Bicentennial necrophilia
Nicholas von Hoffman
Washington By the Fourth of July weekend even the intelligentsia had surrendered to sentiments Of simple patriotism it didn't know it possessed and the whole nation joined in the Bicentennial fun. When the mass culture soft machine revs up to rolling speed, it is impossible to hold out against the commercialism of the red, white and blue lavatory seats on sale in the supermarkets. Politics stopPed, business stopped, and America lit her celebratory firecracker. For the jingos there were displays of armed might, for monarchists there was the Queen of England, for aesthetes there were drum majorettes in red, white and blue bikinis and in city, suburb and country there were 10,000 small Parades, contests and picnics that were genuine just because they weren't organised by the Government or some other large and therefore resented entity.
The differences between 1876 and 1976 are striking but go mostly unremarked. The centennial was as vulgar, mindless and tastelessly commercial as this one. The country then was as bothered by corruption and scandal in its public life, but the tone was decidedly more optimistic. Judging by the oratory, America lost her future transversing these past hundred years. A century ago Americans had less to cheer about than they do now. The United States was just beginning to come out of a depression that makes the recent one mild by comparison ; Chief Sitting Bull and his Indian colleagues had annihilated an American force under General George Custer a day or so before 4 July 1876; the South was still in ruins from the Civil War, and you could extend the list of reasons for being downcast during that great national holiday. But the populace wasn't.
The country saw its future as the leader of the globe. 1876 was a forward-looking event ; 1976 isn't. The future patriotic speakers have laid out for Americans this year is static, defensive and mostly devoid of the Preposterous, pretentious but noble vision that used to be part of patriotic American bombast. The promise which is held forth now is that the future will be like the past. The task that Americans are being called on to undertake is to keep things the same, to hold on, to protect what they have.
The direction of the celebrations, as much as the rhetoric here in recent years, is backvv. ard-looking. The adoration of 'the Founding Fathers' as the American revolutionaries are invariably called, surpasses ancestor worship and approaches necrophilia. In the city of Washington so many museums have been built and consecrated to one form of Americana or another that they seem like
crypts in which the society is laying itself out. The veneration of the Constitution, always written with a capital C, gives that document the same function as the Bible had in seventeenth-century Scotland. Wrangling over constitutional exegesis is an accepted and ordinary form of political debate in a country where many literally believe that the writing on this piece of parchment is as divinely inspired as the Acts of the Apostles.
Whether or not this absorption. with one's national past and the abstractions of eighteenth-century political philosophy has much influence on what Americans do, it takes up a great deal of time that might be better spent than on searching out old texts of Thomas Jefferson to find meaningless precedents for things that are going to be done anyway. Some time in the coming months, however, the country will have to leave off embellishing myths about its greatgreat-grandfathers and elect itself a President.
As much to their own surprise as everybody else's, for the first time since 1964 the Democrats enter the campaign reasonably united. No less surprising is their candidate, Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer and former Georgia Governor, a self-described bornagain Christian of intelligence and toughness who has won out over his rivals, not because his policies are so different, but because his opponents failed more often than he in the primary elections and because the Democrats had no stomach for the kind of intra-party fight that would make it impossible to beat the Republicans this autumn. As a party they badly want to win. Moreover the issues which had divided leftand right-wing Democrats don't seem as important as they did a few years ago, and certainly not as important as getting back into power.
He looks good in the public opinion polls so far, but Jimmy 'Peanut and his vendors, the hungry young men who run his campaign, don't have the thing won yet. Although you'd never guess it from the affirmations or American politicians, at least half of the population has no interest in or affiliation with religion so that the prayerful peanut and his faith-healing sister, a real, circuit riding missionary, are the objects of some misgiving. It's not that the agnostic segment of the electorate suspects him of plotting a Baptist coup d'etat, it's that they don't know how much faith, hope and treacle they can take before they start to yearn for Richard Nixon and his famous expletives deleted.
The explanation most often offered for the Georgian's taking the nomination away from better-known Democratic stars in the Senate is that he ran an anti-Washington campaign while their names and their fame are indissolubly linked with America's least-loved city, its national capital. There may be a degree of truth to that, but it's worth remembering that politicians here have been campaigning for office by denouncing Washington for one hundred and forty years. The anti-Washington bias is more of a cultural trait than a political principle.
Former California Governor Ronald Reagan knows that. He was twice elected in that heavily Democratic state by preaching the best government is the least government, a Bible text Americans dearly loved to listen to, but once in office his words had no effect on his conduct and no one thought they would. He is playing the same-tune in trying to take the Republican nomination away from the thick fingers of Jerry Ford (the amiable mediocrity from Michigan is never referred to as Gerald).
Reagan is a better speaker and a more effective TV politician than either Carter or Ford. He has a reputation for right-wing ferocity but his politics and Ford's are nearly identical. The difference, as the Reagan managers will tell you, is that the former cowboy actor is an outsider, a stranger to many of the major Eastern figures in his party and to the Washington media mob.
The idea of an ex-movie actor playing the role of President also works against Reagan. Ford, however, has his own problems convincing people that he has the dignity, poise and minimal intelligence to handle the job without embarrassing the country. Hence his managers have been having him do things which are designed to make him look 'presidential', an adjective of uncertain definition. Unfortunate for this man, who has spent most of his career being dismissed as an obedient, party-serving joke, is the unpresidential quality of the managers he's picked to run his campaign. Goodnatured men with IQs comparable to their boss's, they accomplished a feat that had been thought impossible as recently as last January : they've nearly lost the nomination for an incumbent President.
At the time of writing Ford is still a slight favourite only because of the rule that incumbents win more often than they lose. In the meantime Jerry will look for new ways to appear at least plausibly presidential. He's already had one international conference (Puerto Rico) where he had his picture taken with real statesmen from abroad. The hope was that their stature would rub off, but usually when he acts presidential, he is merely dull.
At least as important as who wins the Republican nomination is how he wins. If the Reagan-Ford fight is so violent that the losers refuse to work for the party next fall, the pious peanut will take the Democrats back to power, presuming, of course, enough people can be dragged away from the bicentennial barbecue to have an election at all.
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