Raking Gore's Muck

[Kendall Clark <kclark@xxxxxxxxx>]

Al Gore is the only realistic choice for
President in 2000. So say many white progressives.
And yet Gore stinks from his own political muck.
Cockburn and St. Clair's new book demonstrates why.

Raking Gore's Muck
By Kendall Clark


     muckrake v.intr. search out and reveal scandal, esp. among famous
     people.

   A good book review presupposes distance, a minimum of space, between
   the reviewer and the text. The distance may be political, factual,
   conceptual, ideological, or a novel mixture of these or other types.
   Without it the reviewer may find herself with little to do but
   praise the author, little to decide beyond how high such praise
   should be heaped. Such is the case with Alexander Cockburn and
   Jeffrey St. Clair's new book on Al Gore. While reading it I found
   myself in such regular agreement that I'm unlikely to do more than
   fuss over how lavishly I should praise it.

   Let me be direct. Al Gore: A User's Manual (AGUM) is a book I wish
   I'd written, not because its prose is beautiful, for even at his
   best, Cockburn never writes political prose as well as, say,
   Christopher Hitchens. Cockburn and St. Clair clearly rushed to press
   -- Verso copy editors must've been tanning in Majorca -- in time for
   the home stretch of the presidential election. Orthographic errors
   abound, and it lacks the hard edges of Cockburn's usually feisty
   prose.

   [agum.jpg] No, I wish I'd written it because it offers an enrichment
   of the public conversation about Al Gore and George W. Bush and
   their respective fitness for office. While Americans focus too much
   on the personality of the President -- thereby committing two banal
   errors -- the character (in the Aristotelian sense) of these two
   jostlers for the office is of no little consequence. AGUM
   demonstrates beyond sensible dispute that Al Gore lacks anything
   approaching a virtuous character. The display of Gore's utterly
   deficient character is the real value of Cockburn's book. By almost
   any comparison, Gore is inferior to Clinton; certainly in
   intelligence, charisma, political savvy, humor. On other comparisons
   -- honesty, courage, self-sacrifice, generosity -- they run a dead
   heat.

   At this point in a book review I, the reviewer, should present for
   you, the reader, a long recitation of Gore's ills, as documented and
   described by Cockburn and St. Clair. When I sat down to write this
   recitation, two things became apparent: first, Cockburn describes so
   many disgusting events in Gore's life that picking the few worst is
   difficult; and, second, judgments about the deficiencies of Gore's
   character should rest on the mass of these disgusting events, not
   merely on a few lowlights. If you have any interest in making a
   judgment about Al Gore's character -- which you should have if
   you're considering voting for him -- then just get Cockburn's book
   and read it.

   In the past year, in local Dallas activism, in Green Party politics
   nationally, and activism in Philadelphia around the RNC, I've
   learned something quite disturbing. I learned that the most
   avoidably stultifying force in American politics is the misplaced
   loyalty, particularly of white progressive folks, to the Democratic
   Party. Why do I say white progressive folks? Of course I know that
   there are progressive people of color. But the moral calculus of
   white progressives and progressive people of color is often
   significantly different, in large part because of standard patterns
   of oppression and repression. (I'm also addressing my remarks to
   white progressive folks because I'm a white progressive person, and
   I generally avoid giving political advice to people of color. It's
   the least I can do.) White progressives can afford to risk, and
   perhaps lose, what political power we have by virtue of their
   alliance with the Democratic Party; we can afford to do this
   because, by and large, we do not live on the margins of society.

   The Republican Party intends to deliver to its loyalists -- the
   corporate and religious fundamentalist kinds -- nearly all of what
   they want from politics. That is, the Republicans represent their
   constituencies fairly well, even when that means screwing the rest
   of us. The Republicans, despite being galled by Clinton's takeover
   of their agenda, have to be privately ecstatic with the general
   rightward tilt of the country. Since profit and piety are rapacious
   masters, neither the Corpos nor the Fundies will ever be satisfied
   with how much they get. Republican pols know this. They know they'll
   be in business for a good long time. The chief Republican problem is
   how to get back into the Oval Office, a place they'd long since
   assumed was theirs by divine fiat.

   The Democratic Party, presently dominated by minions of the
   [1]Democratic Leadership Council, doesn't even intend to deliver to
   its loyalists anything like what they want from politics. It is,
   therefore, the loyalists of the Democratic party -- who may well be
   the numerical majority of the country: women, labor, minorities of
   various kinds, greens, etc. -- who've got the biggest reason to be
   dissatisfied with Democratic politicians.

   And yet, for all that, white progressives grasp stubbornly and often
   irrationally to whatever new candidate the DLC sees fit to throw up.
   I've met scores of white activists in the past year who are deeply
   dissatisfied with eight years of Clinton and Gore but who are
   supporting Gore in 2000. What's worse, it's hard to get any but a
   few of them to admit that if enough white progressives risked the
   election of Bush by supporting Nader vigorously, it would tend to
   force Gore leftward. It might at least blunt his rightward plunge,
   and that would be a good thing. Being obsessed by short-term
   calculation of political reality isn't the way to halt the
   30-some-odd year rightward plunge in America.

   As I've already hinted, however, progressive people of color, and
   other marginalized and oppressed groups, face a different moral
   calculus. They are no less dissatisfied with Clinton and Gore. But
   when you inhabit the margins of society, the amount of real
   political power you can safely relinquish (in a bid to support a
   more reliable political choice, say, Nader), and when you can do
   this, safely, and whether you can afford to think and act long-term,
   are all open (and very difficult) questions. No blame may redound to
   progressive people of color for choosing not to relinquish, at this
   time, the modest, but very real, political power they have as a
   result of supporting the Democrats.

   (Further, some blame may yet redound to Nader for not explicitly
   embracing issues vital to people of color. This too is a tricky
   matter because it's not clear whether or to what extent Nader's
   reticence to speak forcefully and often about, say, racial
   profiling, police brutality, and capital punishment reflects a lack
   of deep concern about these issues or, perhaps, reflects momentary
   political tactics -- if the former, Nader may not be deserving of
   support from any progressives; if the latter, I think he's
   miscalculated badly. And, in any event, why hasn't he visited Al
   Sharpton in Harlem? Sharpton asked why in a recent speech in
   Washington, and I daresay no white supporter of Nader had a ready
   answer.)

   One of the benefits of AGUM, then, is to make it more difficult for
   white progressives to continue holding their noses as they support
   pseudo-liberal Al Gore. Corporate media pundits have droned on in
   this election season, wondering if or how much of Clinton's muck
   will adhere to Gore. Too many white progressives have joined them,
   complaining about Clinton (and, by implication, Gore too, since he
   is, by his own and Clinton's admission, the most powerful VP in the
   modern era) but not following through on those complaints by
   critically examining, and then rejecting, Gore -- or at least making
   the reluctant, realpolitik nature of their support for Gore very
   plain. In this way, white progressives have made common cause with
   corporate media pundits in defending Gore. Corporate pundits may at
   least plead innocence of the hypocrisy of white progressives.

   What each has done is willfully ignore, and thus excuse, Gore's own
   muck. And unlike Cockburn and St. Clair, that certainly doesn't
   amount to raking, to say nothing of opposing, it.

References

   1. http://www.ndol.org/


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Posted on Monkeyfist at http://monkeyfist.com/articles/663