Political myth-making goes into overdrive every four years. With
presidential campaigns fixated mostly on media, an array of nonstop spin
takes its toll while illogic often takes hold: When heroes are absent,
they're invented. When convenient claims are untrue, they're defended.
Many supporters come to function as enablers -- staying silent or
mimicking their candidate's contorted explanations to try to finesse the
gaping contradiction. Fast talk substitutes for straight talk. A kind of
"covering fire" across media battlefields makes it easier for the
candidate to just keep on dissembling.
There are true believers, of course -- people who believe every word
that comes out of their own mouths when, for instance, they stand at the
podium of the Republican or Democratic convention. Whatever the extent of
their sincerity, only superlatives will do as speakers unequivocally
praise George W. Bush or John Kerry.
The fact that Bush keeps saying things that aren't true should
matter. His repeated statements about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction,
or supposed links between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein (again explicitly
refuted on June 16 by the official 9/11 commission), have been mendacious
exercises in deadly propaganda. But the president's avid supporters can't
possibly be honest about those lies while speaking to journalists or
appearing on radio and television. Instead, we get a whole lot more
hooey.
Meanwhile, the man in line to become the Democratic presidential
nominee is supporting the current war in Iraq following an invasion based
on distortions that he helped to propagate before the war began. In a
speech on Oct. 9, 2002, for instance, John Kerry let fly with this
rhetorical question: "Why is Saddam Hussein attempting to develop nuclear
weapons when most nations don't even try?" Kerry also sought to justify
his decision to vote for the congressional pro-war resolution with the
statement that "according to intelligence, Iraq has chemical and
biological weapons." Yet you can bet that countless Democrats who oppose
the current war and never bought the WMD "evidence" will keep
pretending -- in public, anyway -- that there's nothing much wrong with
Kerry's Iraq stance and general hawkishness.
Partisans are frightened off from engaging in candor -- especially
within media earshot -- because they're afraid of being accused of simply
settling for the lesser of two evils. Yet foggy evasions degrade
political discourse. We'd be better off bypassing the media's
black-and-white political color schemes. In the case of the 2004
presidential race, all military hawks are not alike. The Progressive
Unity Voter Fund aptly quotes comedian Dan Kaufman: "The only thing worse
than the lesser of two evils ... is the greater of two evils."
The gang in control of George W. Bush's presidency is beyond even
the sort of militarism implemented during the 1980s by the
administrations of Ronald Reagan and Bush the First. In a new documentary
film, "Hijacking Catastrophe," Noam Chomsky comments: "They happen to be
an extremely arrogant, dangerous group of reactionary statists. They're
not conservatives."
Usually the media game is to choose your presidential candidate and
then sing that candidate's praises. But for progressive advocates, the
most telling -- and honest -- way to support Kerry would be to openly
acknowledge his pro-corporate and militaristic positions while pointing
out that, overall, Bush is significantly worse.
The crying need to defeat the incumbent president is so clear that
presidential candidate Ralph Nader says his campaign this year will aid
in ousting him. Nader keeps making that claim, which he phrased this way
in late March: "I'm going to take more votes away from Bush than from
Kerry."
But the Progressive Unity Voter Fund's "Don't Vote Ralph" site
provides a chart and backup data from available independent polls (a
total of 37) gauging Nader's impact. Titled "How Much Nader Is Helping
Bush," the chart is posted at
www.dontvoteralph.net/pollwatch.htm -- and
it demolishes Nader's assertion, while graphically showing why "Bush's
brain" Karl Rove must be thrilled that Nader is in the race. Rove's
gratitude is especially plausible because Nader is trying to get on the
ballot in every state -- a big gift to the Bush-Cheney ticket in more
than a dozen swing states.
Supporters of Bush, Kerry and Nader differ on many issues. But all
too often they're similar in this unfortunate respect: They are willing
to go along with absurd pretenses rather than publicly acknowledge that
their candidate is blowing smoke.
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Norman Solomon is co-author, with Reese Erlich, of "Target Iraq: What the
News Media Didn't Tell You."
