NICE IS EASY
Tuesday, 29 January 2008
HAPPY WARRIOR
from National Review
I used to support the “candidate of change”, but then I changed to the candidate of “change you can believe in”, and then I changed back to the “candidate of change” after the candidate changed to being an “agent of change”, which sounds very top-secret and groovy. There used to be a British rock band called Status Quo (one would like to think there still is), and, endearingly enough, all their records sounded exactly the same. But no-one’s using them for a campaign theme this season. Instead, it’s one beguiling chorus after another of “Changers In The Night”. As the bumper stickers say, “I’m Pro-Change And I Vote”. Even my colleague John O’Sullivan penned a column for the Telegraph in London headlined “Barack And Huckabee Ride On Wish For Change”.
I’m not sure I’d want to ride a wish for change if I needed to get anywhere in a hurry on it. Among the 300 million or so Americans, the ones consumed by a burning desire for meaningful change are the teensiest sliver of a tiny minority. Oh, sure, lots of people would like a quick fix in health care, if there were such a thing, but on most issues large numbers of folks who claim to be pro-change are content with either a meaningless gesture (on the environment) or utter inactivity (on social security and everything else). Non-politically-active Americans – which is to say most Americans – are broadly content with their country. Even an issue such as illegal immigration, on which ostensibly a huge bipartisan majority of Americans would like real action, doesn’t get much traction once the candidates are up there talking about it.
Why? Well, when voters say they want “change”, what they really mean is they want nice. If you’re not into politics 24/7, it is to the casual observer one of the most unpleasant arenas of American life. Take any other competitive environment and they’re using entirely different standards of “meanness” – Simon on “American Idol”, for example, would be a pussycat if you signed him up at Daily Kos. So come presidential nominating season a big swathe of the populace expresses a kind of aesthetic distaste for the entire business by plumping for the freshest face on the national scene – ie, Obama or Huckabee. Both of them seem nice mainly because they’re new. A primary or three later, and they don’t seem so new, and don’t seem so nice. Politics will do that.
Christopher Hitchens likes to say politics is showbusiness for ugly people, but a lot of ‘em didn’t seem that ugly until 30 years of Sunday morning Senatorial talkshow appearances took their toll. Even the fascist mass murderer Bushitler ran eight years ago as an alternative to the stern-faced Gingrich Republicans who’d sat in weekly judgment over the Clinton era. The first President Bush famously offered himself as a “kinder, gentler” alternative to the President he’d just spent eight years with, a pitch so shameless that it worked only because it expressed something very profound – that in settled democracies most people just want something kindler, gentler, nicer, quieter, easier listening. That will be especially true after seven years on Orange Alert.
Which brings us back to why Mister Uniter-Not-A-Divider is ending his term as the most divisive president since the last divisive president. Because to govern is to choose. And to govern in tough times is to make tough choices. And thus to choose is to divide. An electorate that wanted real change – on immigration, education, entitlements – would be voting for one almighty four-year slugfest. So instead we wind up with a bit of bipartisan tinkering and drift. That’s the lesson of 9/11. It may be “the day the world changed”, but in the great federal bureaucracy it was the day nothing changed, except a few agency acronyms: Look at the CIA or the State Department or whatever the INS is called this week. To make even the smallest (here’s that word again) change – such as, say, requiring passports for visits to Mexico and Canada – takes the best part of a decade.
Do you remember the last time America was “united”? The fall of 2001. Ninety per cent approval for Bush. Massive majorities in favor of toppling the Taliban. Didn’t last, couldn’t last. Because six months go by, and suddenly Afghanistan doesn’t seem so easy, and 40 per cent bail on the president and decide it’s his fault. Unity on anything serious will, almost by definition, be shallow and ephemeral. President Bush learned that the hard way, when history reasserted itself and left its bloody calling card.
What we need is not bogus invocations of unity, which is largely a platitudinous or poll-driven cover for inertia. The President of the United States has to act in a world in which everyone from the bureaucracy to Congress to the EU to the UN is urging lethargy. In the days after 9/11, you’ll recall that Nato invoked its famous Article stating that an attack on one member was an attack on all, but even as the declaration was rolling off the photocopier various European foreign ministers were saying not to worry, it doesn’t mean anything. That’s “unity” – unity in the cause of torpor. George W Bush determined that for once somebody had to mean something, and he acted.
The next president will face that choice, too. By “change”, most voters want a restoration of the quiet life. Sorry, that’s not an option, no matter what nice young freshman Senators promise.
from National Review, January 14th 2008
