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Kerry: In Search
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| July 8, 2004 |
This
is a great country. It has a huge 
talent
pool of gifted people with original minds. I’m
awed by it every time I browse at Borders Book Store: so much to choose
from!
So why do our presidential
options come down to a pair of men like George W. Bush and John
Kerry? Is our political system designed to filter out better, more
interesting choices? It would appear so.
Thanks to UHF and cable TV, we
no longer have to choose among three networks. Borders offers an infinite
selection of books. Even at McDonald’s, we have other options
besides hamburgers and cheeseburgers — fish and chicken
sandwiches, salads, and so on.
But in politics, it’s the
same old menu: a Republican hack or a Democratic hack. And we are told
that our two-party system is the glory of democracy. Other countries
should be so blessed. Multiparty democracies, where people may actually
get to vote for the candidates they prefer, are deemed
“chaotic.”
Both major parties aim at
blandness in selecting their presidential candidates. A mildly explosive
Howard Dean must yield to an “electable” John Kerry; even
Ronald Reagan was once thought “too extreme.” A third-party
candidate who threatens to upset the balance between the Big Two is
considered a “spoiler.” Oh, all right, Ralph Nader has the right
to run for president, but it’s just a technical legal right that he
shouldn’t actually exercise. He’s being
“irresponsible.”
So in the two-party system, the
quest is not for the guy you really want, but for the guy you think most of
the electorate will settle for, even if they don’t really want him
either. It’s like my pet definition of public opinion: what everyone
thinks everyone else thinks.
In a system dedicated to the
proposition that all “responsible” candidates must be
colorless and unprincipled, it doesn’t take much to get the pundits
excited. Kerry himself did it last winter by emerging as the most
“electable,” if least inspiring, Democrat. Now Kerry has
caused another media frenzy by picking John Edwards as his running mate.
![[Breaker quote: It will take more than Edwards.]](2004breakers/040708.gif)
Only
in a system where ennui is the norm could a political
nobody like Edwards cause pulses to race. What is his record? What does
he stand for? No matter. The pollsters are already asking the public for
reactions to his selection.
The pundit chorus sees Edwards
as balancing the Kerry ticket. Since his brief voting record is nearly as
liberal as Kerry’s, it’s hard to see how. Because he’s a
Southerner? He’s barely known outside North Carolina, where
he’s still a newcomer anyway; he won’t be able to deliver the
Republican South, where George W. Bush is popular, to the
Democrats’ column.
True, he’s not from
Massachusetts, and nobody would call him a Brahmin; as he keeps
repeating, his father was a humble millworker, a fact that is supposed to
give him a populist pedigree. He’s younger and better-looking than
Kerry, who vaguely reminds you of Boris Karloff. And they say he’s a
good campaigner, rousing crowds with the same tear-jerking skills he
perfected in the courtroom as a trial lawyer.
It’s to Kerry’s
credit that he has realized he needs a running mate who is less boring than
he is. If you come across as an old reptile, maybe it’s not a bad idea
to balance the ticket with a young mammal. That American politics has
become the ugly sister of the entertainment industry is now a
commonplace. Kerry is doing his best just to keep the audience awake.
Of course he won’t go to
the desperate extremity of offering a message. Each party wants you to
think the other party is very bad, while minimizing any substantive
difference with it. If Kerry can be said to have any campaign theme at all,
it’s that he would administer the Bush agenda more competently
than Bush does.
At least Bush has a theme:
We’re winning the war on terrorism, your taxes are lower, and the
economy is fine. You may not believe it, but you know what it is. Kerry
sounds like a sore-headed nitpicker whining about “tax cuts for the
rich” and “corporate interests.”
As long as Dick Cheney’s
pacemaker holds out, we’re in for a very dull campaign.
Joseph Sobran
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Mailarticle © 2001 by Gavin Spomer
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