Raking Gore's Muck

Kendall Clark kclark at ntlug.org
Mon Sep 18 15:34:21 PDT 2000


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/

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



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