DON'T BE PUT OFF BY THE COMPASSION

Mark Steyn, reporting from the Republican Convention in

Philadelphia, says that George W Bush's enlightened conservatism is just a ruse — but it might win him the White House

I KNOW next to nothing about Philadelphia except that Frank 'Big Bambino' Rizzo, police chief and mayor back in the Seventies, ran for election on a pledge to 'make Attila the Hun look like a faggot'. My kind of guy, even though he was a Democrat.

But that was then and this is now, and now compassion is all. As Dubya likes to say, 'Don't judge me by how many people I fry, judge me by what's in my heart.' (I paraphrase.) If Cheney is in the mood to jail anyone, he's keeping it to himself. This year's Convention programme is like a bad edition of The Black and White Minstrel Show: the stage has most- ly been abandoned to vapid white women and black men who seem strangely uncon- vincing. The speakers are heavy on single moms who believe in local control of educa- tion, Hispanic agricultural workers who believe in sensible health-insurance reform, breast-cancer survivors who believe in tax cuts, etc. If Nelson Mandela were to stroll by the Convention today, Cheney would be the first to say, 'Hey, if you're the African-Amer- ican senior who believes in strong missile defence, you're not on till tomorrow night.'

Thus, the opening day's Pledge of Alle- giance was led by a blind mountain-climber. A senior Republican tells me that this is the first blind mountain-climber ever to address a political convention, though no doubt the Democrats are scouring the land for a blind mountain-climbing lesbian. The non- compassionate conservatives — the pro- ffers, gun nuts, the religious right — are unimpressed at seeing the GOP's big tent turned into base camp. 'This blind moun- tain-climber,' said one North Carolina dele- gate. 'What's he climbed?'

'He's climbing Everest next year,' I said.

Timm,' said the delegate. 'Well, I'll be interested to see if he can make it up to the podium.' In the event, he had a seeing-eye dog, who presumably gets into the old gog- gles and crampons and accompanies his mas- ter everywhere, the first K9 on K2.

Perhaps, asked why he wants to scale Everest, the blind mountain-climber would simply reply, like Mallory, 'Because it's there. Or maybe over there. Anyway, that general direction.' Because it's there: that's why I'm at the Republican Convention, scaling the vast mountains of compassion- ate verbiage, blinded by the lightness, des- perate for a glimpse of an Abominable Snowman or two. But Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson and all the other incendiary Pats of yore are nowhere to be seen: the only Patness to be found is in Dubya's responses.

'The Republican Convention,' I said to my cab driver, 'and make it snappy.' Some chance. He pulled up by a stand offering free mammograms. 'This can't be right,' I said. But he insisted it was the official entrance. 'As part of the Convention,' said the lady, 'we're offering free mammograph- ic consultations.'

'Thanks all the same, but that's not much use to me, is it?' I chuckled. 'You'd be sur- prised,' she said, and explained that male breast cancer was America's silent killer. 'We're also doing free prostates,' she added.

'As long as I don't get Bob Dole's,' I said, pressing on before she could start feeling for lumps under my breast and I had to explain that it was my old, gnarled, conservative hard heart. After watching Bill Clinton steal most of their policies, Republicans are now appro- priating Bill Clinton's style. After all, he's spent much of the last eight years performing free mammograms on Kathleen Wil- ley and co, and it seems to have worked out well for him.

'So what do you think of it?' I asked an Oklahoma delegate.

'Well, George Dubya Bush is a strong candidate with a positive messa. .

Oh, come on, what do you really think?

'Well, there's some truth to the argument that in recent years we Republicans have perhaps tended to be a bit strident and nega. '

No, no, what do you really think?

He sighed. 'I keep telling myself all I have to do is get through till the end of the week.' Yet just because my pal's white and armed to the hilt, why should he be excluded from the inclusiveness? The party that opposes quotas has turned its Convention into the biggest quota program of all. In a convention awash with visible minorities, the poor guy was part of the Republican party's non-visi- ble majority: he's not black, he's not gay, he can't speak Spanish, he hasn't triumphed over breast cancer. 'Leave no child behind,' says Dubya, incessantly. But leave all these cranky white bastards behind: that suits us just fine. That was more or less what hap- pened to William Hague, who turned up here to salute Dubya, as one colossus of global conservatism to another, and to the best of my knowledge never made it past the martnnogram. I'm no pollster but I would say that about 5 per cent of the delegates believe Passionately in compassionate conservatism, 5 per cent are longing for Pat Buchanan to walk in and relaunch his 1992 cultural war for the soul of America, and the remaining 90 per cent would prefer cultural warfare but are willing to string along with this ersatz- Clintonian shtick if it works.

