[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Hearts of Gold

[Bill Totten]

by Lewis H Lapham

Harper's Magazine Notebook (January 2008)


For politicians not only represent us ... They are, as a group, the
hardest working professionals; they must continuously learn new masses
of facts, make judgments, give help, and continue to please. It is this
obligation, of course, that makes them look unprincipled. To please and
do another's will is prostitution, but it remains the nub of the
representative system. -- Jacques Barzun


Seventeen presidential candidates (nine Republican, eight Democrat) go
on sale in the January and February primary elections, and if it's fair
to measure their worth by the cost of their manufacture (a total of
roughly $420 million through the third quarter of 2007), never before in
its history has the country been so fortunate in its selection of
quality merchandise. Why then the murmur of dissatisfaction and
complaint, the suspicion that the hearts of gold can't be weighed simply
by the size of the money they raise? The media showroom salesmen rummage
through the season's political piece goods as if through an
unsatisfactory shipment of summer hats - this one the wrong color, that
one too wide across the forehead, these other ones lacking the moral
fiber of genuine Panama straw. The candidates on tour with the balloons
and the gospel choirs compare their rivals to defective Christmas toys -
Senator Hillary Clinton wobbles; Senator Barack Obama comes with no
directions in the box; Rudy Giuliani makes strange clanking noises.

The judgments fail to account for the job description, which is to be of
service, believe in God, and never forget that the customer, although
sometimes weird, is always right. The work is not as easy as it looks on
The Daily Show, and when reading the op-ed columnists disappointed by
the absence of Pericles among the items listed on the Iowa and New
Hampshire ballots, I remember the story told by Mort Janklow about his
interview with the senior management of the New York Democratic Party
during the early months of the Kennedy Administration.

Not yet settled in his career as a prominent literary agent, Mort in the
autumn of 1961 was drawn to the romantic lantern light flickering in the
gardens of Camelot. Perceiving politics as a noble calling, he thought
to run for a soon-to-become-vacant seat in the House of Representatives
reserved for a tribune of the people from Manhattan's Lower East Side.
Three of the party chieftains invited Mort to lunch at a French
restaurant on West Fifty-seventh Street. They weren't interested in his
views on taxes or civil rights, didn't care whether he'd read Uncle
Tom's Cabin and George Washington's Farewell Address. Mort's credentials
as a candidate were adequate to the purpose - presentable, articulate,
familiar with the issues, no prior criminal arrest - but before agreeing
to underwrite his campaign they set him a test of his aptitude for the
art of democratic politics.

He was asked to imagine that for six months he'd been selling himself on
street corners, that the campaign speech had gone stale in his mouth,
that he was sick of his own voice and tired of telling lies, that he no
longer could see the humor in the questions asked by newspaper reporters
looking for him to fall off a podium or forget the name of the president
of Mexico. The party has promised him that on Columbus Day he gets the
day off. He can stay in bed with his wife, talk to his children, maybe
watch a movie or go for a walk in Central Park. Columbus Day dawns, and
a volunteer telephones to say that a car will be out front in twenty
minutes. The schedule has Mort at the head of a parade marching through
Little Italy between 8:00 am and noon. He gets to wear a red- white-
and- blue sash and carry the cross of San Gennaro. It's raining.

Mort's examiners didn't doubt that he would march in the parade (for
Jack Kennedy and the New Frontier if not for Columbus and San Gennaro),
but would he want to march in the parade?

"No", said Mort, "not really".

"Then don't waste your time or ours, because that's all that it's about
- waving and smiling and a crowd of maybe fifty people, some of whom
speak English". The committee ordered cognac, offered Mort a cigar, and
drank a toast to the beginning, middle, and end of his political career.


Forty years ago, in the midst of the democratic uproar otherwise known
as the 1960s, it was still possible to think that political theory had
something to do with the practice of government, that the country's
elected representatives were somehow responsive to the voice of the
sovereign people. For proofs of the hypothesis one could look to the
lowering of America's racial barricades, to the hand-painted signs
protesting the Vietnam War in the streets of Boston and Chicago.
Political debate took the form of argument instead of being staged as
high school spelling bees; haircuts weren't yet rated as significant
campaign issues; the cost of running for Congress was equal to the cost
of buying the medallion for a New York taxi-cab. Democracy was still a
work in progress unsupported by the scaffolding of pious ritual that now
defends it against the threat of any further use. Al Gore made the point
last October to Bob Herbert of the New York Times, explaining why,
despite having won the popular vote for the presidency in 2000 (as well
as both an Academy Award and the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007), he chose
not to set forth on this year's road to the White House. "What politics
has become", he said, "requires a level of tolerance for triviality and
artifice and nonsense that I find I have in short supply".

Gore's acquaintance with politics is a good deal more extensive than
Janklow's, but the two men tell what has become a familiar story in the
citadels of the country's wealth and the conference centers of its
higher purpose. Among the financial and media chieftains in New York as
among their counterparts in Hollywood and Silicon Valley, the discussion
sooner or later works its way around to the poor quality of America's
public servants, whether Democrat or Republican, conservative or
liberal, incumbent senator or would-be congressman. I never doubt the
exquisiteness of anybody's taste in politicians, but when I sometimes
ask one or another of those present why they themselves don't do the
work, I'm told that politics is a profession that no longer attracts the
best people, that it's become increasingly difficult to hire decent help.

The explanations differ - the long hours and the low pay, the
intrusiveness and stupidity of the news media, fewer intelligent
prospects willing to make the shift from subject to object, recognition
of the fact that one stands a better chance of improving the lot of
one's fellow men by working through voluntary and non-governmental
organizations (for example, Bill Gates arranging aid to Africa, AI Gore
promoting the awareness of global climate change) than by striking
ornamental poses on the parade floats of a theme-park republic.

