American Studies (26 page)
Authors: Louis Menand
Although
Penthouse
and several other plaintiffs ultimately obtained a federal court ruling that Sears’s letter constituted unlawful prior restraint, “the damage,” as John Heidenry says, “had been done. The removal of
Playboy
and
Penthouse
from ten thousand stores across the country, including the mammoth 7-Eleven and Rite-Aid chains, sent the circulations of both magazines plummeting.”
14
Hustler was one of the magazines affected. The incident, Heidenry also points out, was not an isolated incident of extremist pressure on mainstream taste. It reflected a shift in mainstream tolerance of pornography as well. In 1986, Time magazine reported that 63 percent of women and 47 percent of men now believed that pornography led men to commit rape.
Penthouse
and several other plaintiffs ultimately obtained a federal court ruling that Sears’s letter constituted unlawful prior restraint, “the damage,” as John Heidenry says, “had been done. The removal of
Playboy
and
Penthouse
from ten thousand stores across the country, including the mammoth 7-Eleven and Rite-Aid chains, sent the circulations of both magazines plummeting.”
14
Hustler was one of the magazines affected. The incident, Heidenry also points out, was not an isolated incident of extremist pressure on mainstream taste. It reflected a shift in mainstream tolerance of pornography as well. In 1986, Time magazine reported that 63 percent of women and 47 percent of men now believed that pornography led men to commit rape.
But the demise of the culture of anything-goes sexuality coincided with the demise of the culture of televangelism, and by the end of 1987, when
Hustler v. Falwell
was finally argued before the Supreme Court, Falwell’s empire had become as marginalized as Flynt’s. The reason was the PTL scandal, which was, fittingly, played out in the twin worlds of religious broadcasting and adult magazines. The scandal began when Jim Bakker, the host, with his wife Tammy Faye, of the television program of the PTL (Praise the Lord) Club, was accused of having committed adultery by a church worker named Jessica Hahn, who claimed Bakker had deflowered her, and of having used several hundred thousand dollars of PTL money to purchase her silence. The ensuing inquiry into PTL’s financial affairs disclosed a massive bilking scheme, and in the uproar, Bakker asked Falwell to take custody of his ministry. Falwell agreed, and his magnanimity proved his undoing. Falwell’s constituency was Baptist; Bakker’s was Pentecostal, and the suspicion quickly arose that Falwell was principally interested not in saving PTL but in dissolving it in the interests of folding its viewership—the program was said in 1987 to reach over twelve million homes—into his Old Time Gospel Hour ministry. Falwell denied the charge, but it was repeated continually, and the light thrown by Bakker’s indictment and conviction on the whole practice of fund-raising through religious broadcasting (by 1987, The Old Time Gospel Hour was reported to be spending twenty-six minutes of every half-hour pleading for money) ended by crippling the national credibility of televangelists like Falwell.
Hustler v. Falwell
was finally argued before the Supreme Court, Falwell’s empire had become as marginalized as Flynt’s. The reason was the PTL scandal, which was, fittingly, played out in the twin worlds of religious broadcasting and adult magazines. The scandal began when Jim Bakker, the host, with his wife Tammy Faye, of the television program of the PTL (Praise the Lord) Club, was accused of having committed adultery by a church worker named Jessica Hahn, who claimed Bakker had deflowered her, and of having used several hundred thousand dollars of PTL money to purchase her silence. The ensuing inquiry into PTL’s financial affairs disclosed a massive bilking scheme, and in the uproar, Bakker asked Falwell to take custody of his ministry. Falwell agreed, and his magnanimity proved his undoing. Falwell’s constituency was Baptist; Bakker’s was Pentecostal, and the suspicion quickly arose that Falwell was principally interested not in saving PTL but in dissolving it in the interests of folding its viewership—the program was said in 1987 to reach over twelve million homes—into his Old Time Gospel Hour ministry. Falwell denied the charge, but it was repeated continually, and the light thrown by Bakker’s indictment and conviction on the whole practice of fund-raising through religious broadcasting (by 1987, The Old Time Gospel Hour was reported to be spending twenty-six minutes of every half-hour pleading for money) ended by crippling the national credibility of televangelists like Falwell.
