http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/08/20/stifgnusa02005.html
Gore says goodbye centre
ground, hello sweet left-wing
mood music
Andrew Sullivan
IN AN age when spontaneity has all but
disappeared from American politics, it was
good to see the Democrats in Los Angeles
last week. They knew the game plan; they
read the schedule; they just could not help
themselves.
Speeches went over time; rhetoric went over the top; and the old
party divisions - left and right, blacks and Jews, union bosses
and gay activists - crackled with occasional life.
The denouement - Gore's speech on Thursday night - was a
stunner, profoundly altering his image as a person and as a
politician for better and surely also for worse. If the Republicans
staged an impeccable, unassailable spectacle of moderation,
the Democrats found themselves presiding over a messy veer to
the left.
The surprises began on the first night when the country was
exposed to its last spectacle of psychodrama from the "first
family". The script was simple: pass the torch gracefully. All Bill
Clinton had to do was say sorry for you-know-what, exonerate
Al from any scandal and give the best Gore endorsement he
could. He did none of it.
From his egregiously ham entrance to his trademark lateness, it
was vintage Clinton and a nightmare for Gore. It was all about
Bill, a man so vain that he could not think of a single anecdote
to describe Gore's decisiveness, because any such story might
have reflected poorly on himself. It was all about Clinton's
record: a shameless appropriation of anything good that had
happened (he even seemed at one point to claim credit for
curing Aids) and a resolute omission of anything else.
When the cameras caught up with the vice-president afterwards,
he seemed almost speechless. You can see why. Clinton had
mentioned Gore only late in his speech, long after most swing
voters were in bed, and weakly.
The language sounded like a letter of recommendation that a
teacher is required to write but does not really believe in. So
Gore was a "good man". He was "always there". (Where else
was he supposed to be?) When the two men had lunch
together, "we talked about the business between us and the
business of America. But we'd also often talk about our families,
what our kids were doing, how school was going, what was
going on in their lives".
If this staggering banality was not inspiring enough, Clinton
stuck in two focus-group buzz words: Gore was "a strong
leader" and he cared about "ordinary Americans". What a plug.
There was no mention in the introductory video of the second
impeachment trial in the country's history, no explicit
exoneration of Gore in the Monica Lewinsky ordeal that Clinton
foisted on the country by his compulsive lying, no apology to
the vice-president, to the first lady or to the country for what
Clinton had done to the rule of law or the simple credibility of the
presidency by his perjury and deceit.
In other words, Clinton behaved as he always behaves: with no
sense of duty, honour or propriety, but with a massive attack of
amnesia. Even now. Even after everything.
The one thing Clinton needed to do was to take final
responsibility for his actions and set Gore free. He did not. He
never will. In an almost poetic moment of justice, the lead story
on Thursday's evening news was not Gore's acceptance speech
but the empanelling of yet another grand jury to investigate the
Lewinsky affair.
Clinton's legacy was also apparent in another way. There is no
doubt that he moved the Democratic party to the right. But he
did so mainly by triangulating away from his own party, which
remained wedded institutionally to many old liberal nostrums.
Clinton brought the left along partly thanks to his enemies on
the right and also because of his personal charm. He never
accomplished the kind of institutional reform that Tony Blair
brought to new Labour.
So Gore was left with a highly precarious political challenge:
how to bring right and left together around a charm-free centrist
ticket. The second night of the convention was part of the
answer. It was handed over to the old liberals.
Jesse Jackson and Ted Kennedy rallied the old guard, even as
the Gore campaign tried desperately to appease a revolt from its
black caucus over the selection of Joe Lieberman. In turn,
Lieberman had to devote most of his speech to placating the
left.
Having opposed affirmative action and supported the California
initiative banning it, Lieberman said he was committed to the
idea that America "should mend affirmative action, but please,
don't end it".
Having supported school choice, he all but bowed down before
the teachers' unions that make up a hefty section of the party's
liberal base. He even mounted a few lame populist forays
against "big polluters".
