MY MEANINGLESSNESS IS CLEAR
Mark Steyn on the contest between
American presidential aspirants to say nothing that could be understood
New Hampshire LAMAR ALEXANDER re-emerged last week. He's the former Tennessee governor who lost the Republican nomination to Bob Dole in 1996 and is toying with anoth- er run at it next year. He is, it seems, unimpressed by his rivals' campaign slo- gans, 'Compassionate conservatism' (George W. Bush) and 'Practical idealism' (Al Gore, though in fact the phrase was first used by Richard Nixon). 'These are weasel words,' complained Governor Alexander. ' "Compassionate conserva- tive" is just like Al Gore talking about "practical idealism". They're designed to mean nothing.' And, believe me, Lamar Alexander is a guy who knows about meaninglessness. He's the Mozart of meaninglessness, the Beethoven of bull- shit.
What, for example, was his own cam- paign slogan back in 1996? It was: `Remember your ABC — Alexander Beats Clinton.' After saying this, the governor would step to his electronic keyboard and play his campaign song, 'Alexander's Rag- time Band'. The Washington pundits, who apparently have never dropped in on open- mike night at a bad karaoke bar, consid- ered this approach daring and refreshing and cranked out pieces about Lamar — or `Lamar!', as his posters billed him — being the man to watch — 'A Republican Mod- erate with a Populist Touch', etc. As proof of the latter, they cited the red-and-black plaid shirts worn by Lamar! and his cam- paign team. A plaid shirt is a thing of beau- ty (in moderation: as Diane Keaton moans in Baby Boom, despairing of gnarled old Yankee menfolk, 'I'm so sick of plaid'). Looking down on my own red-and-black shirt, I can spot the dark streak of my dip- stick, some sausage gravy from the Hungry Bear Diner circa 1995, a few rusty spots of blood from the deer season and, in the cor- ner, what looks worryingly like presidential DNA. The plaid-clad members of Alexan- der's ragtag band were more fastidious: their shirts were fresh off the plane from LL Bean and, just in case, some thoughtful person on the campaign team had taken the precaution of ironing razor-sharp creases into them. They looked ridiculous, just as I'd look ridiculous if I were given a Tom Hanks Nehru jacket to attend a White House gala in and insisted on first covering it with oil and gravy stains and whitetail entrails.
The governor's other big thing was his plan to walk the entire state of New Hampshire, meeting the people and giving them 'Lamar Walked Here!' signs to plunk in their front yards. In the early hours of primary morning, one appeared on my town common. Although it seemed unlike- ly that Lamar! had Walked Here! at three in the morning when so few folks would be around to greet him, most of us were char- itable enough to assume that a plaid-clad member of his ragtime band with a 'Lamar Walked Here!' sign had Walked Here! But, on closer inspection, the lack of footprints suggested that someone from Lamar!'s team had actually Driven Here!, tossed a `Lamar Walked Here!' sign into the snow- bank and driven on to the next town. Instead of walking across the entire state, Lamar! walked a few hundred yards in towns in the southern third of the state, waited until the TV crews had got their pic- tures, then climbed into his limousine to continue his cross-state walk in another lucky town, as long as it was close enough to the airport to get back in time for the last flight out. This is what a 'populist touch' means in the Nineties — a populism blessedly untouched by anything as messy as people.
Anyway, after his mild criticism of their meaningless slogan, the George W. Bush team, recognising that they were in the presence of the Master of the Meaningless, was suitably cowed: a spokesperson made a feeble attempt to explain that 'compassion- ate conservatism' actually does mean some- thing and then slunk away. The Gore camp, by contrast, came out swinging. The Vice-President announced, through his aide Chris Lehane, that he considered it `unfortunate' that Governor Alexander 'has joined the Republican attack pack in engaging in this politics of personal destruction'. Apparently, Mr Lehane said this with a straight face.
It seems there's no stopping the effort- less rise of 1999's first catchphrase. Less than a month ago, 'the politics of personal destruction' was a respectable weasel phrase reserved for sorrowful Democratic tributes to Bob Livingston, the fastest Speaker who never was, the guy who quit in the middle of the impeachment debate because Larry Flynt, pornographer and Democrat, had managed to get hold of four of his former mistresses. In a nano- second, Mr Livingston was transformed from ruthless right-wing thug into the greatest personal tragedy since the fall of Oscar Wilde — from the love that dare not speak its name to the Speaker who dared not name his loves. When the President, later the same day, at his post-impeach- ment pep rally, urged an end to 'the poli- tics of personal destruction', the phrase's future seemed assured. But, in Al Gore's hands, the mantra du jour has subtly mutat- ed in meaning — from offering money to aggrieved lovers for fingering Republican bigshots to, er, offering mild criticism of the Vice-President's campaign slogan. But these days we're all supposed to deplore partisanship and, even though Mr Gore is deploring it in a frankly partisan way, his oversensitivity is unlikely to hurt him with the electorate: no doubt even now some Beltway pundit is applying the finishing touches to 'The New Gore: A Moderate Democrat with a Populist Touchiness'.
