The Last Empire (31 page)

The new president will be applauded when he attacks waste at the Pentagon. Everyone is praised for attacking waste. But no one ever does anything about it because no one ever can. Although there have been no declared wars since 1945 (except those of our own undeclared intervention) the United States has a total war economy, and we shall go right on building aircraft carriers and Seawolf submarines until all the money’s gone. Over the years, the Pentagon has seen to it that there is a significant “defense” plant in each congressional district; that is why most congressmen will always say no to cutbacks because of the Effect on the Economy.

In any case, Clinton–Gore, as southern conservatives, are wedded from birth to the military. Partly this is due to the hawkish nature of the southern states. During Reconstruction, politics and the army were about the only careers open to the ambitious southerner. Even for the unambitious, military service was often the only way out of poverty. The fact that southerners traditionally keep their congressional representatives in office longer than other regions means that they end up with those committee chairmanships that deal with the military, and so the South’s great source of revenue has always come from “defense.” Since expenditure on war is what got us into our present mess, one would think that the military budget—and its ominous twin, the interest that we must pay on $4 trillion of debt—should have been the centerpiece of the campaign.

But Clinton–Gore never got close to the subject, and they will not address it in office. Bush himself wisely kept the campaign focused on the sacredness of the fetus, hard to upstage in a country where, according to the good Dr. Gallup, 47 percent think that God created Man one afternoon out of some convenient mud, while 40 percent think that God may have taken a bit longer to put the finishing touch on what, after all, is His self-portrait. Only 9 percent believe in Darwinian evolution and science. So with folks like that out there, perhaps it is better to talk about abortion and adultery and who spells Jennifer with a
G
and who spells it with a
J
, and what can this
mean
?

In foreign affairs, we have one great opportunity, which only crafty Dick Nixon ever truly grasped—Russia. Although we don’t have much money left to give them, a lively president and a few corporate magnates with no more than average IQs could start making deals to develop Russian oil and other resources. This would generate the money for the Russians to buy our consumer goods, which, in turn, would make us prosperous again. Naturally, this will require intelligence and planning, two things our corporate governing class has not been capable of since 1945. But the opportunity is superb. Until two years ago, it looked as if West Germany had landed the Russian account, but then their union with East Germany threw them off course. That leaves us and Canada as Russia’s friendly industrialized neighbors in the Northern Hemisphere. H. L. Mencken noted many years ago that the “Russians were like the Americans. They, too, were naturally religious and confiding; they, too, were below the civilized
average in intelligence; and they, too, believed in democracy, and were trying to give it a trial.” The time has come for an economic union.

Our allies are deeply disturbed by the intensity of the sick religiosity that the United States is currently experiencing (due more to television preachers than to the Good Book). Obviously, a people who cannot deal with the natural sciences is not going to do very well in the twenty-first century, when religion will play hardly any part, at least in Western Europe and Asia, our competition.

Of course, it’s not considered nice to criticize someone else’s religion; yet this particular election has been based almost entirely on religion, and it is now clear just how our single-party system (with two right wings, one called Democratic, one called Republican) will end. The country is now splitting into the Party of God, whose standard-bearer the godless Bush so ironically tried to be, and the Party of Man, which represents, in theory, observance of religion-free laws and a limitation of the state’s control of the private lives of the citizenry. In the primaries, only Jerry Brown grasped the necessity of a party of the people at large, while only Pat Buchanan grasped the true potency of God’s Party.

Although Clinton–Gore are essentially Party of God politicians, they moderated their views and did not too piously defend the sacred fetus on the sensible ground that most women, even Godly ones, resent God’s ministers’ regulating their gynecologic works. After all, the reproductive system that God devised for both men and women is ridiculous enough as it is—certainly, any competent plumber could have done a better job; yet to pretend that the Great Baron Frankenstein in the Sky’s sexual handiwork is evil (as in original sin) is truly evil; and that is where the present conflict between the two evolving parties is taking place, and the ultimate confrontation, as ol’ Ross Perot would say, ain’t gonna be pretty.