Hahn, meanwhile, went on to pose twice for
Playboy
, the second time following plastic surgery subsidized by Hugh Hefner himself. (Her claim to have been a virgin when Bakker slept with her has been pretty thoroughly discredited.) In 1988, a year after Hahn’s pictures
appeared in Playboy, Penthouse revealed that another prominent televangelist, Jimmy Swaggart, had paid a prostitute to pose for him, in a hotel room, in provocative postures he told her he had seen in adult magazines. And a year after that, Penthouse published an interview with a protégé of Bakker’s who claimed to have served as his “male prostitute.”
Playboy
, the second time following plastic surgery subsidized by Hugh Hefner himself. (Her claim to have been a virgin when Bakker slept with her has been pretty thoroughly discredited.) In 1988, a year after Hahn’s pictures
appeared in Playboy, Penthouse revealed that another prominent televangelist, Jimmy Swaggart, had paid a prostitute to pose for him, in a hotel room, in provocative postures he told her he had seen in adult magazines. And a year after that, Penthouse published an interview with a protégé of Bakker’s who claimed to have served as his “male prostitute.”
The sexually explicit magazine industry and the televangelist fund-raising industry were, in short, working opposite sides of the same street. They knew each other’s business better than anyone else in America did: they were fighting over the same socioeconomic constituency. So it is not surprising that when Falwell sued Flynt over the Campari ad, the lawyer he chose to represent him was Norman Roy Grutman, a man who had become famous as the principal attorney for Penthouse. Falwell knew Grutman well. He had met him back in 1981 when he was suing Penthouse for running an interview with him without his permission. Grutman had attracted attention on that occasion by referring publicly to Falwell as “Foulwell,” but he won the case—and got a new client in the bargain. Flynt has, understandably, a good deal of fun with this irony in An Unseemly
Man,
but the filmmakers, for some reason, never mention it. They may have felt it was the kind of detail that would spoil the simplicity of the legal drama they wished to present, but it is a detail that touches the heart of the cultural moment their movie is about.
Man,
but the filmmakers, for some reason, never mention it. They may have felt it was the kind of detail that would spoil the simplicity of the legal drama they wished to present, but it is a detail that touches the heart of the cultural moment their movie is about.
L
aurie Anderson was born in Chicago in 1947 and was raised in the suburb of Glen Ellyn. She entered Mills College, in California, in 1965, with the intention of becoming a doctor, but dropped out after a year and moved to New York City, where she enrolled at Barnard. She graduated with a degree in art history in 1969, studied for a year with Sol Lewitt and Carl Andre at the School of Visual Arts, and in 1972 received an M.F.A. from Columbia, where she majored in sculpture and studied with Meyer Schapiro and the philosopher Arthur Danto. Her career as a performance and mixed-media artist began the same year.
aurie Anderson was born in Chicago in 1947 and was raised in the suburb of Glen Ellyn. She entered Mills College, in California, in 1965, with the intention of becoming a doctor, but dropped out after a year and moved to New York City, where she enrolled at Barnard. She graduated with a degree in art history in 1969, studied for a year with Sol Lewitt and Carl Andre at the School of Visual Arts, and in 1972 received an M.F.A. from Columbia, where she majored in sculpture and studied with Meyer Schapiro and the philosopher Arthur Danto. Her career as a performance and mixed-media artist began the same year.
In 1978, Anderson heard the song “O Souverain,” from Jules Massenet’s opera
Le Cid
(1885), at a concert in Berkeley. The experience inspired her to write “O Superman,” which, with the help of a five-hundred-dollar grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, was released as a single by 110 Records in 1981. “O Superman” went to number two on the British pop charts. It was a crossover hit that no one had anticipated—110 Records had pressed only a thousand
copies, and lacked the capacity to meet the demand for more. The song’s success led to a six-record contract between Anderson and Warner Bros. Records. The first of those albums was
Big Science,
released in 1982.
Le Cid
(1885), at a concert in Berkeley. The experience inspired her to write “O Superman,” which, with the help of a five-hundred-dollar grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, was released as a single by 110 Records in 1981. “O Superman” went to number two on the British pop charts. It was a crossover hit that no one had anticipated—110 Records had pressed only a thousand
copies, and lacked the capacity to meet the demand for more. The song’s success led to a six-record contract between Anderson and Warner Bros. Records. The first of those albums was
Big Science,
released in 1982.
The Warner Bros. money enabled Anderson to complete and mount her mixed-media work United States, which she had been working on since 1979, and which included many of the songs on
Big Science
.