In a strange way, the whole centrist rationale behind picking
Lieberman was thereby undermined. When Lieberman should
have been displaying his moderation to the country, he was
required to display his liberalism to the party. He needed to do
this because every poll shows that the Democrats, like Labour,
are failing to rally their core voters and could suffer - not
because of defections to the Republicans but from abstention
among their supporters.
However, nothing could have prepared us for Gore's speech. It
was the most important of his career and he made it plain that
he had written it himself. It was set up by a charming
presentation by his wife and was delivered in a brisk, jaunty,
almost casual style which helped to dispel the usual concerns
about his stiffness and condescension.
In style and presentation it was the best speech I have seen
Gore give. But the content was baffling. What Gore needed to
do was to appropriate Clinton's policies while eschewing his
character. What he did was ignore Clinton altogether, spurn any
credit for the boom of the past eight years and give a speech so
far to the left that it could have been given by Kennedy or
Jackson.
On the welfare state, Gore described the new prosperity as a
way to create new entitlements and continue ploughing money
into the old ones. So he ruled out reform of pensions by
investing part of the social security trust fund in the stock
market. He ruled out any change in the retirement age to
prevent future bankruptcy. He pledged a new entitlement to free
prescription drugs for the elderly on Medicare. He promised a
move to "universal health coverage", starting with children.
Every single innovative idea from the moderate wing of the party
- from school vouchers to reform of affirmative action - Gore set
his face against. His method of distancing himself from Clinton
seemed to be not to criticise Clinton's character but to abandon
most of the successful centrist policies that Clinton had
pioneered.
Take abortion. Clinton supported it if it was "safe, legal and
rare". Gore simply defended an absolute right to abortion in
every circumstance, publicly funded if necessary.
Take affirmative action. Clinton had formulated the phrase
"Mend it, don't end it". Gore simply gave it full-throated support.
On the environment, Clinton had always argued that growth
could be accompanied by environmental protection. Gore simply
demonised the "big polluters" allegedly poisoning our children's
water.
The theme was populism. Gore was promising to fight "for you"
against the "powerful forces" trying to foil the wellbeing of
ordinary Americans.
"So often, powerful forces and powerful interests stand in your
way and the odds seemed stacked against you," he intoned. "I
want you to know this: I've taken on the powerful forces. And as
president, I'll stand up to them, and I'll stand up for you . . . and
that's the difference in this election. They're for the powerful and
we're for the people."
What are these forces? It turns out that they are drug
companies, tobacco companies, gun manufacturers and
healthcare bureaucracies - ie, millions of American workers and
shareholders trying to make a living.
The truth is that drug companies in America's vibrant bio-tech
sector have done more than anyone to improve people's
healthcare. Health management organisations, another easy
Gore target, have been stunningly successful in ratcheting down
America's once skyrocketing healthcare costs. Tobacco
companies have already been ransacked by government-backed
lawsuits.
Most people understand this. As Dick Morris, the former White
House aide, said last week: economic populism "sounds so
good in speeches. It wows them at the convention . . . But
swing voters recognise it for the simplistic pandering that it is".
Surely they did on Thursday night. Gore was once a Democrat
who tried to work with the private sector. Those days,
apparently, are gone.
Perhaps Gore felt he needed to shore up his liberal base.
Perhaps he believes this populist tub-thumping. His father, after
all, was a Southern populist. Perhaps he was influenced by Bob
Shrum, an aide who has urged populist campaigns on other
Democrats - usually with dire results. But no Democrat has won
on such a platform since 1948. Populism is most potent in hard
times or recessions - not during one of the country's most
sustained economic up-swings.
What Gore needs is to bring independent and swing voters into
his camp. What he did instead was to revive memories of
Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, those failed presidential
candidates of yesteryear.
The Democrats left Los Angeles with the sinking feeling of 1984
and 1988. A weak leader had presented a long list of
commitments to Democratic party interest groups, wrapped
them in an angry populist rhetoric and hoped for a turn in his
luck. It did not work then. It will take a miracle for it to work
now.
