A Pilgrim’s Digression

On the recommendation of a friend of mine, I am trying to keep my posts shorter, which may mean I post more than once in a day/lunch hour.

I watched the first two prime time hours of the Democrat convention last night, which perhaps resulted in my poor night’s sleep and my need to read The Waste Land early this morning. I did not stay up for Bill Clinton’s speech at ten. For someone who does not sleep well on a normal night, and who has to get up anyway no later than five-thirty the next morning, ten o’clock is too late to stay up for a speech, even if it were made by Christ or the Buddha himself. Clinton being neither, I had all the more reason to skip it. I listened to Gore’s speech at eight, and I thought it was quite effective, though it is hardly remarked on in the papers this morning. Typically, the focus of the media is on Clinton. I do think he drew the wrong conclusions from his loss to Bush in 2000. Gore said the thing to take away from that experience is that every vote counts, which seems to me to stand in stark contradiction to what Election 2000 really said about the importance of an individual’s vote.

That criticism aside, Gore asked exactly the right questions of those who supported Bush four years ago: did you really get what you expected from the candidate you voted for? Is our country more united today? Or more divided? Has the promise of compassionate conservatism been fulfilled? Or do those words now ring hollow? John Kerry needs to repeat these questions like a mantra to every crowd to which he speaks. And Gore ended on a positive note, almost a Reagan-like “morning in America” note, when he spoke of the need to make America new again. Optimism is the Democrats best weapon, if they can arm themselves with it. Contrary to received wisdom, I don’t think the Republicans have much of that these days. For one thing, Bush’s Achilles heal is the drama that has attended his Presidency. David Brooks says as much today in the New York Times, Kerry at the Wheel. So I guess I can’t claim credit for the idea, though it really did occur to me first. I think it highly probably that a large number of undecided people who might otherwise lean to the right are simply sick of feeling afraid. If the Democrats can capitalize on this, present themselves as a sunny contrast to the Republican pessimists and fearmongers, the Democrats can win.

In contrast with Gore, Jimmy Carter was a sad, aged figure from the past with little to offer in his speech, except Bush-bashing. He may have won the Presidency one time, but it is a mistake for the Democrats to trot Carter out as some kind of elder statesman hero. It would equally be a mistake for the Republicans to give Gerald Ford a place on the stage. Carter is a relic, properly enshrined somewhere behind the altar for veneration, but not for use in routine communion. Carter looked depressed as he walked to the podium, as if he were doing something he really didn’t want to do. Perhaps a couple Democrat thugs had shown up at his door a few days before with a suit and a speech and said, “OK, Boy, time to do your duty for Party, Country, and God.” And so Carter, barely able to manage a smile, showed up and made his speech. He began by reminiscing about the Truman and Eisenhower years, which is hardly likely to invoke a tear of nostalgia from a crowd so young that the oldest of them probably can’t remember back much farther than Lyndon Johnson. His first shot, though, was an all-too obvious crack at President Bush’s National Guard service. I found that pretty crass coming from an ex-President, and an ex-military ex-President, at that. Carter went on to critique the Bush presidency, particularly President Bush’s foreign policy. It all rang hollow coming from Carter. In order to keep from totally disregarding what he had to say, I had to recall that Carter was a one-termer, too, so he certainly knows something about failed Presidencies. Yet I could not get past the fact that here was a man, Jimmy Carter, critiquing our current President–the same Jimmy Carter who himself single-handedly ushered in 12 years of Republican rule through his mismanagement of the economy and foreign affairs. Who in America mourns the lost second term of Jimmy Carter? Why should we listen to what he has to say?

As I said, I did not stay up for Clinton’s speech. I did not even finish listening to Carter. This morning, I did hear a clip of Hillary, shrill as ever, exhorting people to put Kerry in office in November. Maybe she can’t control it, but when she is trying to rouse enthusiasm, the woman’s voice goes up a couple octaves until she sounds like every man’s first wife in a lamp-breaking, dish-throwing fit. Perhaps this is the result of learning to speak publicly at feminist bra-burning rallies in the sixties. It is little wonder so few men can bear her.

I still do not know who I will vote for in the coming election. Luckily, for most of us, our lives go on much the same as always regardless of who is in office. There are very few personal tragedies, save the death of a soldier, one can lay at the feet of the President. But this does not solve the problem of who to vote for, because there are differences, if only cosmetic differences. I’ve heard Limbaugh, apparently speaking from Republican talking points, saying that the Democrats are forcing upon themselves an extreme makeover to hide their essential ugliness from the American people. Teresa Kerry’s “shove it” remark is, in this view, an example of the mask coming off and the true face of the Demcorats showing itself. Typically, Limbaugh neglects to mention that the Republcians are hardly honest in their presentation of themselves. No one expects honesty, really, no more than people expect others to come to work looking exactly as they did when they fell out of bed in the morning. We all construct appearances which we present to others, and political parties and political candidates are no different. Politicians are all fictions. For ordinary people in an election year, the question is “which fiction do I believe?” For thinking people, the question is, “Which fiction do I want to believe?”