Millennium Politics

by Alexander Cockburn

Otherwise sensible people grip me by the sleeve and portray in quivering tones the Y2K darkness that is nigh. Am I laying aside supplies of bottled water and canned goods? Do I have my shotgun ready to repel looters? They fail to note that I am listening with glazed incredulity, particularly when they tell me (as though this was somehow bad news) that the Internal Revenue Service will cease to function.

So far as I can see, the Y2K fever is (a) an excuse for software companies to hawk their latest updates and (b) a way for the semiconductor industry will free itself from all liability for the defects in its products throughout the next millennium. To this end, Silicon Valley sent a bill rocketing through Congress in October, absolving itself from all such liability suits. The bill cleared the relevant committees in about three minutes flat and was obediently signed by President Clinton as a rider to the budget deal.

Lacking the menace of imminent invasion or the scourge of famine, Americans always have a particularly vivid apprehension of Big Trouble on the way, and the Y2K alarms are yet another receptacle for such fears, mixed in with pre-millennial promises to get underway in conditions, not of nerve-jangling anarchy and chaos, but amid a presidential campaign of unendurable tedium. If early portents hold true, by June of 2000, the American people will be on their knees, begging for a Y2K meltdown, as necessary relief.

One could see the omens already on Nov. 4 of this year, when post-election analysts said that "moderation" won the day. Translated into the language of stump oratory, "moderation" means demure candidates speaking in terms so dulcet that their party labels and doctrines are invisible.

Take Bill Bradley, former U.S. senator from New Jersey. On Friday, Dec. 4, he launched his bid for the Democratic nomination with rhetoric so decorous that he could not even bring himself to say that he was challenging Al Gore.

"This is not about Vice President Al Gore and me," was Bradley's stirring call. So, if it wasn't about him and Gore, what was it about? Bradley was unable to explain, beyond saying that he preferred to talk about the future rather than the past. That was it. I read five different newspaper stories in search of further ideological nutrition concerning the Bradley candidacy but came up empty-handed.

Now consider the political slogans of the two main contenders for their respective party nominations, Gore and, for the Republicans, George W. Bush. Gore offers us "practical idealism," and Bush ripostes with "compassionate conservatism." To read these phrases is like being slowly suffocated with goose-down pillows, the way the Ottomans used to snuff out caliphs they had wearied of. This kind of blandness makes one irritable.

Gore says he wants to reject "false choices." What is a false choice? A false choice is saying that you have to choose between sugar plantations in Southern Florida and the survival of the Everglades. Under the Gore plan, we can accept huge political payoffs to the Democratic National Committee from the sugar barons and order up more environmental studies to prove that the toxic runoff from the plantations won't destroy the Everglades until after 2008. The "idealism" comes with wanting to save the Everglades. The practicality comes with knowing that in the present political system there's no way that can be done.

Want some more "practical idealism"? How about carcinogens in processed foods? Idealism prods Gore to say that all processed foods should be free of any additives shown to carry a cancer risk. Practicality, on the other hand, whispers in the vice president's other ear that it might be wiser to succumb to lobbyists from the processed food industry, wipe the irksome Delaney clause from the statute book and rule that additives can carry a risk of cancer. Idealism means spotted owls and unravaged parks. Practicality means listening to the northwestern congressional delegation, the timber companies and the coal-strippers.

At least, in these Clinton-Gore years, we've had the brisker version of "practical idealism" in the form of the "win-win" solution. Al Gore should get a new slogan writer. It sounds as though practical idealism comes from the genius who gave him "no controlling authority" when he tried to slide out of the legal problems associated with doing party fund raising from his government office.

George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" has the same fraudulent resonance. Conservatism makes you want to kill Karla Faye Tucker. Compassion allows you to take a phone call from Rev. Jerry Falwell, pleading for her life. Conservatism prompts you to privatize Social Security. Compassion compels you to remember all those poor pensioners who vote.

The alternative to all this mush? Well, why do you think Jesse "The Body" Ventura pulled the highest turnout in America last Nov. 3, when this former wrestler won the governorship of Minnesota? He put some life into the process. Which is what people want, now and in the next millennium.