Meanwhile, George W. Bush, the Texas Governor, is putting his own more literalist spin on the politics of personal destruction by becoming the first politician to person- ally destroy himself: he's let it be known that, in preparation for his presidential campaign, he's hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on himself to see whether there's anything in his past he may have forgotten about that might prevent him becoming President. This is a brilliant strategy: even if it costs him the nomina- tion, he'll at least have something to ped- dle to Larry Flynt.
What's harder to explain is why, when the President or his aides solemnly bemoan the politics of personal destruc- tion, the entire Washington press corps doesn't collapse with laughter. The saving grace of the British, sunk in depravity as they are and slipping ever further down the Eurinal of history, is their fail-safe bullshit detector. Let a Westminster politi- cian offer up some sappy formulation like `resigning to spend more time with my family' and, within 48 hours, it's possible to use the phrase only in a parodic sense. To their credit, fellow politicians — the late Nicholas Ridley, for example — are some- times among the first to hoot. This tradi- tion has been put under severe strain since the revolution of 1 May 1997, but, even so, no pal of Geoffrey Robinson or Peter Mandelson would be foolish enough to risk the derision that would accompany any appeal to end the politics of personal destruction.
But amazingly, on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, on the op-ed pages of the Washing- ton Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe, the phrase is treated solemnly and respectfully instead of as just another piece of focus-group-tested hum- bug. Part of the reason is that the network news anchors and op-ed heavyweights are for the most part portentous and earnest and therefore, as the Clinton White House well knows, susceptible to any pitch equal- ly portentous and earnest. Wimbledon fans will remember how Dan Maskell, during a McEnroe racket-tossing tantrum, would confine himself to a few technical remarks about how he needed to concentrate on his 'beckhend'. That's the way a network news star feels when faced with Monica Le winsky talking about cigars. Seemliness Is all. When at the 11th hour last Friday, the Senate belatedly did its duty and stitched up a ramshackle agreement to defer its disagreements on trial procedures for a couple of weeks, the deafening sound of smug senatorial self-congratulation was drowned only by the media huzzahs for the solemnity, dignity and (inevitably) non- partisanship these 100 wise men and women had brought to their deliberations. About everyone else — Monica, Linda, the House Republicans — the media take the same line as Lord Charteris on Fergie: vul- gar, vulgar, vulgar. Of course, when you think about it, Mr Clinton is pretty vulgar. Unseemly even. Sometimes, when he's in triumphalist bongo-thumping, cigar-chomping mode, as he was after the dismissal of the Paula Jones suit, the press notices and gets annoyed. At other times, they just look the other way: so we're supposed to pretend that censure would be a meaningful pun- ishment that would shame the President, whereas it's perfectly obvious that it'd be just another excuse to get out the bongos. After all, at a recent White House party he let slip that the House impeachment vote felt 'pretty good' and then compared his own excesses with General Grant's heavy imbibing: 'Find out what he's drinking,' said Lincoln, 'and send a case to all my other generals.' If the parallel holds, pre- sumably we should send Monica round to service those uptight Republicans.
At such moments, Mr Clinton is unseemly, but the media forgive him because, when it counts, he's as earnest as they are. Take his recent visit to the Mid- dle East. As the Forward, a New York Jew- ish newspaper, subsequently reported, `President Clinton stood before the Pales- tinian National Council and spoke of two profoundly emotional experiences in less than 24 hours. One of these was his meet- ing with the children of jailed Palestinian- Arab terrorists. The other experience was meeting Israelis, some little children whose fathers had been killed in the con- flict with Palestinians. Israeli government sources who would speak only on condi- tion of anonymity said Mr Clinton never met with the Israeli children. The White House and State Department did not return calls about whether such a meeting took place. There was no such event on the public schedule of the trip.'
The President of the United States is, by any reasonable measurement, a pathologi- cal liar. But hey, that's okay, too. We live in an acting culture that embraces politics as much as showbiz: it's more important to act presidential than be presidential. And, as long as the phrases are lofty enough, they'll fly. 'Bipartisanship' means to Mr Clinton what 'détente' meant to the old Soviet Union: the absence of opposition. It doesn't mean Democrats doing their con- stitutional duty, but Republicans 'moving on' and agreeing to let the President finish his term. It's useless to complain: the Democrats got to all these woozy 'biparti- san' phrases first and signed 'em up to an exclusive deal.
So I disagree with Lamar Alexander. `Compassionate conservatism' is marginal- ly less meaningless than 'practical ideal- ism', and if Governor Bush can succeed in claiming 'compassionate' for the Republi- can lexicon he'll have done his party a great service. It'll be boring, it'll be insuf- ferable, it'll leave you pining for Lamar! playing 'Alexander's Ragtime Band' on his Yamaha. But those were the wild and crazy days of '96. For this campaign, strike up the bland.
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