B142-DES91
Home Of The Meek: The Cowardly American Electorate
Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 4/10/04
4 years ago
Americans had a chance to really show that they meant it when they wanted
‘real change’ in politics. The outgoing President was Constitutionally
barred from seeking reelection, and the 4 main contenders from the 2 major
parties offered striking choices to the electorate- not just between themselves,
but within their own party affiliation. Democrats had a choice between a sitting
Vice-President, Albert Gore, who was a moderate to right leaning, anti-union,
pro-censorship, big business stealth Republican who was raised in a wealthy,
highly successful political family- seeming groomed for the Presidency and an
Ivy League educated, classic Liberal Senator, Bill Bradley, who came to politics
late, after a successful career in sports, and who made his political mark as
standing more for principle than party or monetary backing.
Republicans
similarly had a marked choice in their primary elections. They could choose from
the son of an ex-President, Texas Governor George W. Bush, who was a right
leaning, anti-union, pro-censorship, big business faux ‘Compassionate
Conservative’ who was raised in a wealthy, highly successful political family-
seeming groomed for the Presidency and a War Hero, Classic Conservative Senator,
John McCain, who made his political mark as standing more for principle than
party or monetary backing.
To anyone who
would read the plaints of the American voter over the last 40 years that there
are no real choices in politics this would have seemed to have been the year the
voter was finally served. The 2 favorites were sallow-faced hypocrites whose
money-grubbing knew no bounds, and whose visions for America were nonexistent.
The underdogs were pugnacious and principled. Voters have long claimed to have
wanted clear choices. But, when they get it they punt, and play it safe. When
Ralph Nader said that there was not a shit’s worth of difference between the 2
men he was right. Is it any wonder that the 2000 general election was so close?
I’m sure many voters thought they were voting for the other guy.
To Democrats
who believe things would be Nirvana if President Gore were seeking reelection I
say this was a man who folded his ‘convictions’ on something as innocuous as
CD lyric stickers- do you really think he’d make a big stand on gay
marriage? Do you really think the ‘Father of the Internet’ would have
prevented 9/11? Or not gotten us involved in a needless war? Perhaps not in
Iraq- which seems now to have been purely payback for Saddam’s attempted hit
on Bush, Sr. and a de facto LBO of the nation by Halliburton- but he would have
probably botched things against the Taliban, or done something dumb in Pakistan.
As for the economy- perhaps it would have been a bit better, but remember- the
seeds for this downturn were sown by the Clinton-Gore years’ blind eye to the
deleterious effects of mergermania. It’s the excesses of the Clinton-Gore
years that started this downward spiral- W. has only mismanaged it to a
near-catastrophe. This is exactly why I opted for Ralph Nader. The last election
showed the folly of the ‘voting for the lesser of 2 evils’ mentality. It’s
this mentality that led to a ‘no good choice’ election. One may argue over
the motivations, consequences, and import of Ralph Nader in 2000- but no one can
seriously argue that he was vis-à-vis Bush and Gore far more principled, far
more competent, and far more in tune with the average American.
Now, imagine
what a McCain-Bradley contest would have been. There would be no blurred lines,
there would be a Classic Bootstrapping Conservative vs. a Classic Egalitarian
Liberal. There would not be this gray mush in the middle that means nothing. In
that election I’d’ve voted for Bradley- as well as if he had run against
Bush. In a McCain-Gore race I’d’ve gone for McCain, as long as a 3rd
choice did not exist. With the Scion Twins I went for Nader.
