Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon News

Regrets, he has a few
In his best sugar-toned, pedagogic style, Kenneth Starr defends his tattered reputation in front of a tony L.A. audience.
By Vivienne Walt
[09/16/99]

Shays' rebellion takes the House
One determined Republican overcomes his own leadership's opposition to pass a bipartisan campaign finance reform bill -- again.
By Jake Tapper
[09/15/99]

The Amazon.com primary
Was Buchanan trying to seduce readers, not just voters, with his latest TV splash?
By Anthony York
[09/15/99]

The Buchanan triangle
Most analysts think a run by Buchanan under the Reform Party banner would hurt Bush more than Gore. It's time to think again.
By Micah L.Sifry
[09/15/99]

The real Bush drug scandal
Texas Gov. George W. Bush has presided over a crackdown on first-time drug offenders from poor neighborhoods like Houston's Third Ward Bottoms.
By Debra Dickerson
[09/14/99]

Complete archives for News

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

During the '80s, Democrats were quick to deride Ronald Reagan's claims of "Morning in America," with New York Gov. Mario Cuomo famously, and rightly, chiding the Great Communicator's vision of "a shining city on a hill" by saying: "There is despair, Mr. President, in faces you never see, in the places you never visit in your shining city." But Cuomo, and many of the most vocal Democrats protesting in the '80s, suddenly came down with laryngitis in the '90s, their cries of outrage replaced by cocktail chatter about the soaring NASDAQ.

It was the original "compassionate conservative," Teddy Roosevelt, who called the presidency a "bully pulpit." Unfortunately, the president has failed to use that pulpit to rally Americans to care about the poor. Talk about poverty has been replaced by endless nattering about "this era of unprecedented prosperity," as the president repeatedly calls it. "Finally the rising tide of our economy is lifting all boats," Clinton said in a radio address this year.

Prosperity is undeniably the theme of campaign 2000. The candidates are dishing it out like burgers and watermelon at a straw-poll picnic. In fact, listening to them talk, it's as if they're all auditioning not for leader of the free world, but for Regis Philbin's gig on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?"

In announcing his candidacy last week (candidates are now allotted, apparently by federal law, roughly half a dozen "announcements," which the media obligingly cover), Bill Bradley repeatedly used the P-word. First he said he was running "to guard the economic fundamentals of our prosperity," presumably the way he used to cover players in the NBA. He then called for "a deeper prosperity ... a prosperity that makes us feel rich inside as well as out."

What that means is anybody's guess, but even as platitude it's notable. Do you remember the days when campaign rhetoric at least tended to be about something noble, even inspirational? But "making us feel rich inside and out"? That's more Tony Robbins than Robert Kennedy.

Vice President Al Gore wants us to know that he, too, can pander to our noble love of money. "I want to keep our prosperity going," Gore said in New Hampshire, "and I know how to do it." He even vowed to make America the "world capital of prosperity" -- which begs the question: Where is the capital now? Russia? North Korea?

Not wanting to seem soft on prosperity, George W. Bush has gone on a prosperity jag himself, determined not to cede one inch of the humming economy to his Democratic rivals. "Some in this current administration think they've invented prosperity," he said. "But they didn't invent prosperity any more than they invented the Internet." In his announcement speech (his third, I believe), Bush used "prosperous" or "prosperity" 15 times. To hear him tell it, prosperity is the panacea.

"We must be prosperous to keep the peace," he said, suggesting that prosperity can even protect us from "terror and missiles and madmen." That's some bull market! Maybe by the time the year is out, we'll hear that the market can heal the sick and infirm. Or turn water into stock options.

Of course, Steve Forbes is the poster child for prosperity. It's his birthright -- and lately he has been railing against Alan Greenspan and "the high priests of finance at the Fed." The current prosperity is apparently just not prosperous enough.

Like one of those single-issue cable networks, the White House has given us the 24-hour Boom Channel -- All Prosperity, All The Time (with, of course, lots and lots of commercials).

The problem with this prosperity parade is the assumption that keeping the good times roaring will lead to everyone enjoying them. The language of the marketplace has eclipsed all other forms of rhetoric. Don't worry, they're saying, we're not going to ask you to even think of community and civic responsibility or anything that is not in your direct, economic self-interest -- and, somehow, a nation that we can be proud of will materialize.

Even the president's Poor-a-pa-Looza summer poverty tour was conducted not as an appeal to the nation's conscience but as a profit-making opportunity. "This is not about charity," said Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo, "it's about investment. There's money to be made."

It's instructive to remember that leadership hasn't always been reduced to economics and didn't always answer only to the laws of supply and demand. Thirty-two years ago, when Robert Kennedy launched his poverty tour, he shocked the nation's conscience with television pictures of hungry children in his arms. He had faith that if the American people knew what was going on, they would respond with something other than fear of inflation.

"When Robert Kennedy was assassinated, something died in America," said civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. "Something died in all of us." And Clinton buried whatever died with his flaccid rhetoric, a pale mockery of Kennedy's stirring words. It's like watching a Vegas lounge show where ersatz legends offer up feeble renditions of your all-time favorites. They've got the look, they've got the moves –- what's missing is the soul.

Next page | Dan Quayle mocks "compassionate conservatism"