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One nice thing about writing about America’s presidential race is that the writer runs no risk of libelling the candidates; he can say that Mrs. Clinton is a scalawag or that Mr. Giuliani is a scoundrel. No jury in the world – given a fair hearing – would ever find him guilty. No National Secrets Act prevents him from revealing that Mr. Huckabee is a moron. Nor will he be brought up on libel charges when he says that Mr. Obama’s entire campaign premise is nothing but a bold-faced fib.
On the Democratic side, Madame Clinton, like Kristina Kirschner in Argentina, and Eva Peron before her, aims to replace her husband as head of state – after giving the nation eight years to recover. She is probably the least amusing of the candidates, in that she has been a mote in the public eye for so long we assume we are stuck with her forever.
Her main opponent, Barack Obama, is a fresh face. So far, his clowning achievement is that he has managed to make himself the campaign’s greatest mountebank. This month’s issue of the New Statesman has a photo of the man in his office. On the wall behind him are photos of the men who “inspired him” – Martin Luther King, John Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi. More honest would be a photo of Tony Rezko, one of his key Chicago supporters, who is now awaiting trial for extortion, money laundering and fraud. But honesty is not a part of this election; the voters won’t stand for it.
We had never heard Barack Obama’s name at all until we discovered that he was running for president. Obama likes to pretend that he is somehow heir to the civil rights movement, and that his ascension to the White House is a part of the inevitable destiny of black people. Up from slavery, through the Jim Crow era, to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – to the final glory of America’s coerced African immigrants – the election of Barack Obama as the President of the United States of America. Yet the reality is that if he has anything in common with the American Black experience it is through his (white) mother’s side of the family… that is, the slave owners, not the chattel. He lived overseas… went to expensive private schools… and then to Harvard Law School.
It is all a “fairy tale”, said Bill Clinton. Of course it’s a fairy tale. The whole campaign is a fairy tale – lies told by delusionals and desperadoes, earnestly reported by hacks, and taken up by a public eager for make-believe.
Queuing up for an election in the US is like queuing up at a security point before getting on an airplane. The old lady in front of you knows perfectly well she is not going to hijack the plane. The fellow giving her the once-over knows it too. So does everyone waiting in line. Still, the woman gets such a thorough pat-down that she doesn’t know whether to lodge a complaint or leave a tip. And the Republic is spared!
“Change” is the word that appears most often in the candidates’ guff. Google “presidential candidates” and “change” and you get 4,560,000 examples. Barack Obama promises “change you can believe in”. The Democrats suggest that you can “vote for change” by choosing one of them. John Edwards’s website says “if you’re ready to change our country, please join us”.
Change is the only thing that all of the candidates agree on – they’re all opposed to it; each one pledges to do his level best to stop it. If there is going to be any change at all, it is going to be over their dead bodies. Which would probably be the best way. Voltaire once remarked that the best form of government was democracy, “with an occasional assassination”. But it is not just that the candidates are opposed to change; it’s the last thing voters want too. And the change they all most oppose is the change Mr. Market is working to bring about.
Mr. Market has begun a worldwide credit crunch; stocks in both Britain and America are headed down. If Mr. Market has his way, recessions will follow. The only disagreement between the major candidates is how to stop him. One promises tax hikes – on the rich, of course. Another promises tax rebates. Still another calls for tax credits to help one group of voters or another. Each and every candidate puts his hand over his heart and pledges to do all he can to keep the boom alive.
Mitt Romney, appearing in Michigan – one of the slumpiest states in the union – says the recession could be “diverted”, whatever that means. Mike Huckabee, too, pledges to set things right in Michigan. The former Baptist preacher has an understanding of economics at least as good as a smart cocker spaniel. “Michigan is in trouble,” he said. “We owe it to Michigan to help it, just like we had to do for the people of the Gulf Coast” after Hurricane Katrina.
The whole art of politics is coming up with the right lie at the right moment. We don’t know what went through the candidate’s mind at that moment. But we can imagine what went through the voters’ minds – images of bloated bodies floating through the streets of New Orleans, desperate, frightened refugees huddled in the convention centre, and acres of boarded up, washed out shacks still vacant two years after the storm. They must not have known whether to laugh or cry.
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Bill Bonner
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