America Fidgets

Monday, June 9th 1997 -- Watching America wrestle with whether or not Timothy McVeigh should get the death penalty is illuminating. Obviously people are somehow uncomfortable with it -- but why?

Here's a man convicted of murdering 168 people two years ago. All too many were children who couldn't possibly have participated in the federal government McVeigh held in such disdain. Yet the moment McVeigh's motives come up, discussions between pundits and pundits on television public policy shows teeter.

Except for a Catholic bishop, who opposes the death penalty generally, I haven't heard one political leader call for a punishment less than death for McVeigh. After all, that seems the politically correct thing to do.

But at least two victim families have made public statements that killing McVeigh will do nothing to alleviate their pain.

So just what is it that makes us pause in this case? Is it our 250-year-old tradition of revolution? Is it the fact that most of share at least some part of McVeigh's outrage at Waco and Ruby Ridge? Do some see him as a sort of political-prisoner-cum-murderer who has put us in the position of injecting him with some lethal concoction because he did not choose a protest march to vent his anger?

It's too complicated to tell.

One thing's for sure. When and if the deed is done, the most important question might go unanswered for eternity:

Why did he do it?

© 1998, 1997, American Politics Journal Publications Inc.