Op-Ed
Because I think we're watching something important, quite aside from the fate of the nation and the future of The World's Greatest Democracy (except for Florida).
In a mild and in some ways not terribly important case (I may have to eat those words), we're watching why wars start. What we see is the constant presentation -- because the media love to polarize -- of people who are apparently incapable of imagining what the situation looks like from somebody else's point of view.
Is it a lack of empathy, sympathy, imagination? A few years ago, James Carville, the Democratic consultant, wrote a book called We're Right, They're Wrong, which is a great title. Since I don't believe in objectivity -- I think that poor Al Gore won this election fair and square and that the Bushies are trying to spin their way into the White House -- I'm not trying to split the difference here, as in, "You know, they could both be right." Possible, but highly unlikely.
Jokes are flying on the Internet. Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat have offered to mediate the election for us. Slobodan Milosevic called to suggest that Palm Beach County become an independent republic of Serbia. The late-night comics are in heaven.
The political high road is clear, for at least a while. Of course, Al Gore's camp was entitled to demand a recount in Florida. The race was so tight that the recount was triggered automatically under state law anyway. For George W. Bush's camp to sigh impatiently and pretend that the D's are out of line is ridiculous.
But before the sun rose on the East Coast, the networks were correcting themselves again, acknowledging that Florida was too close to call. By then, the arrogance of the television networks had compounded a distressing specter: The Electoral College might end up giving the presidency to someone who came in second in the country's popular vote.
Twenty-four hours after the polls closed across America, the reporters and commentators on the airwaves and cable channels seemed to be reeling from the succession of extraordinary events. Surely, millions of Americans were also stunned, as if the previous long night had been a vivid and protracted bad dream.
Our future depends on The Stuff They Wouldn't Talk About -- economic globalization, global warming, the spread of AIDS, the need for some social control of new technologies and the corruption of our political system. Al and Tipper Gore's big smooch got more ink.
Having set the proper tone of superiority here -- it is now obligatory for journalists to drip disdain on the democratic process as we assist in deforming it -- may I say that I'm mad as hell? Not only has this been a stupid campaign, but it has been a deceitful one.
Gore's reputation as a fibber and an exaggerator is apparently set in stone -- despite the fact that he never claimed to have invented the Internet (although he assisted at its creation), that he was in fact a model for the lead character in "Love Story" (the stiff), that he never claimed he had discovered Love Canal and that he did in fact have to work hard on his father's farm in Tennessee when he was a boy. That's the way it goes in Medialand.
A couple of months ago, the current Democratic Party leadership seemed to be firmly in control. The succession was orderly. The party's new ticket of "moderates" -- Al Gore and Joseph Lieberman -- gained momentum. If all went according to plan, President Lieberman would be wrapping up his second term in 2016.
The longstanding game plan kept boosting people who fervently embraced "the center." Why defend low-income mothers when you can brag about dumping them off the welfare rolls? Why make trouble for Wall Street when you can curry favor and rake in larger contributions? Why put a brake on the drug war when you can keep building prisons and filling them with more dark-skinned poor people?
Applauded by countless reporters and pundits, the New Democrats grabbed hold of the national party apparatus in 1992 and never let go. Journalists concluded that all the major policy issues within the Democratic Party had been settled. The mood was similar among most of the Democrats on Capitol Hill as they kowtowed to the party's hierarchy.
The recent "Hey, a sleeping lawyer is still a lawyer" decision came from the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on a 2-to-1 decision agreed to by the ever-charming Judge Edith Jones, who was on the short list for the Supreme Court when Bush pere was president and will certainly be so again under Bush fils.
Under Judge Rhesa Hawkins Barksdale and Judge Jones' remarkable legal reasoning, "It is impossible to determine whether ... counsel slept during presentation of crucial exculpatory evidence, or during the introduction of unobjectionable, uncontested evidence." Therefore, they voted to fry the guy.
Actually, the top candidate for Supreme Court under Bush, who is looking for judges like Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, is Judge Emilio Garza, the Clarence Thomas of the Hispanic world (without any known sexual peccadilloes).
You may want some background on how it came about.
Byrd's hideous death attracted the national media to East Texas. The case and reaction to it were much-examined, as was the later case of Matthew Shepard, the young gay man who was lashed to a fence in Wyoming.
By the beginning of the 1999 session of the State Legislature, the black, brown and gay communities were demanding a hate crimes bill, and the issue had to be addressed by Gov. George W. Bush. He said he opposed the bill because "all crimes are hate crimes."
The House sponsor, Rep. Senfronia Thompson, in one of the finest speeches of her career, made a direct rebuttal: "Is cashing a bad check a hate crime? Is insurance fraud a hate crime?"
This remake of the infamous classic "daisy ad" from Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 campaign accuses the current administration of having "sold" the nation's security to "Communist Red China" -- that's as opposed to Communist China, Red China or even just China -- in exchange for campaign contributions. And as a result, China "has the ability to threaten our homes with long-range nuclear warheads." None of which is true, by the way. My favorite moment was when the group's spokesman told The New York Times that the group was formed to bring "accountability" to politics.
Meanwhile, Our Boy George -- the uniter not the divider, the one who promises to restore civility to Washington politics -- is getting so mean that it's creating newspaper headlines. So much for his pledge not to wage a campaign of personal attacks.
For several decades, the Pacifica Foundation -- which owns five radio stations and operates a small national network -- nurtured precious experiments in the arid terrain of radioland. Pacifica has provided listeners with wide-ranging discussion, progressive analysis and independent news coverage, in acute contrast to America's usual corporate-backed media fare.
But during the last few years, Pacifica's board of directors made itself a self-selecting body with an increasingly mainstream agenda. The more highhanded the new hierarchy became -- and the more it deserved strong criticism -- the more determined it became to prevent criticism of itself from getting onto Pacifica airwaves.
OK, Nader voters. Let's talk.
I'm voting for Ralph. I'm voting for Nader because I believe in him, admire him and would like to see his issues and policies triumph in our political life. I'm also voting for him because I live in Texas -- where all 32 electoral votes will go to George W. Bush even if I stand on my head, turn blue and vote for Gus Hall, the late communist.
I know that many of my fellow Nader voters are young people and probably don't want to hear from a geriatric progressive. (We had to walk three miles through the snow, barefoot, uphill both ways.) But I have learned some things just from hanging around this long, and with your permission, I will pass them on.