Meanwhile, we have numerous elections but no politics. Each candidate must hustle corporate money and then put together as many groups as he can to win. After all, once elected, he does not have to serve any voters, on the ground that if he pleases one group he’ll alienate another, so why rock the boat? But he does have to serve Lockheed or Boeing or Exxon or the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and all the other corporations or lobbies that pay for him.

The office of vice-president is now the preserve of the Israeli lobby, and Gore will continue the Quayle tradition. After all, in the 1988 presidential primaries, Gore’s campaign was largely paid for by the lobby, whose point man was the ineffable
New Republic
publisher, Marty Peretz (who boasted in
Spy
magazine that he’d written “Al’s” speech at the Democratic Convention). The alliance between a Pentagon-oriented southern politician (Gore has never voted against any appropriation for war) and the Israeli lobby was a not-unnatural one in the days of the Cold War. But no longer. Imagine if a Roman Catholic lobby were in place to siphon off billions of federal dollars to bail out the truly broke Vatican, while covertly supporting the terrorism of, let us say, the Irish Republican Army. I don’t think the Godly (non-Catholic) would like this, while the Manly would be in court. Once selected by Clinton, Gore made his first speech to AIPAC, where he groveled without shame. He was there
to get money for services rendered; and on offer. Happily, the new Israeli prime minister, Rabin, has just given the American Israeli lobby hell on the ground that their crude buying of senators in order to pit the legislative against the executive branch might start a backlash among even the densest goyim. Henceforth, the Israeli command post will be not the Senate but the vice-president’s office.

What to do? The logical and intelligent solution would be to go back to Philadelphia and make a new Constitution with a stronger Bill of Rights, a weaker executive, a disciplined Supreme Court (the original court mucked about with admiralty suits rather than trimesters, and they were much, much happier in their modest work). A parliamentary system might be more workable than our current—that word again—gridlock. Yes, I am quite aware that no ruling class has ever abolished or even reformed itself, so there is not much chance for us to invoke the great powers invested in We the People, who are ultimately sovereign, if we could ever again meet in Congress assembled and make a new charter. But if the times get too bad and a dictator does not take over, I suggest exercising the Philadelphia Option, not only in memory of Benjamin Franklin but of W. C. Fields, Philadelphia’s other great son, whose screen performance as Mr. Micawber in
David Copperfield
was a prescient impersonation of Uncle Sam today.

In a sense, the great cancer of our system, the defense budget, will go into remission when the Japanese and the Germans are no longer buying our Treasury notes. But what then? Here, Clinton is making a bit of sense. Public works of the Rooseveltian sort could stave off revolution, which was exactly what the United States was facing in 1933, as I observed firsthand. Then came the New Deal. People got jobs. Roads. Conservation. Dams. When Roosevelt was told that he might well be the most popular president in American history, he said, “If I’m not, I will be the last.”

For the present, in the pursuit of the Numero Uno job, Clinton has worked himself into a number of contradictory binds. But then so did Roosevelt, who promised, in Philadelphia (again), that if elected president he would balance the budget. In 1936, up for re-election and on his way back to Philadelphia, he turned to Sam Rosenman, his speechwriter, and said, “Well, what do I say now about the deficit?” Rosenman was serene: “Deny you were ever in Philadelphia.”

Although no public jobs can be created and no bridges repaired as long as all that money goes for unworkable Rube Goldberg Star Wars systems, not to mention cost overruns and plain corruption, Clinton will have to overcome his natural southern affinity for all things military. Conversion is the name of the only game we have left. Conversion from war to peace. Instead of Seawolf submarines, he must build bullet trains (my advice to Jerry Brown, who dramatized it on television and won the Connecticut primary). The same workforce that now builds submarines has the same technology to build trains. This would not reduce the deficit, but then nothing ever will.

Clinton has a chance to take a deep breath and start building and repairing the country. If this is done rapidly and intensely—the way Roosevelt did in the Thirties, with fair success; and in the Second War, with great success—then we shall start generating that famous cash base Perot keeps nattering on about.

