Strange
Victory
By John Chuckman
04 October, 2004
Countercurrents.org
Nothing
tells us more about the odd political state of America than the recent
presidential debate and reactions to it.
The American debates,
of course, are not debates at all. They are more a set of joint press
conferences, a staged opportunity for both candidates to repeat memorized
lines in a cozy environment, protected by elaborate rules and an always-undemanding
moderator. Still, once in a while, something manages to happen.
You cannot look
to the prominent members of either major American political party for
an honest assessment of how their candidate performed. Despite being
regularly trotted out on America's political-discussion programs, these
people leave the impression of old Soviet apparatchiks offering spontaneous
views on Stalin's latest speech.
If you looked to
the mainline press or the small group of people who hold lifetime sinecures
on television, you would have concluded the morning after that the debate
was a tie, an opinion generated by the same tireless machinery that
churns out most of what Americans hear about Iraq. Only the so-called
instant polls told you something else, and there was a clue from John
McCain, a man desperate to cleanse his conscience of groveling for Bush,
who briefly admitted that Kerry had his best night in a long stretch.
If you had read
the words of former Vice President Al Gore just before the debate, you
might have expected Bush to be a formidable opponent, consistently underestimated.
But to credit Gore's judgment required you to ignore the fact that he
is the man whose inept campaign in 2000 put Bush into office. Gore does
not want to be remembered as the smart man, groomed for decades in politics
at the highest level, who let one of the most sniveling and uninformed
politicians in American history take the country's highest office, but
that is precisely Gore's legacy.
With most of the
usual sources of authority discounted, you were left to your own judgment,
something with which Americans are not all that comfortable. American
television's hazy, synthetic vision of the world, where everything from
the best choice of toilet-bowl cleaner to what should be your view of
the latest colonial slaughter is appealingly served up to be consumed
as directed, makes independent judgment unfamiliar territory.
Still, once in a
while, there's no shaking the effect of a stark fact. Any fool could
see that Bush is a man who cannot think on his feet, that his responses
are those of a toy doll whose same scratchy set of recordings play each
time you squeeze him. Winning a debate with a man of his quality would
not be an achievement anywhere, except in America. Gore should have
landed a string of knock-out punches during the 2000 debates, but he
utterly failed to do so. My private guess as to why he didn't is that
he thought the audience might judge him harshly for assisting an incompetent
to appear incompetent. It reflects the same political sensibility that
had the razor-sharp mind of Mrs. Clinton focused on baking cookies.
Kerry's wife, an outspoken woman of foreign birth, has only just been
asked to make herself a little scarce. She doesn't go down well with
the bowling-bag-and-Barbara-Bush set.
Before the debate,
Kerry pretty much had followed Gore's script for campaign as light farce.
On a few occasions, Kerry indulged an inexplicable taste for the Keystone
Cops, making floundering, bizarrely-twisted statements about the war
in Iraq. You almost expected to see his eyes crossed while his jaw worked
at the words. His audience, not surprisingly, failed to see a Keystone
Cop as someone to rescue them from a moron, and the polls marked Kerry
down as someone the Political Angel of Death was not going to bypass
in November. As for turning instead to a thoughtful, honest man like
Ralph Nader, that simply is not on in an America that only buys brands
with billion-dollar advertising budgets.
So, Kerry had little
to lose in the debate. Still, he offered nothing heroic, nothing startling,
only just managing a few pointed comments most of the world takes as
common sense, but in politically-asthmatic America even that little
wheeze is significant. Judging by Bush's reaction, which (broadcast
on split-screen despite a previous understanding not to do so) resembled
the movements of one of those old monkey-on-a-stick toys, even these
few comments were deeply irritating. It may be that the broadcast of
Bush's reactions was more telling than anything Kerry managed to say.
Get ready for years of howling cries about a stab in the back from those
who await the coming of a new Dr. Goebbels to save them from the sick
fantasy of a liberal American press.
The ridiculous circumstance
in America that tends to make an incompetent like Bush seem above scrutiny
and criticism starts with the very nature of a Constitution making the
President both head of state and head of government. Thus, when you
criticize a President for doing something stupid, you are seen to be
criticizing the symbol of the country itself, and not merely another
politician, which is of course what Presidents are, first and foremost.
In the case of war - even a totally illegal, bungled, and pointless
war like the one in Iraq - you may be regarded as giving aid and comfort
to some undefined enemy or as not supporting the "boyz in hawm's
way," perhaps the most unforgivable transgression an American politician
can commit.
Less-instant polls
at this writing indicate the public-opinion impact of Bush's broadcast
reactions may be substantial. If so, it is remarkable that it took Americans
four years to see what a pathetic lump their President is, but it is
equally remarkable that Kerry, who has said little of anything beyond
the obvious, will benefit.