Jim Hightower
The
quadrennial presidential horserace is on, and the media establishment has
unleashed its multimillion-dollar army of pundits, pollsters, powdered anchors,
analysts, chart makers, gossips, make-up artists, set designers and others to
drum up the drama, telling us peasants over and over again how exciting, how
momentous, how democratic it all is.
This
is choice? Which one of them is going to stand up for your family against the
whims of the polluters, the downsizers, the tax loopholers, the corporate
welfare bums, the HMOs, the media conglomerates, and all the rest of the
establishment, which is flanked by an elite corps of $500-an-hour Gucci-clad
lobbyists and armed with enough campaign cash to build an impenetrable wall
around Washington?
Even
before anyone casts a ballot, IT’S ALREADY OVER! No matter which of the
Republicrat Egos finally ends up in the big chair in the Oval Office, the
policies of our government will not change on the kitchen-table issues that most
affect Americans. Already decided is the crucial question of who government will
serve, assuring a continuation of the status quo on middle-class income loss,
global trade scams, weak-kneed environmental gradualism, mega-mergers, biotech
insanity, campaign finance corruption, etcetera.
This
is because the real election was held last year in various corporate suites and
in the Martha Stewart-designed living rooms of the rich, where 0.05 percent of
"the people" voted. These are the CEOs, lobbyists, and investors who
bankrolled BushGoreBradleyMcCain and any other wannabe with even a faint chance
of winning the Republican or Democratic primaries. These privileged few vetted
the prospective candidates, making certain that each of them can be trusted to
govern in the corporate interest. Candidates that don’t pass muster don’t get
money. Period. The result is that in 1999, the moneyed interests chose our
choices for 2000. For example, Goldman Sachs and its executives have put
thousands and thousands of dollars into Al Gore’s campaign. And into George
Bush’s. And into John McCain’s. And into Bill Bradley’s. No matter who wins,
Goldman Sachs has a friend in the White House-and probably will get at least one
of its own executives appointed to a key administrative position, from which to
keep an eye on the company’s political investment.
But
Goldman Sachs and the other plutocrats also win because their donations assure
that none of the contenders will be making trouble in the campaign by taking any
nonconformist, nonauthorized positions that could spark a bothersome debate
about the plutocracy itself, inflaming the peasantry’s simmering economic and
political resentments. By purchasing candidates wholesale, they guarantee a
campaign that is much ado about nothing, with the debate restricted to social
issues like abortion, hokey issues like who can downsize government the most
(while hypocritically lavishing ever more wasteful spending on the Pentagon, the
antidrug war, and corporate welfare), local issues like zoning and traffic jams,
and nonissues like which candidates can be the most pious about never ever even
thinking about doing cigar tricks with White House interns.
What
a shame that our nation’s politics is so corrupted and worthless these days,
that our two-party leadership is such an embarrassment, for America really could
have used an honest pulse-taking in 2000. All hoopla aside, the turning of a
century, much less a millennium, is a significant marker, an attention-focusing
opportunity to have a thorough public conversation-maybe even a bit of national
contemplation-about our people’s progress and our national direction. If our
political system was not totally twisted, this election could have been a time
when the parties, the candidates, and the media all came out to us plebeians,
actually listening to the reality of regular people’s situations, debating a
plethora of unconventional (i.e., noncorporate) ideas, and generally conducting
a kind of two-year, coast-to-coast political Chatauqua-not quite a plebiscite,
but at least a "whaddaya think" consultation on charting America’s
twenty-first century course. Instead, 2000 will be like ’96, ’92-another
money-soaked, corporate-driven, issue-avoiding, made-for-television snoozer,
completely unconnected to real life.
Politics
should matter. I know that’s a radical thought, perhaps hopelessly idealistic in
this age of carefully calculated political centrism, when the money backers
demand candidates who are inoffensive (especially inoffensive to money
interests), and when the army of consultants that directs every campaign insists
that the way to win is not to lose. So both parties are scuttling cautiously
along the pollster-tested center line like a couple of sand crabs, going
sideways for fear of being perceived as either moving forward or backward.
There
actually was a time when a Democratic presidential nominee was a species
discernibly different from the Republican, when the Democrat was not skittish
about kicking corporate ass, and when the Democratic Party didn’t need a
consulting firm to figure out who it was for . . . and who it was against. This
is a party with a heroic history of siding unequivocally with the common people
against the bastards, a party that once even voted by a four-to-one margin as
its national convention to disown any political candidate within its own ranks
"who is the representative of or under obligation to J. Pierpont Morgan . .
. or any other member of the privilege-hunting and favor-seeking class."
Today,
the Democratic Party itself, as well as its top candidates, boast of being under
obligation to Morgan-or, more specifically, to J.P. Morgan Inc. and Morgan
Stanley, the two Wall Street firms spawned by old J. Pierpont. Democrats go
shamelessly and often into these houses of greed, obsequiously seeking campaign
funds in a straight-up exchange for their populist principles and constituency.
So far, Al Gore has bagged $17,000 just from the two Morgan firms, and the
Democratic Party is obligated to the tune of $75,000.
Now
comes Election 2000, a space odyssey so far out that even Stanley Kubrick would
have a hard time imagining it. Fueled by an unprecedented level of corrupting
cash, the political system has disconnected itself from the body politic. The
result is not so much an election process as it is a burlesque. Last year, as
part of the build up for his presidential run, Bush’s handlers arranged a speech
from a stage festooned with flags and ceremonial banners. In a pitch to
politically significant Latino voters, one of the banners proclaimed "Juntos
Podemos"-Together We Can. But the Houston Chronicle reported it as Juntos
Pedemos-We Fart Together. For many Americans, that’s a fair summation of what
today’s political system delivers.
"I
won’t vote," Manuel Gonzalez told the New York Times. A superintendent in
the Bronx, Manuel speaks for the multitudes when he says, "Doesn’t count
anyway-the politicians do what they like. It’s not a people’s country. It’s a
money country." Tragically for America, Manuel is right. He can vote for
BushGoreBradleyMcCain and nothing in his life will change.
What
kind of "election" is it that does not address, much less treat, the
needs and aspirations of the millions and millions of Manuels who, after all,
are America? What kind of democracy is it that can be perfectly satisfied, even
glad, that Manuel won’t vote? Indeed, despite there being an open presidential
seat, despite the control of Congress being up for grabs, despite this being the
first election of the third millennium-more Americans watched the Super Bowl
than will show up for November’s national balloting. We’re staring at an
electoral train wreck in the making, with the likelihood that fewer than half of
the country’s voters will be motivated to bother, and with the live possibility
that this year will produce a lower national turnout than the scintillating
Clinton-Dole matchup of ’96 (third lowest in history).
The
noted political theorist, Dan Quayle, has commented on the phenomenon of the
disappearing voter: "A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people
going to the polls". Thank you, Professor Quayle. Unfortunately, he’s not
that much more whacked out than the rest of the establishment, which continues
to stiff America’s workaday majority economically and politically, yet blithely
thinks there will be no price to pay. But our country’s history is one of
rebellion, often explosive, by people who are shut out of the system. If today’s
shut-out majority is not to turn ugly, a new politics has to be forged that
opens a broad new channel so these good people have a real say in the way things
are being run and being shaped for the future. Ordinary folks have to matter
again.