United States
opened at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on February 3, 1983. (I saw the second show, on February 5 and 6.) The work was divided into four parts, comprising seventy-eight separately titled segments, some of them musical and some spoken; and it took eight hours, split over two nights, to perform. Although it is Anderson’s most famous work, it has been performed in its entirety only four times—twice in the Opera House at BAM, once at the Dominion Theatre in London, and once in Zurich, where it was done in one all-night, eight-hour set. No complete video of it exist.
1
Big Science
.
United States
opened at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on February 3, 1983. (I saw the second show, on February 5 and 6.) The work was divided into four parts, comprising seventy-eight separately titled segments, some of them musical and some spoken; and it took eight hours, split over two nights, to perform. Although it is Anderson’s most famous work, it has been performed in its entirety only four times—twice in the Opera House at BAM, once at the Dominion Theatre in London, and once in Zurich, where it was done in one all-night, eight-hour set. No complete video of it exist.
1
United States
is often classified as performance art, but this can be misleading. The work was much more conventionally staged than performance art ordinarily is. Anderson used the proscenium for the traditional theatrical purpose—that is, to establish an unambiguous distinction between the performer and the audience, a distinction performance artists generally go to some lengths to blur. And she rigorously excluded the element that gives most performance art its edge, which is contingency. In performance art, a piece isn’t performed; the performance is the piece. The work of art is whatever happens within the set of conditions the artist has laid down.
is often classified as performance art, but this can be misleading. The work was much more conventionally staged than performance art ordinarily is. Anderson used the proscenium for the traditional theatrical purpose—that is, to establish an unambiguous distinction between the performer and the audience, a distinction performance artists generally go to some lengths to blur. And she rigorously excluded the element that gives most performance art its edge, which is contingency. In performance art, a piece isn’t performed; the performance is the piece. The work of art is whatever happens within the set of conditions the artist has laid down.
Anderson had created that kind of work many times before. In her
Institutional Dream Series
(1973), she had slept in public places (such as the beach at Coney Island in January; night court at 100 Centre Street, in New York City; and the women’s bathroom in the Schermerhorn Library at Columbia). In
Duets on Ice
(1974–75), she had performed on the streets in the five boroughs of New York City and in Genoa, Italy, to whatever groups of passersby assembled. She told them personal anecdotes, accompanying herself on a “self-playing” violin—that is, an instrument that played prerecorded
music when the bow was scraped across the strings. “The prerecorded material was mostly of cowboy songs recorded on ninety-minute cassettes,” as she described the piece. “I’d play along, but since it was a loop there was no definite way to end the concert. So the timing mechanism was a pair of skates with their blades frozen into blocks of ice. When the ice melted and I lost my balance, the concert was over.”
2
The blocks of ice were the performance-art element: they made each performance time- and place-specific. In
United States
, though, Anderson was performing pieces she had already created, and some of which her audience knew from listening to “O Superman” and other tracks on Big Science. Anderson’s appearance at BAM had a lot more in common with Barry Manilow at Wolf Trap than it did with Chris Burden at The Kitchen. United States was a concert.
Institutional Dream Series
(1973), she had slept in public places (such as the beach at Coney Island in January; night court at 100 Centre Street, in New York City; and the women’s bathroom in the Schermerhorn Library at Columbia). In
Duets on Ice
(1974–75), she had performed on the streets in the five boroughs of New York City and in Genoa, Italy, to whatever groups of passersby assembled. She told them personal anecdotes, accompanying herself on a “self-playing” violin—that is, an instrument that played prerecorded
music when the bow was scraped across the strings. “The prerecorded material was mostly of cowboy songs recorded on ninety-minute cassettes,” as she described the piece. “I’d play along, but since it was a loop there was no definite way to end the concert. So the timing mechanism was a pair of skates with their blades frozen into blocks of ice. When the ice melted and I lost my balance, the concert was over.”
2
The blocks of ice were the performance-art element: they made each performance time- and place-specific. In
United States
, though, Anderson was performing pieces she had already created, and some of which her audience knew from listening to “O Superman” and other tracks on Big Science. Anderson’s appearance at BAM had a lot more in common with Barry Manilow at Wolf Trap than it did with Chris Burden at The Kitchen. United States was a concert.
