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Angry Robots and Other Democratic Candidates
A few random notes on the Democratic primaries� The talking heads are all coming to a consensus that John Kerry will inevitably receive the Democratic nomination. I think this is a disastrous mistake. Winnowing candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire is retarded. I can�t emphasize this enough: Retarded! Unless you�ve been in a coma for the last quarter of a century, you�ve probably noticed that the cultural center of American society has moved to somewhere just east of Amarillo. California may not like it, but in truth, they�re just as trashy as the rest of mainstream America�they just shop at Target rather than at Walmart. We�re a NASCAR nation now, and states like Iowa and New Hampshire are the genteel, rural exceptions to the coarse, consumeristic and suburban rule. I can�t imagine two worse states in which to narrow the field of candidates. So Kerry has been very successful in Iowa and New Hampshire, two of the few remaining places where gray, grave, cool-tempered old white guys still have appeal. I think his icy demeanor will be disastrous for his candidacy in the southern states. I�m sure some smarmy consultant-types are already coaching him on how to seem more like a live human being, but if the Gore/Lieberman campaign taught us anything, it taught us exactly what a risky strategy that can be. I met Al Gore during the first Clinton/Gore campaign. He was a genial, kind of nerdy, very upstanding sort of fellow. One got the impression that he had some really interesting ideas, and a whole lot of integrity. He was the perfect vice-presidential candidate. He played the straight man to Clinton�s enthrallingly vaudevillian persona. But of course, Americans like their politicians charismatic. Ethics and ideas are optional. Which is why Gore was such a terrible nominee for the 2000 election. He had ethics and ideas, but no charisma. At all. And so they brought in the consultants, and lo and behold, he still had no charisma. The campaign consultants had apparently told him that if he talked loud enough, he would produce a reasonable enough facsimile of charisma to dupe those morons out there on the other side of the TV screen. And so we got Al Gore, the loud and angry robot. It was horrible. I had to change stations whenever I heard him on TV or radio�it was just too bizarre. Still, he was a relatively savory electoral entr�e when compared with the Salisbury Steak Hungry Man frozen dinner offered up by the GOP in the person of George W. Bush. He was, that is, until the Democratic machine served up our main dish of Angry Robot with a heaping side of Whiny Old Jew. What were they thinking? Now, before I get a bunch of spastic emails about how I�m an anti-Semite, let me say that what I am talking about here is public perception. I�m sure that Joe Lieberman is a very fine man. I find many of his political positions repugnant, but I personally care not a lick about the religion or ethnicity of a candidate. Nevertheless, I wonder if anyone at the Democratic Party ever had a clue how thoroughly unappealing a political dish these two would make for the Southern palate. Gore looked like a loudmouthed, ill-mannered technocrat, and Lieberman came across as a withered, scheming rabbi. These are not the archetypes of the Southern political imagination. We like our politicians to act like astronauts and cowboys. That this preference is stupid goes without saying, but it is nevertheless the reality of contemporary American politics. And so Gore won the election�but not by enough to keep Katherine Harris and the Supreme Court from appointing G.W. to the Presidency. I fear that Kerry is getting some of the same campaign-consultant-type advice. He�s turning into an angry robot, and that bodes ill for a Democratic victory in 2004. Also, his wife is totally scary. She�s like a drunk Belgian dominatrix. The media will have a field day with her. And when the talking heads start pushing on their personalities, these two won�t have the extroversion to push back. Speaking of Lieberman, I wish he would just go the fuck away. I heard him last night spouting some nonsense about how he�s going to stay in the race because he feels like he�s in a three-way tie for third place. Good lord. Discretion is the better part of valor�just quit, already. In other news, it looks like the Dean candidacy has entered the beginning of its end this morning with the dismissal of Joe Trippi as Campaign Manager. Although Dean is my personal favorite, I won�t speculate on how realistic a chance he ever had of getting the nomination. Whatever chance he did have was rooted in Trippi�s fresh and innovative strategies. Bringing in some old hack from the Angry Robot/Old Jew 2000 campaign seems a bit suicidal. Of course, I tend to think that the media have already killed the Dean candidacy with their incessant harping about how he�s the �angry candidate�. The way they talk, you�d think he was some sort of frothing psychotic. And since they know, in their smug half-conscious way, that if they repeat something enough, people will start to believe it, I�m sure they�ll all be clucking away in self-affirmation when he withdraws. John Edwards is actually interesting, and I suspect that he will be the President of the United States one day. I doubt it will be in 2004, though. The GOP will nail him on �experience,� and they�ll be right. He doesn�t have much experience. Since 9/11, Bush has worked hard to position himself as a seasoned pragmatist who�s been tested in the fires of war. That�s a load of crap, of course, but he�s been relatively successful at remaking himself in this mold. �Experience� will matter in 2004, which is why I had such high hopes for Dean. If history is any measure, governors make better candidates than congresspersons, and Dean�s accomplishments in Vermont are rather impressive. I hope that the party doesn�t make a poor choice. It matters a great deal who gets elected in November. For the past four years, the Bush crew has been busy tossing wrenches into the machinery of the Federal Government. They are setting the government up for failure, and will spend the next four years watching the structures of the government collapse while they cluck their tongues and remind us that they always told us that big government doesn�t work. We face mounting deficits and declining revenues, and are already involved in a military occupation that we may not be able to gracefully withdraw from no matter who is elected. The seeds of GATT and NAFTA are finally beginning to bear their disastrous fruits as the last of the U.S. manufacturing sector collapses and skilled �information economy� jobs start to decamp for India and China. Whether or not America will be able to keep any jobs and still retain things like employer-sponsored medical insurance and minimum wage laws is an open question. I have always thought that the American public is overly enchanted with social issues like abortion and gay rights. We ignore economic issues, and do so to our great peril. Economic issues are harder to understand. They require less emotion and more knowledge. In short, they run absolutely against the grain of contemporary American life. And yet economic questions are the only real questions about rational self-interest and quality of life. Dean isn�t afraid to talk economics. Edwards� �Two Americas� speech impresses me immensely. Lieberman and some of the others, in the mean time, take an economic position that amounts to �everything is okay, and could maybe be slightly better.� And that�s just not true.
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