Finally, though, someone at this Republi- can Convention had the guts to stand up, go negative and make a vicious personal attack - • on Republicans. In his keynote address, General Colin Powell argued that Republi- cans were racist hypocrites who'd aban- doned the mantle of Lincoln and cared nothing for helping black children while being happy to provide corporate affirma- tive action for fat cats.

And the Republicans loved it! General Powell had said much the same thing at the 96 convention, but the cranky Doleful GOP of .four years ago had been unimpressed. Tlus time round, they applauded, they Cheered, they said to themselves: 'You know, that guy's got us just right. We really are awful, aren't we? And he's so right about how great those racial quotas are! If we'd had racial quotas in the GOP, we wouldn't be such a bunch of unlikeable white racists!'

Al Gore and his reprogranamers must be baffled. If the Vice-President had wanted to beat up on Republicans for wanting to leave black kids in the ghetto, his advisers would have said, `Nah, that's too negative. Affirmative action's not popular. The speech'll backfire and you'll get hammered for being mean. But maybe we can sell it to the Republicans.' I may have to revise my opinion of Con- vention honcho Andrew Card's three- pronged strategy of filling the screen with blacks, gays and Hispanics; saying nothing beastly about the Democrats; and being unsparingly critical of your own failings. presumably the idea is that in two weeks' time in Los Angeles viewers will tune in, see a bunch of blacks and gays attacking the Republicans, and go, 'Hey, this is a rerun. What else is on?' And, when you think about it, the GOP's decision to stage the Democratic Conven- tion two weeks early is a stroke of genius. The Democrats run effective conventions ('92, '96), the Republicans run effective governments (most states and most major cities). Dubya has effectively divided the two, in much the same way as parliamentary monarchies distinguish between the digni- fied and efficient parts of the constitution. The Republican Convention is basically the US equivalent of the Queen Mother's 100th birthday bash, if you can imagine the Queen Mum as a black Hispanic Queen Single Mum. And, like the royal family, the Convention is scrupulously non-political. On Tuesday morning Colin Powell went on television and said he would be willing to serve in a Gore administration.

And I don't doubt it. General Powell is far too grand for anything as grubby and vulgar as politics. Maybe he'll be in the Cabinet, or maybe after November we can all forget him for another four years until the next qua- drennial refrain of how the general is Ameri- ca's I...ast Best Hope. We can certainly forget about John McCain and Elizabeth Dole: you wouldn't want McCain as defence secretary because he's nuts, and you wouldn't want Mrs Dole as anything because she's a big- government dominatrix in favour of raising the legal drinking age to 23. If there's one thing I've learnt during this prolonged expo- sure to 'compassionate conservatism', it's that the right to drink yourself into a stupor is one of the most precious of liberties.

So make the most of General Quota, Mister Maverick, the blind mountain- climber, Snoop Doggy Dogg and the Broad- way cast of La Cage Aux Folks. Most of the people we're seeing this week will, happily, be irrelevant to Dubya's administration. Come November, I don't expect the Repub- licans to have made significant inroads among African-American voters. But, whether or not General Powell knows it, that's not his job. His job is to make signifi- cant inroads among those white voters who need to be reassured that pulling the lever for the Republicans doesn't mean you're Jesse Helms.

Looked at that way, this sappy Convention is a price worth paying for a conservative administration with robust views on missile defence, tax cuts and social-security reform. And any incendiary right-wingers disoriented by the gay Hispanics up on the podium need only wander down to one of the city's many protests. I checked out the big demo on Ben Franklin Parkway, a mass protest against more or less everything, a vast one-stop shop for all your doomed-cause needs, among them 'US Military Out Of Okinawa', 'Boy- cott Veal', 'Reparations For African-Ameri- cans', 'The Fraud Of Education Reform Under Capitalism', 'Settle The PLCB Con- tract Now', 'No Stadium In Chinatown' and 'More Money For Right-Wing Columnists'. Okay, I made that last one up. My suit and tie were still enough to give me away. 'You're with the corporate media, right?' said one of the hot-looking young anarchist babes agitating against police brutality, mulling over whether to speak to me.

On behalf of my corporate masters, I asked how the protest was going police- brutality-wise. 'I smoked some dope Satur- day during the day and the cops didn't mind,' she said. 'But at night they were kind of funny about it.' She gave me the benefits of her political insight: 'Underneath all this empty rhetoric about inclusiveness, the Republicans are as right-wing as ever.'

'I know,' I said. 'Isn't it great?' She didn't find that funny, so I asked what she thought of Dubya.

She turned round and showed me the proud slogan on the small of her back: 'FUCK BUSH'. He'll make a fine conserva- tive president, but I have to say there were times during his wretched touchy-feely Con- vention that I wish I'd asked for the name of her tattooist.