Still, Anderson did come out of the performance art tradition, and
United States
was essentially an elaboration of that tradition’s central insight, which is that the ground of expression is the body. This may seem a counterintuitive thing to say about a work famous for an ostentatious display of electronic hardware—vocoder, harmonizer, synclavier—and lots of visual effects. And most of the songs and stand-up routines Anderson delivered in
United States
were wan, ironic tales about daily life in the postindustrial—what we now call the digital—age, with repeated references to airplanes, televisions, petrochemicals, missiles, and outer space. The gadgets and the spaceships may have given people the idea that
United States
enacted a disaffection with creeping dehumanization, that it was a cri de coeur against the disenchantment of the world. But its effect on me was exactly the opposite. I took the point to be that the world can’t be disenchanted, because enchantment is the mode in which human beings experience it. The trail of the human serpent (said William James) is over everything, even answering-machine beeps and aircraft safety instructions. Our electronics is no less an expression of ourselves than our poetry is.
United States
was essentially an elaboration of that tradition’s central insight, which is that the ground of expression is the body. This may seem a counterintuitive thing to say about a work famous for an ostentatious display of electronic hardware—vocoder, harmonizer, synclavier—and lots of visual effects. And most of the songs and stand-up routines Anderson delivered in
United States
were wan, ironic tales about daily life in the postindustrial—what we now call the digital—age, with repeated references to airplanes, televisions, petrochemicals, missiles, and outer space. The gadgets and the spaceships may have given people the idea that
United States
enacted a disaffection with creeping dehumanization, that it was a cri de coeur against the disenchantment of the world. But its effect on me was exactly the opposite. I took the point to be that the world can’t be disenchanted, because enchantment is the mode in which human beings experience it. The trail of the human serpent (said William James) is over everything, even answering-machine beeps and aircraft safety instructions. Our electronics is no less an expression of ourselves than our poetry is.
One of the great evolutionary leaps in the history of modern entertainment was the invention of the microphone. The microphone is more than a convenience, and it is more than a prop; it is an extension
of the body. It expands the space the performer can command by reducing that space to the dimensions of intimacy. It turns the stadium into a bedroom; it murmurs softly into the ears of thousands. And then there is the object itself—this long, sleek, juiced-up thing just begging to be caressed with sounds, to be kissed and teased and masturbated. It is the instrument of vocal seduction and its very image. That the microphone looks the way it does is no accident: the ghost of the body is hidden in the forms of everything we create. Many images in
United States
were designed to make this point: for example, an enormous blown-up photograph of an electric wall socket. It looked, twenty feet high, with its two vertical slots and the little hole underneath, just like a face, frozen in an expression of permanent astonishment, an electronic Mr. Potato Head.
of the body. It expands the space the performer can command by reducing that space to the dimensions of intimacy. It turns the stadium into a bedroom; it murmurs softly into the ears of thousands. And then there is the object itself—this long, sleek, juiced-up thing just begging to be caressed with sounds, to be kissed and teased and masturbated. It is the instrument of vocal seduction and its very image. That the microphone looks the way it does is no accident: the ghost of the body is hidden in the forms of everything we create. Many images in
United States
were designed to make this point: for example, an enormous blown-up photograph of an electric wall socket. It looked, twenty feet high, with its two vertical slots and the little hole underneath, just like a face, frozen in an expression of permanent astonishment, an electronic Mr. Potato Head.
All the hardware in
United States
was prosthetic in just this way. Anderson programmed her synthesizers with human voices (like the breathy “hah hah hahs” in “O Superman”); she projected her own silhouette onto a vast screen and made shadow puppets with her hands. She inserted a miniature speaker into her mouth and manipulated the sound by moving her lips. She recorded her own voice on a strip of audiotape, fixed the tape to a bow, and “played” it on a violin with a pick-up mounted on it in place of strings (the “self-playing” instrument she had devised for
Duets on Ice
). She wired her head and performed a drum solo on her skull. She turned herself, in short, into an instrument. She didn’t sing the body electric. She was the body electric.
United States
was prosthetic in just this way. Anderson programmed her synthesizers with human voices (like the breathy “hah hah hahs” in “O Superman”); she projected her own silhouette onto a vast screen and made shadow puppets with her hands. She inserted a miniature speaker into her mouth and manipulated the sound by moving her lips. She recorded her own voice on a strip of audiotape, fixed the tape to a bow, and “played” it on a violin with a pick-up mounted on it in place of strings (the “self-playing” instrument she had devised for
Duets on Ice
). She wired her head and performed a drum solo on her skull. She turned herself, in short, into an instrument. She didn’t sing the body electric. She was the body electric.
