By Jay Kim
One day, my congressional aides brought me two portraits of the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. They wanted to display the portraits of Lincoln, a founder of the Republican Party, in my offices in Washington and California. It is common to find Lincoln’s portraits in the offices of Republican lawmakers; it is also common to find portraits of the third president and Democratic Party founder Thomas Jefferson in the offices of Democratic lawmakers.
Barack Obama, a Democrat, is the 44th president of the United States. If he runs again and wins the next election, he can serve as president for a total of eight years. Franklin Roosevelt was elected to four different four-year terms from 1932 to 1945. He died one year after his fourth election, and Vice President Harry Truman became president.
After Roosevelt’s death, the 22nd Constitutional Amendment was passed on Feb. 22, 1951, limiting the total amount of time a president can serve to two terms, or eight years overall. Out of 43 U.S. presidents, only 13 held the office for eight years, including President George W. Bush. Thirty of them failed to be re-elected while in office. To be president of the U.S., one must be born in America, over 35 years of age, and have lived in the country for more than 14 years.
Among the many differences between the Republican and Democratic parties, the biggest difference outside of economic policies may be their viewpoints on criminal policy.
The Republican policy is that criminals should be duly punished and the families of victims should be provided for; the Democratic policy is that the prevention of crimes should be stressed and that criminals should be rehabilitated in order to live in society again. In California, the “3 strikes, you’re out” bill pushed by the Republican Party has been signed into law. This meant that a person who has committed three felonies is sent to prison, even if the nature of his crimes is not serious.
I have thought that a committed crime should be punished according to the law, although preventing crimes and rehabilitating criminals into society are also important. Though things have gotten better these days, in the early 1990s crime was at its highest levels in the U.S., from gang fights and petty thefts in convenience stores to bank robberies. There were frequent robberies in Koreatown, and many Korean merchants lost their lives by the guns of robbers.
New Korean immigrants would mainly open their businesses in accident-prone areas, so they were naturally exposed to danger. Once, there was an incident where a Korean owner shot a black female teenager to death while struggling with her after she tried to shoplift a single bottle of fruit juice. This caused major tension between the Korean and black communities, but after extensive joint efforts from community leaders the tension soon dissipated. These days, petty theft like this has decreased, but clever swindlers have increased.
The Democrats think that society is responsible for crimes, especially juvenile crimes. They claim that the government should put all its efforts into studying the root of crimes in order to prevent them from occurring, and that it should provide opportunities for criminals to rehabilitate themselves through education, instead of emphasizing punishment.
In contrast, Republicans take the position that if a person commits a crime, he should pay the price accordingly, and it’s not right to spend tax dollars without taking any measures for the families of victims. They also believe that parents should take first responsibility for juvenile crimes before blaming their social environment.
Most crime reports in the press talk about the criminal’s unfortunate childhood, or the circumstances leading to the commitment of the crime, or the social inequality that made the crime necessary, but do not show the same interest in the deep sorrow of the victim or victim’s family. Many Americans were surprised and embarrassed by the scenes of a crime on TV that happened in broad daylight in a major street in Los Angeles, but was ignored by many people passing by the scene.
Once I was pushed to the ground, breaking my glasses, by a teen running away with a beer stolen from a 7-11 store run by a Korean-American. I thought to myself that all these shameless thieves should be punished. A few days later, the robber was caught and I was called to testify as a witness in the court, which turned out to be quite an ordeal. I told myself at the time that I would always volunteer to be a witness in court for a crime, no matter the inconvenience to myself. But after this ordeal, I doubt I would ever volunteer again.
There were issues that would always come up during a budget session in the House. The Republican side proposed bills to build more prisons and increase the number of policemen on the street, as well as bills making parents pay for the damages caused by a juvenile crime. The Democrats would counter-propose bills to increase the budgets for social service departments in order to strengthen the rehabilitation education of inmates in prison.
They also propose bills to run various sports programs for problematic young people to redirect their energies, constructing sports facilities like basketball courts with lights in poorer, crime-prone areas where socially disadvantaged adolescents were concentrated. Republicans ridiculed these bills as “midnight basketball,” stating that crimes increase ever year despite billions spent on crime prevention programs, “midnight basketball” courts become drug markets, and some criminals cannot be rehabilitated no matter what the cost.
They claimed that habitual criminals who are frequently in and out of jail can no longer be the objects of government protection. They claim that in order to protect society from crimes, strong measures against crimes should be devised and the death penalty should be strengthened to remove these heinous criminals from society altogether.
Every election I participated in, police organizations would always support me, a Republican candidate, but social workers would always support a Democratic candidate. However, since my attitude toward crime was comparatively liberal, I was often attacked as not being a real Republican in every election. I often could not help feeling skeptical about cruel, inhumane laws, as well as the American principle that even bad laws must be obeyed.
Jay Kim is a former U.S. congressman. He serves as chairman of the Washington Korean-American Forum. For more information, visit Kim’s website (www.jayckim.com).