THE ROVING
EYE Clinton clinches the
deal By Pepe Escobar
The
moment he came out swinging into the Hollywood set of
Fleet Center in Boston on Monday, to the trademark sound
of Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop", self-described "foot
soldier" Bill Clinton was on a roll. As superstar
entrances go, this would defy anything pulled off by
Mick Jagger or David Bowie. And then, in a little over
20 minutes, he clinched the deal: he managed to sell
John Kerry as a once-in-a-lifetime strong leader. Had
every one of the 293 million Americans been in the Fleet
Center - or watching on TV - when Clinton, aka The Big
Dog to his ardent supporters, delivered the keynote
speech in the first day of the Democratic Party
Convention, the November presidential election might as
well be over.
The current deluge of polls won't
specifically measure the Kerry bounce due to Clinton's
speech. That's a pity. Clinton made superb use of two
facts. He knew every Democratic delegate, not to mention
most of the country, was more than aware of the
political and economic Desolation Row carved by the
administration of the current president, Republican
George W Bush, so he cut to the chase. He also knew that
in a society with the most voracious appetite for
entertainment in the world, the only way to convey a
complex political message is to put on a good show.
On Tuesday, Barack Obama, candidate to the
Senate for Illinois and an instant superstar, was no
less than electrifying ("There's not a liberal America
and a conservative America - there's the United States
of America"). But it was Clinton on Monday who set the
tone. Subtle, sophisticated, passionate, bathing in
irony, witticisms and allusions with a sprinkle of
self-deprecation, never resorting to an explicit
criticism, Clinton methodically slashed the Bush
administration to pieces with a barrage of oratorical
weapons of mass destruction, supported by undisputable
numbers, while coining a few memorable refrains on the
way, from "strength and wisdom are not opposing values"
to "they need a divided America, but we don't". An
informal Asia Times Online inquiry revealed that the
speech played well all over the world, from Latin
America to East Asia, from Western Europe to the Middle
East. But the question is: will it play in suburban Ohio
and the backwoods of northern Florida?
The
Big Dog may have laid out the full roadmap -
content, context, intonation, stress - for Kerry to capture the
elusive undecided vote in key swing states. In an ideal
campaign, Kerry's team would just need to follow the
Clinton prescription, carefully detailing the social
cost of the Bush administration's policies while
contrasting their legacy with the US the world
cherishes. There's a slight problem, of course: Clinton
can't freelance as Kerry's speechwriter and much less
teach the stiff Massachusetts senator how to come out
swinging.
It may have been as easy for Clinton
to make the case for Kerry as it was to write his 1996
Democratic convention acceptance speech. On page 723 of
the monumental My Life, Bill Clinton writes: "My
acceptance speech was easy to give because of the
record: the lowest combined rate of unemployment and
inflation in 28 years; 10 million new jobs; 10 million
people getting the minimum wage increase ... 15 million
working Americans with a tax cut; 12 million taking
advantage of the family leave law; 10 million students
saving money through the Direct Student Loan Program; 40
million workers with more pension security." If only
Bush could hold a record 10% this good. This is the
speech in which Clinton coined the "bridge to the 21st
century" theme of the campaign and of his next four
years in the White House. Now Clinton has laid out the
terms for Kerry to build his own, all-inclusive,
tolerant, multilateral bridge to the future.
Class warfare What the deluge of polls
is now consistently saying is that Kerry has been
slightly ahead for some time, with 46-48%, while Bush
gets 44-46%. Kerry is leading in every state that
Democratic candidate Al Gore won in 2000, but crucially
is also leading in every swing state won by Bush in
2000. Contextualization is key. Already 54% of
Americans, according to the latest Los Angeles Times
poll, believe the country is going in the wrong
direction. Now Clinton has given Kerry an extra boost -
the roadmap to capture most of the 8-10% undecided vote.
Most Americans, with varying degrees of naivete,
believe they live in a classless society. Class is a
taboo theme in the US; that's why Republicans talk about
"values": God, guns and gays are an essential part of
the package. But once again class will be key in
deciding this election. The Republicans' relentless
cultural populism has been extremely effective: their
own hard sell as the party that best represents
"American values" has captivated a vast,
lower-middle-class, not very educated, socially
conservative base. Kerry may have no way of seducing
this base in the vast spaces of Red (Republican) states,
but he definitely has a shot with male, conservative,
angry, lower-middle-class voters in swing states such as
Ohio and Florida. Once again Clinton showed he knows how
to connect to this part of Middle America: Kerry just
has to learn how to swing accordingly, proving again and
again to these voters how cultural populism is a myth
and how the Bush administration promotes corporate
interests, not their own.
The polls are saying
that if Kerry goes over 50% in the next few days, he has
every chance of holding and even increasing the lead
until November. The Bushites will panic. Since this is a
"war presidency", Democrats fear there would be three
options left. 1) An Osama bin Laden October surprise
(arrested, not "smoked out", with the help of Pakistani
ally President General Pervez Musharraf). 2) The
election is again stolen, this time in California, with
the help of Gubernator Arnold Schwarzenegger and
Republican-made electronic ballot boxes in a few states.
3) An al-Qaeda attack (Osama, lest we forget, votes
Bush) leads to a de facto coup d'etat, with the
"Bush-Cheney junta" (Gore Vidal) postponing the
elections indefinitely.
Conspicuously
absent from Clinton's roadmap for Kerry was the Iraq question.
For a simple reason: neither the Democratic Party, nor
Kerry, nor Bush for that matter, knows what to say and
do about Iraq. Stephen Soldz, founder of Psychoanalysts
for Peace and Justice in Boston, frames the problem to
perfection:
"Imagine yourself an Iraqi. You've
suffered terribly under a ruthless dictator. The
Americans invade your country under false pretenses.
They promise democracy but don't organize elections.
They appoint exiles to rule you, exiles who spend most
of their time out of the country and the rest in a few
highly protected areas. The occupiers break into your
homes in the middle of the night and arrest your men,
who then disappear, with no accountability. They shoot
Iraqis at roadblocks and from convoys. They declare
war on the second-most-popular man in the country,
announcing his death in advance. They open the economy
to US corporations and give them sweetheart contracts,
ignoring local business. Then they write hundreds of
laws and establish commissions limiting any future
government. They build permanent military bases on
your soil. Then they turn your country over to a
former associate of Saddam Hussein, also a former CIA
[Central Intelligence Agency] agent, known for his
ruthless brutality. Imagine that was your country.
What would you do?"
The Iraqi resistance
knows what to do. The Democrats and Kerry still don't.
In the next few days the Big Dog might well figure it
out - as well as the right way to deliver the news to
the US electorate. When that happens, as far as November
is concerned, it's game over.
(Copyright 2004
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication
policies.)
