COVER -> DAY ONE
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Reluctantly veering from our fevered enjoyment of the last days of Richard Nixon's Presidency, a knot of us in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard speculated on what Vice President Ford might do as President. We concluded, with a degree of perspicacity more at home in a high school than that exalted place, that Ford would be purely reactive, not having anything that a School of government might describe as a policy.
Looking back now on that humid June afternoon in 1974, I wonder which was the last Republican President to have a policy other than that of having no policy but merely reducing taxes, preferring big business to 'big government'. As it turned out after our discussion, what dictated taxation and borrowing was not political ideology but the economic cycle with Reagan as the big borrower and Clinton as the accumulator of surpluses.
The issue before the American people in November - setting aside the niceties of the balance of power between the President and the Congress - is whether it wants its projected Government surpluses to be spent on policies or given to the rich in tax cuts.
Vice President Gore's acceptance speech was as full of policies as George W. Bush's was empty. Gore had pages of detail and Bush the slogan of "Compassionate Conservatism," which led some over enthusiastic Democratic partisans into the belief that their party is regaining its radical edge.
Examined more closely, most of Gore's proposals would benefit the honest, almost mythical, "working poor" but would do nothing for the really poor who, after all, do not register to vote so do not count electorally.
Some time ago I wondered aloud whether America might not be better off with a die-hard plutocrat like Bush than a cowardly crusader like Gore but there were two elements in Gore's speech which convinced me otherwise and that the best prospect for America is a Democratic President. Putting aside my own very clear preference, there were two aspects of Gore's speech which stood out.
The first was his promise to use some of the surpluses of the next decade to sort out the benefits system. If you cannot re-balance the Government's spending totals in favour of fairness during a boom when can you do it? Usually the Democrats spend the country into deficit and the Republicans haul state finances out of the red into the black when the cycle repeats itself but, as I said earlier, it was Reagan that reigned in the deficit years and Clinton who has reigned over the climb towards surplus so the Democrats should be allowed a chance to dispense some of the good fortune which, by benign non-interference, they have brought about.
The second was Gore's promise to try to reform electoral finance in spite of fierce opposition from the Republicans. The combination of unlimited expenditure, too frequent elections and the tendency of the majority in Congress to try to bring to book Presidents of the opposite Party has brought American governance close to catastrophe. This may be what the Republican Party wants but it is surely not what Republican citizens want when they think about it. The big businesses that support the Republicans to minimise the role of Government want more freedom and less regulation --- which will damage the interests of consumers --- and as the majority of Republican voters are consumers rather than large scale producers they need a balance within the Republican Party which will be completely overturned if electoral finance is not reformed.
Still, it's perception that counts and no prudent person would prefer a wooden technocrat to a vacuous grin. Unless something quite fascinating happens between now and November I expect the Land of the Free to opt for the smile over the policies, take its tax cuts and worry later about the callousness of big business and the rising threat of civil disturbance.
How can a nation with 40% computer ownership - largely brought about through Gore's percipience about what we used to call the "Information Superhighway" - bring itself to believe that Bush is against the Washington establishment when he is the son of a President and how can it believe that he is in favour of the "little man" when he would not recognise such a creature if he fell over it after a gargantuan fund-raiser? What is it that makes a notoriously hard-headed, kind and moral people vote for a President who stands for greed as the greatest public virtue and, what is more, greed at its own expense?
I can understand Bush's backers wanted to burn 100 Dollar bills to warm his bottom in the cool of a Michigan Fall but I cannot imagine why that 'swing' State's marginal voters should vote for him; they might just as well individually burn a 100 Dollar bill as vote for him because the tax cuts will not pay for their domestic security systems and it certainly will not pay for their peace of mind or the reversal of the decline of the quality of life of their children.
Still, whatever the result, I will be more interested to see how many Marv dolls are finally sold. In spite of my kind words about the American people in general I am aware of an increasing cancer of selfishness, violence and cynicism which rots the body politic more surely than a bad law or even a bad President.
That a nation that calls itself civilised can purchase what it calls a toy which celebrates judicial murder makes me think twice and then abandon the idea of a weekend break in New York; better to go to Barcelona or Rome.
I accept that there may be some people who genuinely believe, against all the evidence, that capital punishment is a deterrent and who have squarely faced up to the prospect of innocent people being killed but still think this is a price worth paying. But there is something communally psychotic about a chain of collusion which leads from a designer of such a monstrosity, to a workforce making it, to a sales force selling it, to adults buying it for themselves and, God help us, for their children and, finally, to a political class that is so shallow or cowardly that it says nothing.
I would prefer Bush without Marv to Gore with him but, as Marv will be all the rage by the second Thursday in November, let us have the wooden, hard working, worthy Gore; for everyone's sake.
