Presidential aspirants lack discourse of truth
The world and country need serious attention. But if you listened to last week’s Democratic and Republican presidential aspirants you might despair. Candidates avoided global warming, for example. Indeed, they eschewed discourse that might describe current reality. Several U.S. systems have become gradually dysfunctional: health and education structures, for examples, don’t meet public needs. And politicians caught in the “fundraise or die” system have failed to address these humongous lapses. Instead of speaking to the anxieties of the public, nineteen people — ten Reps and nine Dems — on national television pleaded: “Vote for Me Because I Can Govern Better.
The contenders acted as if their careers, not the future of the planet, demanded full attention. The live TV show aired one day after the release of a report about global warming accelerating three times more quickly than envisioned in previous worst case scenarios. “This year's massive report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)” includes the following: “Emissions of carbon dioxide have been rising at thrice the rate in the 1990s. The Arctic ice cap is melting three times as fast — and the seas are rising twice as rapidly — as had been predicted.”
The Climate Change Panel also predicted vastly lowered crop harvests, the drying up of water supplies and significant species loss. Even these ominous calculations, the report said, were “likely to be understating the threat facing the world.” (Geoffrey Lean, The Independent June 3, 2007)
In the midst of such news — upstaged by Paris Hilton entering, prematurely leaving and then returning to jail — presidential hopefuls performed a collective show: “The Comi-Tragedy of Political Dysfunction.”
Two exceptions stood out, former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel and Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich. The media has added a silent end to their names: “buttheycantwin.” Gravel with Oregon’s Wayne Morse stood alone in challenging the Vietnam War in the 1960s.
The Democrats dared not present a discourse about the real world. Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards criticized Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for not revealing their voting intentions until they appeared on the floor of the Senate and voted — against the war funding.
Edwards “applaud[ed] them for that.” But “there is a difference between making clear, speaking to your followers, speaking to the American people about what you believe needs to be done.”
Edwards “opposed this war from the start. So you're about four-and-a-half years late on leadership on this issue.” Got ya!
Then Edwards hinted he understood how candidates had to avoid the core issue of imperialism: “It is not easy to vote for cutting off funding, because the fact is there are troops on the ground.” So, one would ask, why not get them off the ground immediately?
“The fact of the matter is,” Edwards continued, “all of us exercised our best judgment, just as we exercised our best judgment to authorize or not authorize this war.” Democrats and Republicans authorized — because Iraq had oil and gave the United States a strategic base to secure the region’s oil. None of them mentioned that when they discussed the difficulties of leaving Iraq. Even Kucinich and Gravel didn’t say the obvious: “The U.S. intervention has caused a series of tragedies since World War II: the CIA knocking off or trying to destabilize governments in Iran, Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, intervening in other third world nations — like Cuba at the Bay of Pigs and subsequently the Dominican Republic — while the military spread death and destruction in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq.
I waited for Hillary and Barack to feel the faith they claim to have found and shout: “Let’s remove the troops from Iraq now, bring them home next month. It’s time to attend to the republic and take the lead in rebuilding the UN, the only institution capable of dealing with world issues.” They did not say it; nor, I suspect did it occur to them. Instead, they bickered over fine points as if to distinguish one from the other on opposition to the Iraq War.
The Republicans, rhetorically more idiotic than the Democrats, except for Ron Paul, the honest Libertarian Congressman from Houston, pontificated on compelling issues: against abortion and gay marriage, for God-given rights to own guns, and pray in school.
Three candidates — Mike Huckabee, Sam Brownback and Tom Tancredo — denied evolution. These bad actors — Fred Thompson wasn’t even present — hoped to convince millions of Americans that dinosaurs and people walked the earth together. President Bush claims “the jury is still out on evolution.” As Louis Black remarked, when Bush watches “The Flintstones” he thinks he’s seeing a documentary. Rudy Giuliani has tried to apologize to hard core anti-evolutionists and assure them that his once progressive views on abortion, gay rights and gun ownership have evolved.
Ex Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney dissembled on Iraq, justifying Bush’s invasion on the grounds that Saddam Hussein had refused to readmit the UN Weapons Inspectors. Saddam invited the inspectors to return in September 2002, six months before Bush made war. Giuliani asked rhetorically how one could make a war against terrorism with Saddam Hussein. Answer: easily, since Saddam had thoroughly rejected Al Qaeda. Ah, memory!
Democrats recognized the health system crisis, not just because some 45 million citizens — and some 12 million “illegals” — have no access to viable medical care. The private health bureaucracy has confounded the public and made its majority deeply anxious and insecure. All who have experienced health crises can imagine some unseen figure sitting at a desk, possibly with a nursing degree, deciding on who should or should not get coverage for an operation! A medical care system inspired exclusively by profit, not by any concern for patients’ health!
Yet, Hillary remembered how in 1993 the insurance and drug companies beat her and Bill bloody when their health care bill challenged a tiny piece of their turf. Harry and Louise emerged as folksy TV characters in interminably repeating ads that mocked any public role in health care and made dire predictions about how the U.S. public would suffer governmental interference in their individual sickness and pain. It worked! Hillary now takes large campaign contributions from drug companies.
Hundreds of millions spent on advertising — and the millions given to politicians’ campaign funds — helped the insurance and drug lobby defeat the Clinton plan to extend coverage and, of course, led to billions in profits for the companies. So, she and the fast-learning Obama stayed away from that dangerous zone. Even Edwards, with perhaps the most solid plan of the viable candidates, still included insurance companies as key instruments. Indeed, people would buy their coverage from them. With the exception of Kucinich others fear of the insurance lobby was palpable.
The candidates thus shied away from the obvious: extend and expand Medicare for everyone. Let insurance companies die! They’ve already made billions from pain and suffering.
The drug and health lobbies will continue to distort the facts in their attempt to convince the public that only “private care” — as if these giant conglomerates were “private” — can provide proper "health coverage." Facts say the U.S. health care system costs everyone far more than anywhere else for less care for the poor and middle classes. And it makes tens of millions of people anxious: they will lose coverage if they lose their jobs; the HMOs will not cover them for expensive operations; patients requiring long-term care will not get covered, etc…
Similarly, no viable candidates have offered antidotes to the steadily declining educational system. As No Child Left Behind became a cruel joke on those left behind and even some who were pushed ahead, reading and math standards failed to improve significantly. Worse, standardized tests don’t reflect critical thinking or insure that high school students can write English. As professors at any state university can testify an alarming percentage of graduating students cannot compose a coherent essay. Math and science skills similarly lag. Some barely literate graduates will become teachers and earn half or less of what a prison guard makes in California.
The Republicans do not address these issues. None in either Party talked about the United States as an empire. None referred to Eisenhower’s warning, that if not stopped the military-industrial and military-scientific complexes would determine the course of future budgets. He was right. They have. Almost every congressional district contains a military installation or a factory linked to “defense.” These and nearly 800 other bases that supposedly “protect” the nation’s security form the material bases of empire.
When will a politician — exempt Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan — dare say: “We are an empire” an outmoded way of existing in the world?” Who will dare say that “our way of life” — production and consumption modes — antagonizes the future of life. Nature metaphorically screams that it finds greed and selfishness no longer acceptable; its logic dictates cooperation and sharing. How to even think about curtailing the production of desire — advertising in all its forms?
Which candidate will risk his career — ambition — and tell the truth? Are we waiting for Godot — Gore?
Saul Landau’s new book is A BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD.
