VOICE FROM AMERICA
The last adolescent squeal of the Republican Party
Houston he discovery by American adolescents that it was cool to be conservative was one of the less plausible events of the last decade. The odd combination of youthful ignorance and authoritarian zeal was more than a little fraudulent. I recall my college room-mate, who led one of the larger cam- pus movements ten years ago, giggling like a child as he played at being a radical. By day he starred on television talk-shows across the land. He appeared on the screen demanding that American universities return to a traditional curriculum of classi- cal texts, which he himself could barely name. I once caught him retailing to the masses his considered view that 'all Ameri- can college students should be required to read Homer and Virgo'.
By night he stood on firmer ground. He gathered in our dormitory room 20 or so other sloop-shouldered, crew-cutted young men from well-to-do families, and plotted to overthrow the liberal establishment. The liberal establishment was the handful of students and teachers actively peddling radical left-wing ideas. Even then they were hard to find — I imagine they are still rarer now — and consisted mainly of a few blacks, the odd sociologist and a handful of lesbians who had formed a club called the Women's Center. These people my room- mate and his fellow hooligans went to great lengths to torment.
What is interesting is that over the last four years the adults in the Republican Party have given themselves over to a simi- lar adolescent sensibility, even as they have backed away from the ideas that originally attracted youth. No doubt this has a great deal to do with George Bush's own unre- solved insecurities; but he has been helped along by the self-styled radicals who once gathered in my college bedroom and have now risen to positions of power. Their influence can be seen everywhere, but it is perhaps best captured in a facetious quiz put out by Bush's campaign headquarters — run by the keepers of the College tradi- tion. It began as follows: SNIVELING HYPOCRITICAL DEMOCRATS: STAND UP AND BE COUNTED ON SECOND THOUGHT SHUT UP AND SIT DOWN!
'Today, the Bush/Quayle campaign provides Slick Willie with a little Holier Than Thou Sunday Puzzle. Do this one before your crossword puzzle, Bill. It's real easy. You picked the categories. We picked the ques- tions. You know the answers .. . '
And so on. Some may find it chilling to think that this is the voice of the Leader of the Free World. Others find it reassuring. Among the latter are over 100,000 college Republican activists — compared with the 20,000 of ten years ago — now peddling the same sort of style on campus with an eye on moving up in the party ranks when they graduate. More than 1,000 of them descended upon Houston this week, with a view to making the loudest possible noises. They travelled there in what they called a `Caravan for Freedom' that travelled the 1,200 miles from Washington in a single day. I joined them.
The Caravan consisted of about ten vehi- cles, all papered over with Bush-Quayle signs, all holding young white crew-cutted males. There were only two breaks in this pattern. One was an older fellow in mirror sunglasses sent along by the White House. When I asked him what his job was, he said, rather cryptically, that he was in 'the surro- gate division'. The other was a van carrying seven black college Republicans and a pair of scantily clad women. We can only imag- ine what the drivers of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana thought when they glimpsed what looked very much like a huge, metal campaign poster filled with black men waving signs saying 'It's a cool thing to vote Bush/Quayle', flying past them at 90 mph — perhaps that it was some sort of practical joke. The women — at least could be easily explained by reference to The Student Government Election Guide, the secret handbook of right-wing youth. When staging rallies, the Guide clearly advises, 'Have good-looking girls wearing campaign buttons pass out brochures'.
Within this group the leader of all lead- ers was a giant young man called Fred. His hair looked as if it had been buzz-sawed off his neck, which was the size of two ordinary human necks. His frame spilled out of the driver's seat, casting a shadow across the three dozen doughnuts on the floor beside him. In his hand for most of the trip was a giant Cola cup emblazoned with the words: `Big dog &I duty'. He had a canned opinion about everything. Asked about gun control, he pulled himself up and announced, 'Out- law guns and only outlaws will have guns.'
Behind him sat five other college Repub- licans, most of whom introduced them- selves to me as chairmen of something or other in the intricate college Republican hierarchy. As we rocketed bumper to bumper towards Texas, Fred described the group's 'philosophy'. They stood for: guns, family values, God, and anything, however false, that might be used to tar Bill Clinton. They stood against: government, abortion, Congress, welfare, taxes, and questioning the wisdom of the party leaders.
He was somehow able to deliver this Republican catechism in Jesse Jackson rhythms, so that when I asked him what he made of Bush's campaign thus far, for example, he boomed out: 'It is not my place or anybody's place to second-guess the President. I offer my services to George Bush and these good people in the back offer their services and we do it without question or doubt. We're going to storm the voting booth in November. And we're going to win a second term. We are the force for change. The politics of the past is not the politics of the future. For evil to tri- umph it is only necessary that good men do nothing.'
For the first time in history it has been possible for a young man to style himself a radical without putting at risk his allowance from home or his career. He can embrace tradition, conform to the thinking of people in real positions of power, yet still believe himself to be radical. It is only fitting that, in a nation devoted to the pursuit of plea- sure, revolutions should be not only blood- less but convenient as well. Still, it requires a special sort of credulity to believe that you are a radical when you are taking your marching orders from the re-election cam- paign of the President, especially one such as Bush who loathes change of any sort. But perhaps these adolescents remain loyal to the leader of the free world only because he speaks their language. He is the under- standing parent, who understands nothing•
The Wasp
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