Assuming the answers embody a consensus among the country's A-list
citizens, then whether for reasons fair or foul, their departure from
the political arena suggests that they entrust their lives, liberties,
and pursuits of happiness to their financial planners instead of to
their elected representatives. From a legislature they expect the
services provided by a well-run resort hotel (no suicide bombers
exploding on the terrace or the lawn, a staff of hard-working
professionals processing new masses of facts), and in a president they
look to find a first-class concierge glad to be of help. Plato referred
to the arrangement as oligarchy, a form of government rooted in property
qualifications and therefore less confusing than democracy. He distilled
the concept into two sentences: "When wealth and the wealthy are valued
in the city, virtue and good men are less valued. What is valued is
practiced, what is not valued is not practiced."

If there is a more concise summing-up of our current political and
cultural circumstance, I haven't yet come across it on Fox News, which
is a shame because as a statement "fair and balanced", it accounts for
the fact that both Republican and Democratic parties second James
Madison's motion that the sovereign people are meant to be seen and not
heard. To read the angry commentaries posted on the Internet if not on
the style pages of the country's major newspapers is to know that a
majority of the American people wish to be quit of the war in Iraq,
object to their government's adopting the methodologies of a police
state, would divert much of the country's military expenditure to
allocations for schools, roads, medical insurance, debt relief, and the
environment. The petitioners being poor, their concerns are ignored.
Congress doesn't see fit to stop the killing in Iraq, postpones debate
on the questions of energy and health-care policy, confirms an attorney
general ambivalent in his statements about torture but clear in his
thought that the president on occasion can claim powers not granted by
the Constitution, searches diligently for ways and means to protect the
home-mortgage industry (that is, the makers, not the users, of junk and
subprime loans) and to reduce to fifteen percent of income the tax rate
charged to hedge-fund managers earning upwards of $50 million a year.

The uselessness of the American democracy as an instrument for
revolutionary change comes as no surprise to the half of the American
electorate that doesn't go to the November polls. To vote for what?
Presumably to keep up the appearance of a government of the people, by
the people, and for the people.

The media salesmen fill in the blanks between the theory and the
practice with increasingly elaborate production values, preserving the
eternal flame in the temples of virtual reality - hundreds of pages of
expert newspaper commentary extolling the virtues of democracy as a cure
for old age and fascism, thousands of hours of talk-show jokes
testifying to the strength and vigor of the First Amendment. For PBS Ken
Burns produces yet another hymn to the heroics of World War II; in the
New York Times, David Brooks cites opinion-poll statistics (from the
General Social Survey, the Harris Poll, and the Pew Research Center)
indicating that almost everybody in America is leading a wonderful life
- 86 percent of Americans content with their job, 76 percent satisfied
with their family income, 62 percent expecting their "personal
situation" to reach record highs. The correspondents weren't as upbeat
about public affairs (only 25 percent content with the state of the
nation, 68 percent believing the country to be on the wrong track), but
in private, which is where democracy really counts, they didn't feel
"personally miserable or downtrodden". Of course not, said Brooks, how
could they? "Their homes are bigger. They own more cars. They feel more
affluent ... they have built lifestyle niches for themselves where they
feel optimistic and fulfilled."

So do the hearts of gold aboard the campaign buses asking to be
appreciated for their property qualifications. How much money can they
attract? How wisely do they spend it on the displays of self? How
sure-footed are their moral values, how well do they get along with
Jesus? When confronting one another on the quiz shows presented along
the lines of reality television (Dennis Kucinich lost in the deserts of
New Mexico, Tom Tancredo up against Mike Huckabee in the amazing race
from Dartmouth to Des Moines, Hillary Clinton attacked by wild male
animals in Las Vegas), can they entertain the audience with "barbed"
rejoinders and "pointed" witticisms supporting the illusion that they're
engaged in outspoken, old-style, genuine political debate, that somehow
their words mean something, conceivably might set policy for the holder
of the winning lottery ticket in the November election?

Given the task at hand - which is to address the needs and purposes of
the figurative as opposed to a representative democracy - the season's
candidates deserve our gratitude and praise. They do the work as well as
or better than their counterparts in Russia or Turkmenistan; the
production costs (in addition to the $420 million raised for last year's
primary campaigns, at least $1 billion likely to be spent on this year's
presidential election) qualify for the rating of honorific waste,
regarded by Thorstein Veblen as the most prestigious form of conspicuous
consumption.

On the other hand, if we complain about the performance and object to
the expense, we might want to consider offshoring the labor. I read in
the papers, and I'm told by informed sources at the Council on Foreign
Relations, that the democratic idea (that is, the sovereignty of the
people as the guarantor of liberty) excites large numbers of college
students in Africa and Asia, and if we can outsource the sewing of our
sneakers and blue jeans, also our back-office accounting and the
assembly of our computers and television screens, why not the making of
our politics? Several companies resident in India and available through
the Internet now provide administrative services (buying theater
tickets, making travel arrangements and hair appointments) for
optimistic and self-fulfilled Americans (the ones with more cars and
bigger houses); a number of agencies offer "womb-rentals" to less
self-fulfilled American women who reduce their hospital costs by sending
in vitro embryos to be carried by surrogate Indian mothers through the
disfiguration of pregnancy and the labor of birth.

Conceive of the future as something bought instead of made (of the
American democracy as finished piece goods rather than a work in
progress), and if we're dissatisfied with our domestic political
product, surely somewhere in the global market we can find better
quality at a cheaper price.
_____

Lewis H Lapham is the National Correspondent for Harper's Magazine and
the editor of Lapham's Quarterly.

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