Too many midgets

Nicholas von Hoffman

Washington I n 1822, two years before the next

presidential election, Hezekish Miles, a visitor to Washington, wrote home astonished at `so great a buz [sic] above the person who should succeed Mr Monroe', and left town deploring the time wasted 'in electioneering for the next President of the United States'.

The astonishment and deploration at the time, energy and wealth given over to this activity continues to this day. Yet never has the process of candidate selection started earlier than among the Democrats hoping to be picked to run against Ronald Reagan. At least six of the eight members of this contingent of politicians who, better than less ambitious men, know how to tap dance in the face of absurdity, have already been out looking for votes for the better part of a year.

If the electorate has any great interest in the contortions of this crew it has succeeded in keeping its enthusiasm under control. The biggest gap thus far in this election is not the credibility gap or the gender gap or the human rights gap, but the mouth gap from the yawns. Snow Black and the Seven Dwarfs — Sleepy, Snoozy, Drowsy, Dopey, Mopey, Cat Nap and Shut Eye — have left the millions in front of the TV sets watching bad movies and waiting for the 1984 Olym- pic Games, a subject for which there is enthusiasm.

The preference for games and entertain- ments on the part of the populace and the prevalence of mediocre men vying for high

'Maybe Sir David Napley did the conveyancing., office does not presage the end of the republic. The United States has been through both before and righted itself. In this conjunction, however, it is well to remember the words of Boise Penrose, a long ago Republican boss of Pennsylvania. It was he, among others, who was accused of being in the first and most notorious smoke-filled room at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago where, legend has it, the big boys decided to make Warren Gamaliel Harding their party's nominee. Some time later, after Harding had distinguished himself as the most inept president since Ulysses Simp- son Grant, Penrose was asked why he did it. 'It was three o'clock in the morning,' legend has the old boss saying, 'the air was blue with cigar smoke and we were sur- rounded by midgets.'

The mightiest midget today, and odds-on favourite, is former vice-president Walter Mondale. History shows that the best way to be president is to be vice-president first. More men have made it from that despised office than from the Senate or a governor's chair. Of late students of the American political process have been arguing that in seeking a major party nomination it helps to be out of office so that no office duties can come between the seeker and his goal. Mondale, who reminds most Americans of their high school civics teacher, has had nothing to do the past three years but assemble money, recruit and build his organisation and solicit endorsements of scores of Democratic notables.

Several months ago the Washington Post ran a long and carefully researched article suggesting that Fritz, as he is nicknamed, had found a way to get round the election campaign laws which forbid giving more than $5,000 to a candidate. The ruse is 10 put Mondale on the board of directors of the companies which his friends control and pay him large fees for doing no work. Several charities even did this, paying up to $50,000 for services of such an evanescent nature that no one is quite sure what they were. The upshot is that from the first daY of this campaign of 500 days Mondale has had lots more money than his opponents. He has, by all accounts, used it well. His campaign organisation is judged the best, his staff considered outstanding by political reporters who make a speciality of knowing the nuts, bolts and technology of election- eering. At the same time Fritz of the coffee grinder voice and the gratingly flat vocaltsa"

tions is getting branded as the water-carrier for 'special interest' groups. The unions, the professional organisations, the social workers, the psychiatrists, are being accus- ed of having bought the ever sincere Mr Mondale.

'Special interest' is one of those phrases. It sounds more sinister than it is when you think of the bucket loads of insipid liquid which you must carry if you become the candidate of its converse, the 'general in- terest'. Nevertheless, Senator John Glenn has chosen to advertise himself as Com- monweal Willie. What comes out is adver- tising agency garbage. Every time you hear Glenn, regarded as Mortgaged Mondale's closest rival, he seems to be saying that he's progressive but cautious, sound but com- passionate, a pragmatic idealist, a former astronaut whose banalities on the virtues of small-town and basic American values would put the Chamber of Commerce to sleep.

Senators who decide to try for a presiden- tial nomination get pulled apart by their campaign staff, who want them on the road in New Hampshire or Iowa, and the office staff who want them in Washington doing the legislative dance under the big dome. Glenn, evidently, has been particularly hampered by these conflicting claims, with the result that until very recently he was but a part-time candidate. His organisation and money-raising reflect it.

Washington wise guys say that what a candidate does the year before the cam- paign is usually decisive. That is when the putting together of the campaign staff is supposed to be done, when its competence can be tested in attempting the inconse- quential; the year before is when the money-raising department in the organisa- tion must be perfected. With that in mind, it is being said that John Glenn, even with the hero's send-off given him in the film The Right Stuff, lost his chance last year. (Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker of Tennessee is not running for re-election this year because, it is said, he wants to stay out of office these next four years to be ready in 1988.)

Wise guys are not always right guys. There are others in the race with much less money and less organisation than Glenn, They are three fellow Democratic Senators: Gary Hart of Colorado, Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, and Allan Cranston of California. For the journalists covering the campaign the sentimental favourite is Holl- ings because he is the candidate with the best, and sometimes the meanest, sense of humour, though it is axiomatic in American politics that funny men are losers.

Fritz number two keeps the one-liners coming. A sample: 'If they call the MX missile "The Peacekeeper" [as Reagan does] what are you going to call the B-1 bomber — "The Virgin Mary"?' His joke material is freshly different too. He tells one about the time a Federal inspector came round to a businessman and asked, 'How many employees do you have broken down by sex?"None, sir', came the reply, `Alcoholism is our problem at this place.'

Senators Hart and Cranston are each perched on the tip of a Peacekeeper waiting for the blast-off which will take them and the war/bomb issue into the White House. Cranston has cornered the nuclear freeze position and made it his own while Hart, who has a long grave face that may remind Americans of a prettier Abraham Lincoln, speaks in slightly more technical language about war, Russia and 'force levels'.

Hart likes to go about saying he is the candidate of new ideas, though what he says that is new has failed to impress itself on American journalists. He is also suspected of political incest in that he is running against George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic nominee, whose campaign Hart managed. The former Senator from South Dakota has come out of retirement to have one more shot at the big time. At least that's what he says he's doing: his plat- form manner is so relaxed, his absence of intensity so obvious, that one wonders if McGovern has not injected himself into the race in hopes of making sure the party does not drift too close to Reaganism.

Former Florida Governor Reuben Askew appears to have injected himself into the race because he saw another Southern governor eight years ago do it and win. When he began the race nobody had heard of him outside his home state and now, after months of campaigning, he is as unknown and unsupported as when he began.

Not so Jesse Jackson. For the first time in the history of our presidential politics the dark horse candidate isn't a metaphor. He is a Baptist who sometimes, but not often, makes Reaganesque mistakes with facts, and gets jumped on for it with a ferocity which the press no longer uses on the President's more gaudy displays of ignor- ance. At the same time he is showing the poise, timing and discipline of a major national politician who, though he will not be nominated, may decide which Democrat will be. In any event his fellow South Carolinian, Fritz Hollings, has a place for him: 'As a minister he'd be good at all those funerals — that's what they use the vice- president for, isn't it?'