------------------
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!
Gore says goodbye centre
ground, hello sweet left-wing
mood music
Andrew Sullivan
IN AN age when spontaneity has all but
disappeared from American politics, it was
good to see the Democrats in Los Angeles
last week. They knew the game plan; they
read the schedule; they just could not help
themselves.
Speeches went over time; rhetoric went over the top; and the old
party divisions - left and right, blacks and Jews, union bosses
and gay activists - crackled with occasional life.
The denouement - Gore's speech on Thursday night - was a
stunner, profoundly altering his image as a person and as a
politician for better and surely also for worse. If the Republicans
staged an impeccable, unassailable spectacle of moderation,
the Democrats found themselves presiding over a messy veer to
the left.
The surprises began on the first night when the country was
exposed to its last spectacle of psychodrama from the "first
family". The script was simple: pass the torch gracefully. All Bill
Clinton had to do was say sorry for you-know-what, exonerate
Al from any scandal and give the best Gore endorsement he
could. He did none of it.
From his egregiously ham entrance to his trademark lateness, it
was vintage Clinton and a nightmare for Gore. It was all about
Bill, a man so vain that he could not think of a single anecdote
to describe Gore's decisiveness, because any such story might
have reflected poorly on himself. It was all about Clinton's
record: a shameless appropriation of anything good that had
happened (he even seemed at one point to claim credit for
curing Aids) and a resolute omission of anything else.
When the cameras caught up with the vice-president afterwards,
he seemed almost speechless. You can see why. Clinton had
mentioned Gore only late in his speech, long after most swing
voters were in bed, and weakly.
The language sounded like a letter of recommendation that a
teacher is required to write but does not really believe in. So
Gore was a "good man". He was "always there". (Where else
was he supposed to be?) When the two men had lunch
together, "we talked about the business between us and the
business of America. But we'd also often talk about our families,
what our kids were doing, how school was going, what was
going on in their lives".
If this staggering banality was not inspiring enough, Clinton
stuck in two focus-group buzz words: Gore was "a strong
leader" and he cared about "ordinary Americans". What a plug.
There was no mention in the introductory video of the second
impeachment trial in the country's history, no explicit
exoneration of Gore in the Monica Lewinsky ordeal that Clinton
foisted on the country by his compulsive lying, no apology to
the vice-president, to the first lady or to the country for what
Clinton had done to the rule of law or the simple credibility of the
presidency by his perjury and deceit.
In other words, Clinton behaved as he always behaves: with no
sense of duty, honour or propriety, but with a massive attack of
amnesia. Even now. Even after everything.
The one thing Clinton needed to do was to take final
responsibility for his actions and set Gore free. He did not. He
never will. In an almost poetic moment of justice, the lead story
on Thursday's evening news was not Gore's acceptance speech
but the empanelling of yet another grand jury to investigate the
Lewinsky affair.
Clinton's legacy was also apparent in another way. There is no
doubt that he moved the Democratic party to the right. But he
did so mainly by triangulating away from his own party, which
remained wedded institutionally to many old liberal nostrums.
Clinton brought the left along partly thanks to his enemies on
the right and also because of his personal charm. He never
accomplished the kind of institutional reform that Tony Blair
brought to new Labour.
So Gore was left with a highly precarious political challenge:
how to bring right and left together around a charm-free centrist
ticket. The second night of the convention was part of the
answer. It was handed over to the old liberals.
Jesse Jackson and Ted Kennedy rallied the old guard, even as
the Gore campaign tried desperately to appease a revolt from its
black caucus over the selection of Joe Lieberman. In turn,
Lieberman had to devote most of his speech to placating the
left.
Having opposed affirmative action and supported the California
initiative banning it, Lieberman said he was committed to the
idea that America "should mend affirmative action, but please,
don't end it".
Having supported school choice, he all but bowed down before
the teachers' unions that make up a hefty section of the party's
liberal base. He even mounted a few lame populist forays
against "big polluters".