The monologues in
United States
mostly expressed a mild neurosis about living in a world filled with airplanes and answering machines; but the work itself exuded control. A petite androgyne, done up in punk chic—black suit, red socks, Vaseline-spiked hair—and manipulating her voice to sound, alternately, like a Midwestern ingenue and a solemnly goofy Ronald Reagan, dominated the room for eight hours. Contingency was banned for a reason: In two evenings’ worth of songs and stories about how things tend to go wrong, nothing was supposed to go wrong. And the gamine persona was plainly designed to point up a contrast: the more waiflike Anderson
seemed, the more mysterious and impressive was the control she exerted. The show was wired, and there was a woman in a punk hairdo throwing the switches. Feminism was not exactly the center of Anderson’s material, but it was part of the message.
United States
mostly expressed a mild neurosis about living in a world filled with airplanes and answering machines; but the work itself exuded control. A petite androgyne, done up in punk chic—black suit, red socks, Vaseline-spiked hair—and manipulating her voice to sound, alternately, like a Midwestern ingenue and a solemnly goofy Ronald Reagan, dominated the room for eight hours. Contingency was banned for a reason: In two evenings’ worth of songs and stories about how things tend to go wrong, nothing was supposed to go wrong. And the gamine persona was plainly designed to point up a contrast: the more waiflike Anderson
seemed, the more mysterious and impressive was the control she exerted. The show was wired, and there was a woman in a punk hairdo throwing the switches. Feminism was not exactly the center of Anderson’s material, but it was part of the message.
Well, as the song said, that was the time, and that was the record of the time. People like me, coming out of the sixties, once dreamed of a fusion between something like pop music and something like conceptual art. We longed for an expressive form that would combine the urgency and excitement of a musical concert with the cool detachment of an art without illusions. We wished for energy and imagination without pretension, for entertainment that did not pander and art that was not antagonistic to commercialism, merely indifferent to it. I suppose we hoped to strike such a balance in our own lives. Glimpses of what that sensibility might have been like were pretty rare. United States was one of them.
I
n the summer of 1992, after he was assured of the Democratic nomination for president, Bill Clinton took a room at the Capitol Hilton, in Washington, and set about the business of interviewing potential running mates. Al Gore was then in his second term as a senator from Tennessee. Gore had run for the Democratic presidential nomination himself four years earlier, on a platform (boiled down to its crudest political elements) of electability. The basic argument of his campaign was that a Democrat could not win the presidency unless he was a white Southerner. Gore lost the nomination, but he did not lose the argument. George Bush, a Connecticut Yankee, defeated Michael Dukakis, the governor of Massachusetts, by running as a Texan. The lesson was not lost on the Democrats. Bill Clinton rose from the ashes of Michael Dukakis.
1
n the summer of 1992, after he was assured of the Democratic nomination for president, Bill Clinton took a room at the Capitol Hilton, in Washington, and set about the business of interviewing potential running mates. Al Gore was then in his second term as a senator from Tennessee. Gore had run for the Democratic presidential nomination himself four years earlier, on a platform (boiled down to its crudest political elements) of electability. The basic argument of his campaign was that a Democrat could not win the presidency unless he was a white Southerner. Gore lost the nomination, but he did not lose the argument. George Bush, a Connecticut Yankee, defeated Michael Dukakis, the governor of Massachusetts, by running as a Texan. The lesson was not lost on the Democrats. Bill Clinton rose from the ashes of Michael Dukakis.
1
According to the account in Bob Woodward’s
The Agenda
, Gore’s vice-presidential interview lasted three hours. Afterward, Clinton told his staff that he was pleased by their compatibility and was inclined to offer Gore the spot. In the context of a transaction usually governed by the political consideration known as “balance,”
this was not the obvious choice. Putting Gore on the ticket, the Bush campaign would say when the selection was announced, strengthened Clinton’s chances in Arkansas. Why Gore? one of Clinton’s advisers, Paul Begala, asked him. “I could die, that’s why,” Clinton said.
The Agenda
, Gore’s vice-presidential interview lasted three hours. Afterward, Clinton told his staff that he was pleased by their compatibility and was inclined to offer Gore the spot. In the context of a transaction usually governed by the political consideration known as “balance,”
this was not the obvious choice. Putting Gore on the ticket, the Bush campaign would say when the selection was announced, strengthened Clinton’s chances in Arkansas. Why Gore? one of Clinton’s advisers, Paul Begala, asked him. “I could die, that’s why,” Clinton said.
