the only recent example of Brownback’s attempt to give some meaning to the Bush administration’s discredited and discarded slogan, “compassionate conservatism.”
On Friday, Brownback publicly took an AIDS test to encourage wider testing for the disease. To defuse possible charges of political grandstanding, he was joined for the test by Democratic Sen. Barak Obama. Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin joined Brownback in the Sudan divestment announcement.
Later this week, Brownback intends to spend a night in a Louisiana prison to promote prison reform and spotlight the role that faith-based organizations can play in improving prisons.
Each of Brownback’s actions carries a potential for political benefits for him. But each action is also an admirable moral statement.
The senator has long been classed among the religious conservatives — first as a Protestant and then as a Catholic — and he has been involved in fights against abortion and gay marriage. What he seems to be trying to prove now is that faith has a role in public life beyond those divisive issues. Other important issues — protecting human rights, ending human suffering — can unite all people of faith, whether conservative or liberal.
As an effective political slogan, “compassionate conservatism” may have run its course. But give Brownback credit for trying to demonstrate that it could be more than just another campaign strategy.