In any event, the only alternative to such a program is social chaos. Clinton’s greatest asset is a perfect lack of principle. With a bit of luck, he will be capable, out of simple starry-eyed opportunism, to postpone our collapse. After all, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was equally unprincipled. On the other hand, he had the aristocrat’s self-confidence, and he was a master of manipulation. Clinton’s nervous eagerness to serve his numerous betters is not reassuring because, as he tries to manipulate them, they often, cold-bloodedly, manipulate him. But as Huck Finn with Tom’s cunning, he may get himself—and us—through. Like Roosevelt, Clinton has a lot of energy, and an eye on the main chance: If he has only a bit of FDR’s luck, we may ride out the storm. But “fasten your seat belts,” as Bette Davis so memorably warned. It is going to take real slickness to get us past the deadly reef of true faith up ahead, so dangerously set in that sea of debt created by the
few who could not resist ripping off the many in the name of Freedom, Democracy and a Supreme Being as personally revealed to good Dr. Gallup. We must wish Clinton luck. After all, if he fails,
he
will be the last president.
*

GQ

November 1992

* 
B
EDFELLOWS
M
AKE
S
TRANGE
P
OLITICS

All’s fair. Presumably in love and war, not to mention in the American electoral process as it becomes more and more surreal. For those who laughed all the way through Bob Woodward’s situation comedy
The Agenda
,
All’s Fair
will give even greater delight. For one thing, this is a him-and-her comedy, worthy of early Hepburn and Tracy.
She
is Mary Matalin, a darkly handsome Croatian from Chicago, with a sense of humor.
He
is James Carville, a Louisiana Cajun, with a sense of humor. Picture Susan Sarandon and John Malkovich together for the first time.

No expense must be spared in this production, any more than any expense was spared in the great election of 1992 that pitted George Bush against Bill Clinton and then, for comic relief, added Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot, two choleric below-the-title character actors, good for cutaways when the stars needed a rest. Director? Preston Sturges, if alive, might have had too much gravitas. The Zucker brothers
et al.
, who gave us
Airplane!
and
Naked Gun
, are a bit too much on the nose. If I were the producer—now I’m just spitballing, this is early on—but I’d like to turn
All’s Fair
over to Oliver Stone and tell him to make the hardest-hitting
serious
film that he can about the degradation of the democratic dogma. The result, I promise you, will be not only hilarious but good citizenship in spades.

This is the story of Mary Matalin, political director of George Bush’s campaign for re-election to the Presidency that he so much adorned (“Read my lips, no capital gains taxes”), and James Carville, who acted in the same capacity for Bill Clinton, the Comeback Kid. Love interest? This is the beauty part, as S. J. Perelman would say: Mary and James are in love before the campaign begins; then, after the election, they get married and settle down on television, where each now glows, he a “liberal” star, she a “conservative” one. Conflict? How can two professional politicians maintain their personal relationship in a campaign that grows more and more dirty as those magical days until November’s first Tuesday fly by? It is not easy.

This is a political
Pillow Talk
, with alternating points of view. First,
James
. He gives his view of an event. Then
Mary
. She gives hers. They are often fascinating—sometimes deliberately, sometimes inadvertently—as they discuss the mechanics of election. James and Mary? There is something numinously biblical about their names: James, brother of our Lord, Bill, and Mary Magdalene . . . Matalin, who has a star-struck crush on George Bush, surely a unique condition.

Each was already a successful political operator when they met in 1991. She had worked on Bush’s winning Presidential campaign. He had worked on a number of senatorial and gubernatorial campaigns, mostly successful after he teamed up with Paul Begala, now of the White House. Each is intrigued by what he’s heard about the other. “I like to know people who do politics for a living,” says Mary, upfront as always. He is equally curious about her, although she notes, dryly, that according to James’s sisters, until he met Mary he had not been seen in the company of a female more than eighteen years of age. On their first date they quarrel about politics. Not to worry. Like most professionals who “do” politics, neither is an ideologue. She lashes out at lefties like Albert Gore (known to Bush as Ozone Man) for having written such Marxist nonsense as: the automobile is damaging the environment. Politically, James the populist openly prefers Bob Casey, the son of a coal miner in
Pennsylvania, as governor, to a patrician like William Scranton; and that’s about it for deep political thoughts.