Well, that was one possibility. It has become a little hard to remember, thanks to the short-term, not to say the micro-term, mindset of his administration, in which every movement seems to be scripted by the morning’s poll results, that Clinton ran for the presidency with the intention of doing something more than simply clinging to the office. But he did. He wished to change the DNA of the Democratic Party, to shed its associations with big government, interest-group politics, and agnosticism about “values.” And in this matter he and Gore thought exactly alike. Their shared commitment to genetic engineering had led them, long before that summer, to enter into a mutual nonaggression pact. Clinton remained neutral in the 1988 primaries to help Gore’s chances against Dukakis, and, according to Woodward, Clinton would have stayed out of the 1992 primaries as well if Gore had decided to run. In 1989, though, Gore’s son was struck by a car and almost killed; the event led to a period of intense family introspection, and Gore was still not ready, three years later, to take on a national campaign. The door was opened for Clinton, and he walked through like a conqueror.
By choosing Gore as his running mate in 1992—by, in effect, doubling the Southernness of his candidacy—Clinton was casting himself off from the party of George McGovern, Walter Mondale, and Mario Cuomo. He was placing all his chips on the future. And he won the bet. The selection of Gore gave the campaign a huge bounce in the polls coming out of the convention, and it never looked back. As the Bush people had predicted, Gore helped deliver Arkansas; he also helped deliver California and Michigan. And in the end, the McGovernites went along, too. After all, they had no place else to go.
In short, Gore has always been Clinton’s designated successor. He is the ideological heir, the legacy-bearer, the anointed’s anointed. “I could die”: if anything were to happen to Clinton, the genetic
code would not be lost. Gore would know what to do. And if nothing happened to Clinton, if Clinton made it through his terms of office, then Gore would carry on the work for another eight years, and the Democratic Party would be saved for a whole generation. In accepting the vice-presidential nomination at the 1992 convention, Gore told the delegates that he finally had the job of his dreams: he was the warm-up act for Elvis. In his own mind, he must have been imagining the day when it would be said that Elvis had been the warm-up act for Al Gore.
code would not be lost. Gore would know what to do. And if nothing happened to Clinton, if Clinton made it through his terms of office, then Gore would carry on the work for another eight years, and the Democratic Party would be saved for a whole generation. In accepting the vice-presidential nomination at the 1992 convention, Gore told the delegates that he finally had the job of his dreams: he was the warm-up act for Elvis. In his own mind, he must have been imagining the day when it would be said that Elvis had been the warm-up act for Al Gore.
Mortality does not seem to be the gravest threat right now to the grand design of Clinton and Gore. The gravest threat is what it has always been: Clinton. The trouble with Clinton is that he is, in the considered and no doubt heartfelt words of George Bush, a bullshit artist. A bullshit artist is not the same thing as a liar (though this may seem like the kind of distinction a bullshit artist would make). Clinton always sounds like he is trying to please everyone because he is always trying to please everyone. That is the basis of his approach to government. And since he can’t always please everyone, he often finds himself obliged to warm the truth a little. This is not because he wishes to deceive you; it’s because he wants you to know that his heart is in the right place. He cannot bear to be the bringer of bad news—which is why it is fully believable that he did not tell his wife the truth about Monica Lewinsky (or, for that matter, tell Monica Lewinsky the truth about his wife). He thinks that even though the situation may not be 100 percent copacetic right this minute, everything will be fine in the long run, so why cause unnecessary pain? Monica will be happy with her new job at
George
, where she will find another celebrity to flash her underwear at and forget all about Bill; Bill will spend more time with Hillary; Ken will self-destruct. He truly is the man from Hope.
George
, where she will find another celebrity to flash her underwear at and forget all about Bill; Bill will spend more time with Hillary; Ken will self-destruct. He truly is the man from Hope.
It is the sour and rather pathetic irony of his career that Clinton is now in the position of having to defend himself against the charge that he is a liar by arguing that he is only a bullshit artist. He wasn’t good (to paraphrase Lyle Lovett), but he had good intentions. The success of this argument will be politically determined. From the perspective of the grand design, though, the danger is that Clinton’s
personal weakness, his tendency to let his intentions vouch for his actions, will discredit his politics, which are the politics of compromise and coalition-building. Reaching out will come to seem indistinguishable from pandering, and the so-called Third Way—the path, which Clinton is credited with blazing and which most of Europe is now supposed to be trying to follow, between welfare-state liberalism and free-market conservatism—will look like an empty formula for political survival. And if Clinton goes down, can Gore rise from
his
ashes?
personal weakness, his tendency to let his intentions vouch for his actions, will discredit his politics, which are the politics of compromise and coalition-building. Reaching out will come to seem indistinguishable from pandering, and the so-called Third Way—the path, which Clinton is credited with blazing and which most of Europe is now supposed to be trying to follow, between welfare-state liberalism and free-market conservatism—will look like an empty formula for political survival. And if Clinton goes down, can Gore rise from
his
ashes?
