Vision and values

Kay Coles James on Jan. 1 became president of the Heritage Foundation, America’s premier conservative think tank. Her previous leadership roles: secretary of Health and Human Resources in Virginia, director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in George W. Bush’s administration, and many more. Here are edited excerpts of our interview in March.

You’ve written that you wanted to become a capital-M Mother, which within the black church community means “a well-respected woman with worn knees, a well-used Bible, candy in her purse for children, who has earned the privilege of saying exactly what she thinks.” Can you do that as Heritage president? I certainly can, and you may call me Mother James.

Mother James, I was impressed with your candor five years ago when we also did an interview here at Patrick Henry College and you commented, “I met recently with young African-American conservative professionals and said, ‘I have a newsflash for you. The cavalry is not coming. There is no one coming to save us. The conservative movement, the evangelical movement, and the Republican Party don’t care about us anymore.’” Do they care now? They are learning to care. They understand how important it is to care. To maintain freedom and liberty, we must spend time, energy, and resources in various communities, including cultural elites, minorities, women, and millennials. Many of our wonderful conservative organizations are comfortable just staying within and preaching to the choir instead of being evangelical, with a small “e.” The Heritage board chose someone who has as a passion growing our movement.

How will you appeal to the cultural elites? I have to appeal to their intellectual honesty.

‘To maintain freedom and liberty, we must spend time, energy, and resources in various communities, including cultural elites, minorities, women, and millennials.’

How much of that is there? Not a lot, I must confess. So I ask, “Are you prepared to be intellectually honest? Will you give me the freedom to call you on it when you’re not? You’re entitled to your opinions but not your own set of facts.” Heritage researchers write papers, and I’m excited to be with Patrick Henry students today because this is the farm team. They learn to rely on data and defend what they believe. Elsewhere, we hear, “I feel, in my opinion.” Those feelings and opinions are typically not based on anything other than some talking points pulled off Facebook.

Thinking of a member of the cultural elite who emphasizes feelings a lot and is also from a minority group, Oprah Winfrey … Oh, I’m looking forward to that one.

What would you say to her? We could find a lot of common ground. I don’t want to see poor people poor. She doesn’t either. I don’t want to see kids trapped in failure factories and unable to get a great education. Neither does she. I don’t want to see access to quality healthcare denied to those who desperately need it. Neither does she. The difference comes in our approach to how to solve those problems. So with Oprah I would lay out the common ground, appreciate who she is, and say, “Are you willing, Oprah, to set everything aside and let’s look at things that work?”

Education is a prime example? When I am dealing with young progressives on college campuses, I like to put up a picture of a kid who is obviously from an impoverished background, and I tell them that my children and my grandchildren have someone who’s crazy about them and that’s me. That poor kid whose picture I put up deserves someone who is crazy about them as well and who’s willing to take on teachers unions and school administrators. Are you willing to do that and set aside politics, set aside labels and talking points, set aside advocating on behalf of anyone other than that kid? If you lock Oprah Winfrey and me in a room, I’ll bet we could come out with some solutions for that kid.

Let’s say Oprah Winfrey responds to that persuasive argument by saying, “Donald Trump. No compassion.” Then what? Heritage is not an arm of the Republican National Committee or the Trump administration. We promote conservative philosophies, ideas, and policies. Whenever the RNC or the Trump administration veers from that, we take them on. I would say to Oprah: When someone is dying in a desert and a hand reaches out to give a cup of water, would you knock it away? Take Trump out of the picture and look at the cup of water. Is it real? Will it quench the thirst? I don’t care who it’s coming from, if it’s a real solution, I’ll take it.

So Oprah then says, tell me about the cup of water you’ve offered to DACA kids. I have compassion for kids brought here by their parents. They had no say in that. I get that they have hopes and dreams and aspirations. But you know what I also get? That there’s a kid in Appalachia who has hopes and dreams. There’s a kid in inner-city Chicago who has hopes and dreams, and in a country with limited resources, I’d just like to say Americans have dreamers too. Let’s take care of our American dreamers, and we can get to the DACA ones eventually. There should be a pathway to citizenship for those individuals, but I also have compassion for folks that I know that stood in line, went through the processes, and respected our laws.

On education, did the Bush administration make a mistake in not pushing school choice but instead emphasizing testing? We made a mistake in not pushing both. If school choice were enacted and people took their resources and money and picked better schools, you would see the public schools improve because they are going to want to keep those kids. I don’t support school choice because I want to see public schools shut down. I want to see poor kids have choice—and the competition will improve public schools.

Clarence Thomas in his autobiography writes about when he was nominated for the Supreme Court and underwent enormous abuse: “We asked four of our friends, Elizabeth and Steven Law and Kay and Charles James, to come over the next morning and join us in prayer. They showed up bright and early, carrying bags of doughnuts and bagels past the reporters camped outside the house. The six of us chatted for a little while, then sat in a circle, held hands, and asked the Lord for help. Both couples came back each day until the battle was over, and their company was a priceless gift. ‘Where two or three are gathered in my name,’ Jesus said, ‘I am there among them.’ He was among us now.” Can you just tell us a bit more about that experience? Only that it’s been repeated more times than I’d like to think of with friends going through difficult times. We need to be a people with the audacity to believe in prayer. We need to be a people, when we see overwhelming challenges, who know we serve a mighty God and can go to Him in confidence and in prayer, knowing that the battle is not ours: It’s His.

Amen.