In a strange way, the whole centrist rationale behind picking
Lieberman was thereby undermined. When Lieberman should
have been displaying his moderation to the country, he was
required to display his liberalism to the party. He needed to do
this because every poll shows that the Democrats, like Labour,
are failing to rally their core voters and could suffer - not
because of defections to the Republicans but from abstention
among their supporters.
However, nothing could have prepared us for Gore's speech. It
was the most important of his career and he made it plain that
he had written it himself. It was set up by a charming
presentation by his wife and was delivered in a brisk, jaunty,
almost casual style which helped to dispel the usual concerns
about his stiffness and condescension.
In style and presentation it was the best speech I have seen
Gore give. But the content was baffling. What Gore needed to
do was to appropriate Clinton's policies while eschewing his
character. What he did was ignore Clinton altogether, spurn any
credit for the boom of the past eight years and give a speech so
far to the left that it could have been given by Kennedy or
Jackson.
On the welfare state, Gore described the new prosperity as a
way to create new entitlements and continue ploughing money
into the old ones. So he ruled out reform of pensions by
investing part of the social security trust fund in the stock
market. He ruled out any change in the retirement age to
prevent future bankruptcy. He pledged a new entitlement to free
prescription drugs for the elderly on Medicare. He promised a
move to "universal health coverage", starting with children.
Every single innovative idea from the moderate wing of the party
- from school vouchers to reform of affirmative action - Gore set
his face against. His method of distancing himself from Clinton
seemed to be not to criticise Clinton's character but to abandon
most of the successful centrist policies that Clinton had
pioneered.
Take abortion. Clinton supported it if it was "safe, legal and
rare". Gore simply defended an absolute right to abortion in
every circumstance, publicly funded if necessary.
Take affirmative action. Clinton had formulated the phrase
"Mend it, don't end it". Gore simply gave it full-throated support.
On the environment, Clinton had always argued that growth
could be accompanied by environmental protection. Gore simply
demonised the "big polluters" allegedly poisoning our children's
water.
The theme was populism. Gore was promising to fight "for you"
against the "powerful forces" trying to foil the wellbeing of
ordinary Americans.
"So often, powerful forces and powerful interests stand in your
way and the odds seemed stacked against you," he intoned. "I
want you to know this: I've taken on the powerful forces. And as
president, I'll stand up to them, and I'll stand up for you . . . and
that's the difference in this election. They're for the powerful and
we're for the people."
What are these forces? It turns out that they are drug
companies, tobacco companies, gun manufacturers and
healthcare bureaucracies - ie, millions of American workers and
shareholders trying to make a living.
The truth is that drug companies in America's vibrant bio-tech
sector have done more than anyone to improve people's
healthcare. Health management organisations, another easy
Gore target, have been stunningly successful in ratcheting down
America's once skyrocketing healthcare costs. Tobacco
companies have already been ransacked by government-backed
lawsuits.
Most people understand this. As Dick Morris, the former White
House aide, said last week: economic populism "sounds so
good in speeches. It wows them at the convention . . . But
swing voters recognise it for the simplistic pandering that it is".
Surely they did on Thursday night. Gore was once a Democrat
who tried to work with the private sector. Those days,
apparently, are gone.
Perhaps Gore felt he needed to shore up his liberal base.
Perhaps he believes this populist tub-thumping. His father, after
all, was a Southern populist. Perhaps he was influenced by Bob
Shrum, an aide who has urged populist campaigns on other
Democrats - usually with dire results. But no Democrat has won
on such a platform since 1948. Populism is most potent in hard
times or recessions - not during one of the country's most
sustained economic up-swings.
What Gore needs is to bring independent and swing voters into
his camp. What he did instead was to revive memories of
Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, those failed presidential
candidates of yesteryear.
The Democrats left Los Angeles with the sinking feeling of 1984
and 1988. A weak leader had presented a long list of
commitments to Democratic party interest groups, wrapped
them in an angry populist rhetoric and hoped for a turn in his
luck. It did not work then. It will take a miracle for it to work
now.
------------------
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!