One morning in late September 1998, a few days after the day on which the House Judiciary Committee had made the nation a Rosh Hashanah gift of Clinton’s grand jury testimony, I went to the White House to talk to a man now contemplating the fact that he was about to be handed, and possibly sooner rather than later, an unpleasantly limp baton.
The vice president’s office shares a reception area with the president’s, and on this morning members of the Congressional Black Caucus, led by Maxine Waters, were arriving to meet with Clinton. The Black Caucus had recently appointed itself the fairness referee in the president’s impending struggle with Congress, and if they had been wearing mood badges that morning, every badge would have displayed the same message: Comfort Level Extremely High. The African-American public is almost united in its contempt for the charges Starr chose to bring against the president, and this has put the black congressional leadership in the unusual position of being able to take a stand on principle without giving up an inch of political ground. If the president pulls through, they will have earned many favors. If he falls, they will be there to pick up some of the pieces. Charles Rangel, the longtime Harlem congressman who sat on the House Judiciary Committee that voted articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon, was slapping backs and growling with genial pleasure, like a politician inside his own local clubhouse. The thought occurred that Charles Rangel always gives the impression of a politician inside his own local clubhouse. But the manner seemed to fit the moment.
Several nights earlier, Gore had introduced the president at a
black-tie dinner sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus, and I had watched him on C-SPAN, doing some homework on the famously inscrutable Gore body language. He has, as a public speaker, only two dials on the console: pace and volume. To convey gravity, he slows down; to convey urgency, he gets louder. Clinton purrs; Gore declaims. In his address to the Black Caucus, he ended by listing, at about volume nine, the positions to which Clinton has appointed African-Americans during his administration. It was, indeed, a long and impressive list, and it accomplished the desired end of bringing the audience to their feet. When Clinton’s turn at the podium came, he was, by comparison, muted, long-winded, and a little dry, as though the only thing on the minds of everyone in the room must be the pros and cons of pending empowerment-zone legislation. “Just doing the job the American people elected me to do” was the message implied by the performance. One could see the division of labor for the midterm campaign ahead.
black-tie dinner sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus, and I had watched him on C-SPAN, doing some homework on the famously inscrutable Gore body language. He has, as a public speaker, only two dials on the console: pace and volume. To convey gravity, he slows down; to convey urgency, he gets louder. Clinton purrs; Gore declaims. In his address to the Black Caucus, he ended by listing, at about volume nine, the positions to which Clinton has appointed African-Americans during his administration. It was, indeed, a long and impressive list, and it accomplished the desired end of bringing the audience to their feet. When Clinton’s turn at the podium came, he was, by comparison, muted, long-winded, and a little dry, as though the only thing on the minds of everyone in the room must be the pros and cons of pending empowerment-zone legislation. “Just doing the job the American people elected me to do” was the message implied by the performance. One could see the division of labor for the midterm campaign ahead.
Once we were inside the vice president’s office and the door was closed, the world of the Black Caucus and the Starr report seemed shut out. The vice president said that he was glad to have the chance to discuss serious subjects; so much of his time was being taken up by what he called “all these political events.”
Physically, what strikes you first about Gore is the solidity. He has the frame of an athlete, but the upper body is heavy, and the complexion is unexpectedly pale. The mask is, indeed, a mysterious feature. He inflects with his face, rather than with his voice. He grimaces, as though he were putting a kind of facial English on the words, and though the effect seems self-conscious, it brings out a certain ruggedness. You see the muscular Gore, the superachiever, the star quarterback who is also captain of the debating team and is invited on Sunday afternoons to have tea with the dean. But in repose the face sometimes goes completely flaccid, the eyes become hooded, and you see the Vulcan side. The light for the hard drive is on, but there is no message on the screen.
Like the face, the manner sends disparate signals. The initial impression is of mildness; the demeanor is formal, the aura is tepid. The system has clearly been designed to avoid wasteful heat loss.
