My old friend Isaiah Treff once told me: “Jay, if you weren’t
such a wise guy you would be a wise man.” That line applies today
to the great Senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, John
F. Kerry, a man who nearly graduated from electoral college.
Someone offered JFK a franc for his thoughts the other night,
eliciting this bon mot: Get a good education so you don’t get stuck
in Iraq. Now Kerry’s knowledge of French will sure come in handy;
words like gaffe and faux pas and contretemps will figure
prominently in conversations conducted behind his back. It’s a
regular cause celebre, you should excuse the expression.
JFK was given the chance to tow his marooned PT Cruiser off the
shoals. Citizens being charitable and journalists being slavish, it
would have been the work of an instant to apologize. Instead he
showed a profile in courage. Courage to stand up to those
Republican hacks; like Custer he would not sit still for their
bull. Courage to stand up to that “stuffed suit,” Tony Snow, in the
starkest case of pot-kettle black calling since Paris Hilton called
Lindsay Lohan a ditz. Courage to stand up to “doughy” Rush
Limbaugh, who apparently managed to rattle Kerry with half his
rabbit-foot tied behind is back.
So poor Kerry, Yale diploma and all, got stuck up on Iraq
himself. As his advisers will tell him in French: “Oui bleu ette.”
Or as his wife will relegate him: “Oubliette.” Not to mention the
57 varieties of spicy remarks she will tender his way. If the
Democrats were really headed for Congressional victory a day ago,
their chances have now sailed off on the swift boat to China.
TRUTH TO TELL, I find all this saddening. It is my fond, perhaps
unrealistic, wish to live in a country with two sets of viable
political ideas competing first intellectually, then electorally.
This was said, in various overlong essays of turgid prose foisted
upon us back in college days, to be the beauty of the two-party
system. We took this to heart in our youth, if only in our effort
to crash two parties a night. There were real debates in those days
and the Democrats were often right on such things as the
Jackson-Vanik Amendment.
Now, sadly, my job has become for the most part a no-brainer.
While my Democrat friends tend to be well-meaning, nice people,
they are represented in the political arena by a band of rapacious
rapscallions. Their intellectual wing has also shut down, paralyzed
by a weird cluster of alliances and prejudices. It is not merely
true the Republicans are alone in promoting vibrant ideas at this
time; it is so scarily true that it makes the Republicans wrangle
among themselves just so they can have some sense of philosophical
ferment.
Think about it. Left-wingers embraced a sort of free-love ideal
in the '60s, originally out of a sort of science-trumps-morality
logic, but now they have followed it to abortion as an inexorable
destination — to the point where the logic and science of the
child’s viability must be ignored. They accepted a model which
identified religious Jews and Christians as the victims of a huge
confidence game, rendering all the enthusiasms of such people
suspect. Then along comes an attack from a quasi-theological force
identifying the Judeo-Christian world as its target and leftists
cannot work up the verve to join the fight for survival. The left
agreed, based initially in philosophy, that all verity is nullity,
and now cannot summon the moxie to do battle for the truth.
At this point I will let you in on a little secret, a powerful
insight into the human personality. The fact is that a big part of
the reluctance by Republicans earlier in this political season to
vote for their own cause is wishful thinking that somehow a cleaner
ideology will emerge from the destruction. Just as the Madeleine
Albrights of the world are upset with America being the only
superpower, some purist conservatives are upset with the
Republicans being the only super-party. They fear the wrath of the
Founding Fathers, who sought to foster an atmosphere of rational
ratiocination.
Instead we get this. The Democrat Party are snobs, solons in
salons, calling the Republicans slobs. Their books have no ideas,
just analysis of how Karl Rove gulls naive rubes in revival tents
into voting against their true interests. Books with titles like
“The Haecceity of the Hayseed”; or, “What Makes Hicks Tick.” One
party has the condescension while the other is in the ascension.
One party does the patronizing while the other has the patrons.
It’s not my fault if my side wins by default. It’s my party that
has the ideas and I’ll cry if I want to.
