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