On Thursday, The Editors went into a little too much detail on what it takes to be President of the United States. It’s written in the classic The Editors style, but I think it also teaches a little lesson about letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Sometimes, when a person wants to get into another person’s pants, that person can act, well, weird. Not like themselves, sorta. Sometimes they can be flat-out dishonest, talking about all kinds of cars they don’t own and jobs they don’t have and romantic plans for the future they have no intention of following through on; but even people who don’t go that far will often seem be acting very self-consciously, a little too agreeable, maybe, laughing a little too hard, and generally behaving in a way that seems pretty phony. And it’s a terrible thing to act like a phony, and the fact that it’s a really effective strategy for getting in other people’s pants doesn’t make it all right. So, shame.
What you’ve got to appreciate – and I know you do, but let me just spell it out – is that Obama, Hillary, and Edwards are all trying to get into 200 million pants by next November. Making comforting noises to AIPAC may be a poor strategy for getting into Max Sawicky’s pants (I’ve had no success with it), but it may work differently on other pants, and that may be of more actual importance, in the long run, than the implications some may draw from the words. Similarly, Chris Bowers probably doesn’t care a whit about getting into the pants of Edith Whitehead of Frostproof, FL, age 97, at any point over the next 18 months. Hillary and Barack (and, yes, stout John Edwards, too!), however, care desperately about getting at the wrinkled privates of addled, licorice-smelling old ladies in Florida who go to church twelve times a day – they’re absolutely gagging for it, those horndogs! – and are probably willing to give less than the maximally correct answer to wedge issue questions if they think it will move the zipper in those powder blue rayon slacks down by even a fraction of a tooth. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
I’m not saying this is a pleasant thing to watch – trying to bed the tens of millions of retirees and right-wingers and paranoids and religious fanatics and all the rest of the Fellini film extras that make up the gorgeous tableaux that is The American Voting Public can’t be – but it’s the exact thing one needs to do if one one wishes to win elections, and the history books are filled with decent, forthright people who scorned this advice and got their asses kicked by some slick little Clintonoid. (The books are even fuller of ambitious jackoffs who followed this advice to the letter and lost anyway – the exceptions that prove the rule.) And I even understand that it may even feel like a betrayal, seeing that dashing candidate with whom you shared that magical night of democratic passion, who you thought was your one true political soulmate, suddenly putting these crude moves on everyone in sight. And scowling octogenarian virgin Ralph Nader understands this, too, and will welcome thee to his nunnery with open (but chaste) arms, and if you’d prefer to spend date night like that, well, it’s your cherry. But do try to avoid singing from the same “Democrats are really just as bad as/worse than Republicans” hymnal this time. Because, if you have noticed nothing else about the past six years, you must at least have noticed that this isn’t so. You don’t have to put out to be cool, but there’s just no excuse for cockblocking.
I think this simultaneously captures both the cringeworthiness of watching an American presidential campaign, and the foolishness of letting your cynicism make you turn away from the sorry spectacle and race into the arms of fantasy and otherworldliness. Has there, in any of our lifetimes, ever been a nominee for President that didn’t make you want to puke? Yes? Well, then you were naive or didn’t pay attention. It’s not pretty…wanting to be President in a country like this one. Don’t fall in love. But don’t be stupid either. Our choices may suck, but they do matter…profoundly.
Todd Gitlin warned us all on October 28, 2000, not to get in bed with Ralph Nader. He got his states wrong, but he got the rest it of it profoundly right.
The arguments for Nader’s campaign are dubious, a vote for him reckless and the consequences of building him up severe and possibly irreversible. As I write, Nader strength in Oregon and Minnesota looks like enough to move those states into the Bush column; Nader could also matter in Wisconsin, Michigan, Washington, even California. The outcome might well be, with a few other states, catastrophic — and not only for the next four years. Just as much of the ground lost to Reagan in the 1980s has never been regained — repeat, never: not in 20 years, not on labor policy, not on the environment, not on income and wealth inequality, not on support for military goons in the poor countries — the ground to be lost by a Republican victory is likely to stay lost. As for the arguments about what’s to be gained by a big Nader turnout, they dissolve on inspection.
What kind of case is made for the Nader vote? We hear, first of all, the notion that Gore and Bush, or Democrats and Republicans, are essentially the same — two names for the same Republicrats. Yet how a thoughtful person can think the differences are negligible boggles the mind.
Indeed. And as we struggle to end the war in Iraq you hear these same arguments. The parties are no different. No. They are not different enough. But there is no more dangerous or destructive force on the planet right now than America’s Grand Old Party. If I didn’t believe that, right down in my soul, I wouldn’t do what I do.
But that’s no excuse for discussing ‘powder blue rayon slacks’.