Flash-forward
4 years later. W.’s crooks are just a little better and better placed than
Gore’s- the Supreme Court. With W. we have a President that most likely
knew there would be some big terror attack before 9/11, but smugly sat on his
ass. We have a President that took out the Taliban (yea) but left a festering
mess in Afghanistan (boo)- apparently Bush’s memory was toasted during the
days of bong- why else would he not have sought a Douglas MacArthur type to
administrate that country ala Japan post-World War 2? Oh, right, because he got
us involved in what now is apparent to have been a needless war in Iraq. Not an
iota of the massive WMD apparatus has been found. Saddam is gone (yea), but
Osama is still King Of The Moslem World (boo), and free. Iraq is even in worse
shape than Afghanistan because it at least WAS a fairly modern country. Now it
is the epicenter for extremist violence in that already violent region, and who
knows how many needless deaths on all sides, and in the future, will come
because of this folly? And the fact is it does not matter whether W. lied or
relied on the incompetent and myopic CIA. Either way his administration is
fraying.
Add in the
fact that Herbert Hoover was the last President to have negative job growth in
his reign. It amazes me how we can have this staggering job loss, loss of
earning power per family, yet because a few bigwigs have been able to squeeze a
bit more blood from their corporate stones eggheads tell us this economy is in a
‘recovery’. Tell that to all the displaced and unemployed. Republicans who
counter that inflation and unemployment are relatively low conveniently overlook
the fact that people whose unemployment runs out and those who work several part
time gigs are not factored in to those unemployment statistics, which would
about triple the actual rate of joblessness from the 5-6% of recent vintage. W.
can thank the Reagan administration for that little jiggering of the stats, for
without it W.’s fiscal mismanagement would be manifestly the worst since the
Great Depression. Democrats should seem to have an easy road.
Not so for
the party that, excepting Slick Willy, has raised national incompetence to an
art form. The 4 top Democratic contenders were a pro-working class General whose
competence in war was beyond reproach (Wesley Clark), a far-sighted socially
Liberal and fiscally Conservative Governor (Howard Dean), a great stumping
outsider one term Senator who could match Clinton and who really is a Democrat
(John Edwards), and a bland, corporate-backed, careerist politician,
stump-challenged Senator, and husband of an heiress (John Kerry). Of the 4, it
would seem a no-brainer that the weakest possible candidate would be Kerry. So,
of course, he’s the one Democrats crowned to challenge Bush.
His
weaknesses are manifest- his Vietnam War hero image is moot, because as many
people who will revile him as a turncoat will see him as principled. More
troubling is his support for Bush’s war in Iraq. While it’s easy to say he
was misled by the White House, they can say the same of the CIA. Kerry is a
classic ‘Limousine Liberal’- probably the most famed since former New York
City mayor John Lindsay. He is one of the most PAC-beholden politicians in the
nation- although a rank amateur compared to W. So, while there are more
differences than last time around there are still a large number of voters who
can legitimately cop out with a lesser of 2 evils vote.
Yet, this is
manifestly what the public wants- the right to eternally bitch. Bitch,
bitch, bitch- because bitching feels good, entails no responsibility,
and allows for the cultivation of easy simplistic bogeymen rather than difficult
complex solutions. I call this ‘willful marginalization’. This tactic is
often employed by Academic Politically Correct Elitists and ‘spoken word
artists’ in contemporary poetry. It basically means that instead of working
hard to produce worthy art it’s easier to screed, then claim discrimination
when the callow nature of the ‘art’ is attacked. Careers have been crafted
around this very tactic, yet it’s not only poetasters who adore being
willfully marginalized. Labor unions, Christian Fundamentalists, tree huggers,
corporate lawyers, Feminists, the oil industry- all groups that wield
significant power- complain that they are ‘underdogs’, yet often it is their
own myopia that leads to their failures, or that their opponents cheated. Never
can anyone accept gracefully that they lost fair and square.
Similarly
the American electorate whines away that they don’t have real choices or a
voice in elections, yet they consistently make this so by their gutless choices.
So, who to vote for? The least successful and divisive president in memory, a
bland apparatchik, or Ralph Nader- who will likely bow out before November? In a
true democracy a ‘None of the above’ option would exist and a plurality in
that category would force renomination processes. As it is I am nonplussed- but
at least that’s not a bitch!
[An expurgated version of this article originally appeared on the 3/04 Hackwriters website.]
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