[lbo-talk] Bill Moyers's Presidential Address

[Charles Brown]

> Bill Moyers's Presidential Address
> By John Nichols
> The Nation
>
> Monday 09 June 2003
>
> Democratic presidential candidates were handed a dream audience of 1,000
"ready-for-action" labor, civil rights, peace and economic justice
campaigners at the Take Back America conference organized in Washington last
week by the Campaign for America's Future. And the 2004 contenders grabbed
for it, delivering some of the better speeches of a campaign that remains
rhetorically -- and directionally -- challenged. But it was a non-candidate
who won the hearts and minds of the crowd with a "Cross of Gold" speech for
the 21st century.
>
> Recalling the populism and old-school progressivism of the era in which
William Jennings Bryan stirred the Democratic National Convention of 1896 to
enter into the great struggle between privilege and democracy -- and to
spontaneously nominate the young Nebraskan for president -- journalist and
former presidential aide Bill Moyers delivered a call to arms against
"government of, by and for the ruling corporate class."
>
> Condemning "the unholy alliance between government and wealth" and the
compassionate conservative spin that tries to make "the rape of America
sound like a consensual date," Moyers charged that "rightwing wrecking
crews" assembled by the Bush Administration and its Congressional allies
were out to bankrupt government. Then, he said, they would privatize public
services in order to enrich the corporate interests that fund campaigns and
provide golden parachutes to pliable politicians. If unchecked, Moyers
warned, the result of these machinations will be the dismantling of "every
last brick of the social contract."
>
> "I think this is a deliberate, intentional destruction of the United
States of America," said Moyers, as he called for the progressives gathered
in Washington -- and for their allies across the United States -- to
organize not merely in defense of social and economic justice but in order
to preserve democracy itself. Paraphrasing the words of Abraham Lincoln as
the 16th president rallied the nation to battle against slavery, Moyers
declared, "our nation can no more survive as half democracy and half
oligarchy than it could survive half slave and half free."
>
> There was little doubt that the crowd of activists from across the country
would have nominated Moyers by acclamation when he finished a remarkable
address in which he challenged not just the policies of the Bush
Administration but the failures of Democratic leaders in Congress to
effectively challenge the president and his minions. In the face of what he
described as "a radical assault" on American values by those who seek to
redistribute wealth upward from the many to a wealthy few, Moyers said he
could not understand why "the Democrats are afraid to be branded class
warriors in a war the other side started and is winning."
>
> Several of the Democratic presidential contenders who addressed the crowd
after Moyers picked up pieces of his argument. Former US Senator Carol
Moseley Braun actually quoted William Jennings Bryan, while North Carolina
Senator John Edwards and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry tried -- with
about as much success as Al Gore in 2000 -- to sound populist. Former House
Minority Leader Richard Gephardt promised not to be "Bush-lite," and former
Vermont Governor Howard Dean drew warm applause when he said the way for
Democrats to get elected "is not to be like Republicans, but to stand up
against them and fight." Ultimately, however, only the Rev. Al Sharpton and
Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Dennis Kucinich came close to
matching the fury and the passion of the crowd.
>
> Kucinich, who earned nine standing ovations for his antiwar and
anti-corporate free trade rhetoric, probably did more to advance his
candidacy than any of the other contenders. But he never got to the place
Moyers reached with a speech that legal scholar Jamie Raskin described as
one of the most "amazing and spellbinding" addresses he had ever heard.
Author and activist Frances Moore Lappe said she was close to tears as she
thanked Moyers for providing precisely the mixture of perspective and hope
that progressives need as they prepare to challenge the right in 2004.
>
> That, Moyers explained, was the point of his address, which reflected on
White House political czar Karl Rove's oft-stated admiration for Mark Hanna,
the Ohio political boss who managed the campaigns and the presidency of
conservative Republican William McKinley. It was McKinley who beat Bryan in
1896 and -- with Hanna's help -- fashioned a White House that served the
interests of the corporate trusts.
>
> Comparing the excesses of Hanna and Rove, and McKinley and Bush, Moyers
said "the social dislocations and the meanness" of the 19th century were
being renewed by a new generation of politicians who, like their
predecessors, seek to strangle the spirit of the American revolution "in the
hard grip of the ruling class."
>
> To break that grip, Moyers said, progressives of today must learn from the
revolutionaries and reformers of old. Recalling the progressive movement
that rose up in the first years of the 20th century to preserve a "balance
between wealth and commonwealth," and the successes of the New Dealers who
turned progressive ideals into national policy, Moyers told the crowd to
"get back in the fight." "Hear me!" he cried. "Allow yourself that conceit
to believe that the flame of democracy will never go out as long as there is
one candle in your hand."
>
> While others were campaigning last week, Moyers was tending the flame of
democracy. In doing so, he unwittingly made himself the candle
holder-in-chief for those who seek to spark a new progressive era.
>

 © Copyright 2003 by TruthOut.org
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