The
Bad or The Terrible?
By George Monbiot
17 August , 2004
The Guardian
This
is the question which people ask themselves before almost every presidential
election: why, when the United States is teeming with brilliant and
inspiring people, are its voters so often faced with a choice between
two deeply unimpressive men?
I would have thought
the answer was pretty obvious: because deeply unimpressive men continue
to be elected.
This year, the American
people have been instructed to elect one again. Almost every powerful
progressive voice has told them not to vote for the progressive candidate,
but to vote instead for The Man Who Isn't There.
Ralph Nader may
stand for everything the Guardian, the Nation magazine, even Noam Chomsky,
claim to support, but all these voices - indeed just about everyone
on the left - have been urging the voters in swing states to choose
John Kerry.
Their argument,
of course, is that Kerry is the only candidate who can knock George
Bush off his perch. He might be about as inspiring as a parking lot
on a wet Sunday in Detroit, but his vacuity is better than the president's
aggressive certainties.
The contest is so
close that if even a few thousand people vote for Nader rather than
Kerry in the swing states, it could win the election for Bush. This
is why Republicans have been giving money to Nader.
So Americans should
vote for the Democrats in 2004, and worry about the wider failings of
the US political system when the current president is safely out of
the way.
And their argument
has merit. Bush has already launched two unnecessary wars, threatened
40 or 50 nations with armed aggression, ripped up international treaties
and domestic regulations, granted corporations a licence to cook the
planet, waged a global war against civil liberties and sought to bury
that old-fashioned notion that the state should tax the rich and help
the poor. The world would certainly be a safer and a better place without
him.
As a result, a Guardian leader told us last week, these are "exceptional
circumstances Mr Kerry's flaws and limitations are evident; but they
are put in the shade by the neo-conservative agenda and catastrophic
war-making of Mr Bush".
In an open letter
to Ralph Nader in January, the Nation magazine claimed: "This is
the wrong year for you to run: 2004 is not 2000. George W Bush has led
us into an illegal pre-emptive war, and his defeat is critical."
The problem with
this argument is that both publications said the same thing about the
2000 elections. The Nation's columnist Eric Alterman blames Al Gore's
defeat on Nader's "megalomania". Three days before the vote,
the Guardian argued that "... the marginalised Mr Nader cannot
win ... Exciting [Al Gore] ain't. A visionary he is not. But he is the
safe, wise choice."
And similar warnings
have been issued during almost every presidential election in modern
times. Under the US electoral system, which is constructed around patronage,
corruption and fear of the media, there will always be exceptional circumstances,
because it will always throw up dreadful candidates.
Only when the Americans
choose a man or woman who is prepared to turn the system upside down
and reintroduce democracy to the greatest democracy on earth will these
exceptional circumstances come to an end. In choosing the bad rather
than the terrible in 2004, in other words, Americans will be voting
for a similar choice in 2008. Whereupon they will again be told that
they'd better vote for the bad, in case the terrible gets in.
Any president who
seeks to change this system requires tremendous political courage. He
needs to take on the corporations which have bought the elections, and
challenge the newspapers and television stations which set the limits
of political debate. Kerry, who demonstrated plenty of courage in Vietnam,
has shown none whatsoever on the presidential stump.
Last week, when
the Republicans were questioning his commitment to defence, he announced
that "even knowing what we now know" he would have voted to
give President Bush the authority to attack Iraq.
Ten days ago his
national security adviser James Rubin told the Washington Post that
if Kerry was president he would "in all probability" have
launched a military attack against Iraq by now. Kerry's ability to raise
almost as much money as the Republicans is seen as a triumph for American
democracy; but his corporate backers are funding him not because they
believe in democracy, but because they believe that he will do what
they want. And they are unlikely to be wrong. When Kerry gets his orders,
he reports for duty.
The idea that this
frightened, flinching man would oversee the necessary democratic revolution
is preposterous.
He has made the
system work for him by working for the system. He knows that as soon
as he turns against it, it will destroy him. What else does he have
to fall back on? Charisma? Popular enthusiasm?
He's no Hugo Chávez.
A vote for Kerry is not just a vote against George Bush. It is a vote
for the survival of the system which made Bush happen.
I'm not an unhesitating
fan of Ralph Nader's - I believe that some of his positions on trade,
for example, are wrong - but no one could deny that he possesses courage.
His decision to
stand in November, when even his former supporters are telling him not
to, is as brave as it is foolhardy. He has spent his working life fighting
the corporations and being attacked in the media.
This month he did
something no other US politician has dared to do, and took on the Anti-Defamation
League, the organisation which smears opponents of Israeli policy as
anti-semites.
He won't be elected
in November, of course, but that's not the point. The point is that
if you want to change a system, you have to start now, rather than in
some endlessly deferred future. And the better Nader does, the faster
the campaign for change will grow.
The Nation claims
that Nader would have "a far more productive impact" as "a
public citizen fighting for open debates and rallying voters to support
progressive Democrats".
But what possible
incentive would the Democrats have to listen to him? He has influence
over these cowering creatures only while they are afraid that he might
take their votes.
None of this is
to suggest that there is no difference between Kerry and Bush. Where
Bush is active, Kerry is passive.
He wants to maintain
massive levels of defence spending, but, despite his efforts to assure
the media that he is as mad as Bush, he would probably be more reluctant
to attack other nations.
He wants to cut
taxes, but he is less willing to wage war on health and education. He
wants to hold down the price of oil, but doesn't want to help the corporations
open up the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.
The question is
whether this difference is sufficient to justify the abandonment of
the only current electoral attempt to democratise the US political system.
I don't believe
it is. Progressives on both sides of the Atlantic are asking American
voters to sacrifice liberty for security, and democracy for expediency.
The voters should ignore them.
www.monbiot.com