The second impression, though, is of a certain stubbornness, and a certain capacity, carefully walled off, for impatience. This is, after all, a man who ran for president when he was forty, something that requires not only unusual self-discipline (not to mention self-importance), but an unusual willingness to demand self-discipline of others. One imagines that Gore has trained himself so well to live within the narrow definition of what a politician must be today in order to survive that he has little tolerance for ordinary fecklessness. He could, by his appearance, be the head of an extremely prosperous nondenominational church, a man of God who sits on the boards of corporations, and for whom a degree of personal rectitude that would be pretty much inconceivable for most of us is just part of the job description. When I explained that my assignment was to capture the essence of his thought, the vice president laughed self-deprecatingly. “I wish you luck,” he said. But he did not seem displeased.
The second impression, though, is of a certain stubbornness, and a certain capacity, carefully walled off, for impatience. This is, after all, a man who ran for president when he was forty, something that requires not only unusual self-discipline (not to mention self-importance), but an unusual willingness to demand self-discipline of others. One imagines that Gore has trained himself so well to live within the narrow definition of what a politician must be today in order to survive that he has little tolerance for ordinary fecklessness. He could, by his appearance, be the head of an extremely prosperous nondenominational church, a man of God who sits on the boards of corporations, and for whom a degree of personal rectitude that would be pretty much inconceivable for most of us is just part of the job description. When I explained that my assignment was to capture the essence of his thought, the vice president laughed self-deprecatingly. “I wish you luck,” he said. But he did not seem displeased.
Still, I said, I wanted to know his answer to a political question first: Why has the Clinton-Gore administration been the object of so much animosity? It is, after all, basically a centrist, pro-business, pro-defense administration; it adopted a Republican welfare plan and it balanced the budget without losing the support of traditional Democratic constituencies. These were precisely the policies the new genome was supposed to produce. But the halo of electability had not been transformed into a halo of leadership ability. The Whitewater story broke in the
Times
even before Clinton had taken the oath of office, and his presidency has endured ever since a political and journalistic inquisition the essential effect of which, whatever the justifications, has been to place its legitimacy on permanent probation.
Times
even before Clinton had taken the oath of office, and his presidency has endured ever since a political and journalistic inquisition the essential effect of which, whatever the justifications, has been to place its legitimacy on permanent probation.
It’s true that for people with a reputation for brains the Clintons are amazingly inept at (as editorial writers say) “getting the facts out.” They apparently cannot bring themselves to admit that their actions are less than noble, even when their actions, like avoiding the draft or making a quick buck in the commodities market or lying about an affair, are merely human. Since their hearts are in the right place, what does it matter where their hands happen to be? The arrogance
is a little exasperating. But politically, Clinton is an accommodationist. There is no point of view he cannot share. Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill, he informed the grand jury on August 17, were both telling the truth. What is there in America that doesn’t want to be accommodated?
is a little exasperating. But politically, Clinton is an accommodationist. There is no point of view he cannot share. Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill, he informed the grand jury on August 17, were both telling the truth. What is there in America that doesn’t want to be accommodated?
Gore’s answer was striking for its dispassion. After all, the question of whether, if he inherits Clinton’s legacy, he will also inherit Clinton’s enemies can never be far from his mind. He must, in his man-of-God mode, be distressed at finding his own carefully tended ambitions threatened by the moral negligence of his brother Bill. In his star-quarterback mode, he must be ready to strangle the guy. But he took a very, very long view of the situation.
He began, with great deliberation (throughout our conversation, the speed dial was turned way down), by suggesting two reasons for the present toxicity. The first is political. “I view our efforts as being rooted in a longer and larger Democratic tradition,” he said. “Franklin Roosevelt would have recognized the kind of outreach and broad-based coalition building that we have engaged in. So would John F. Kennedy.” In those days, he said, the Democratic Party was the dominant party in America, and that is the party he and Clinton have been trying to resurrect. “The success of the 1990s version of the Republican Party,” he said, “really depends on a cartoon image of the Democratic Party, rather than a rebuilding of the Democratic Party at its best.” The Republicans understand that if the new DNA takes, they are doomed to minority status forever, so they cannot merely oppose Clinton. They must deny him legitimacy.
Other books
Owen's Daughter by Jo-Ann Mapson
Hidden Symptoms by Deirdre Madden
Bared to the Viscount (The Rites of May Book 1) by Lara Archer
Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics by Bell Hooks
Yuletide Defender by Sandra Robbins
Play It Safe by Kristen Ashley
The Reaper: No Mercy by Sean Liebling
Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy
Gargoyle Knight: A Dark Urban Fantasy by Massa, William
Gamma Nine (Book One) by Christi Smit