Raking Gore's Muck

muckrake v.intr. search out and reveal scandal, esp. among famous people.

A good book review presupposes distance, a minimum of space, between the reviewer and the text. The distance may be political, factual, conceptual, ideological, or a novel mixture of these or other types. Without it the reviewer may find herself with little to do but praise the author, little to decide beyond how high such praise should be heaped. Such is the case with Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair's new book on Al Gore. While reading it I found myself in such regular agreement that I'm unlikely to do more than fuss over how lavishly I should praise it.

Let me be direct. Al Gore: A User's Manual (AGUM) is a book I wish I'd written, not because its prose is beautiful, for even at his best, Cockburn never writes political prose as elegantly as, say, Christopher Hitchens. Cockburn and St. Clair clearly rushed to press -- Verso copy editors must've been tanning in Majorca -- in time for the home stretch of the presidential election. Orthographic errors abound, and it lacks the hard edges of Cockburn's usually feisty prose.

No, I wish I'd written it because it offers an enrichment of the public conversation about Al Gore and George W. Bush and their respective fitness for office. While Americans focus too much on the personality of the President -- thereby committing two banal errors -- the character (in the Aristotelian sense) of these two jostlers for the office is of no little consequence. AGUM demonstrates beyond sensible dispute that Al Gore lacks anything approaching a virtuous character. The display of Gore's utterly deficient character is the real value of Cockburn's book. By almost any comparison, Gore is inferior to Clinton; certainly in intelligence, charisma, political savvy, humor. On other comparisons -- honesty, courage, self-sacrifice, generosity -- they run a dead heat.

At this point in a book review I, the reviewer, should present for you, the reader, a long recitation of Gore's ills, as documented and described by Cockburn and St. Clair. When I sat down to write this recitation, two things became apparent: first, Cockburn describes so many disgusting events in Gore's life that picking the few worst is difficult; and, second, judgments about the deficiencies of Gore's character should rest on the mass of these disgusting events, not merely on a few lowlights. If you have any interest in making a judgment about Al Gore's character -- which you should have if you're considering voting for him -- then just get Cockburn's book and read it.

In the past year, in local activism, in state and national Green Party politics, and in activism in Philadelphia around the RNC, I've learned something quite disturbing. I've learned that the most avoidably stultifying force in American politics is the misplaced loyalty of white progressives to the Democratic Party. Why do I say white progressives? Of course I know that there are progressive people of color, and I'm happy for it. But the moral calculus of white progressives and progressive people of color can be significantly different, in large part because of historic patterns of oppression. (I'm also talking about white progressives because that's what I am, and because I mean to avoid giving political advice to people of color.) White progressives can afford to risk, and perhaps lose, what political power they might have by virtue of alliance with the Democratic Party; we can afford to do this because most of us don't live on the margins of society.

The Republican Party intends to deliver to its loyalists -- the corporate and religious fundamentalist kinds -- nearly all of what they want from politics. That is, the Republicans represent their constituencies fairly well, even when that means screwing the rest of us. The Republicans, despite being galled by Clinton's takeover of their agenda, have to be privately ecstatic with the general rightward tilt of the country. Since profit and piety are rapacious masters, neither the Corpos nor the Fundies will ever be satisfied with how much they get. Republican pols know this. They know they'll be in business for a good long time. The chief Republican problem is how to get back into the Oval Office, a place they'd long since assumed was theirs by divine fiat.

The Democratic Party, presently dominated by minions of the Democratic Leadership Council, doesn't even intend to deliver to its loyalists anything like what they want from politics. It's the loyalists of the Democratic party -- who may be the numerical majority of the country: women, labor, minorities of various kinds, greens, etc. -- who've got the biggest reason to be dissatisfied with the political status quo.

And yet, for all that, many white progressives grasp stubbornly and often irrationally to whatever new candidate the DLC sees fit to throw up. I've met scores of white activists in the past year who are deeply dissatisfied with eight years of Clinton and Gore but who are supporting Gore in 2000. What's worse, it's hard to get more than a few of them to admit that if enough white progressives risked the election of Bush by supporting Nader vigorously, it would tend to force Gore leftward. It might at least blunt his rightward plunge, and that would be a good thing. Being obsessed by short-term calculation of political reality isn't the way to halt the 30-some-odd year rightward lunge in America.

As I've already hinted, however, progressive people of color, and other marginalized and oppressed groups, face a different moral calculus. They are no less dissatisfied with Clinton and Gore. But when you inhabit the margins of society, the amount of real political power you can safely relinquish (in a bid to support a more reliable political choice, say, Nader), and when you can do this, safely, and whether you can afford to think and act long-term, are all open (and very difficult) questions. No blame may redound to progressive people of color for choosing not to relinquish, at this time, the modest, but very real, political power they have as a result of supporting the Democrats.

(Further, some blame may yet redound to Nader for not explicitly embracing issues vital to people of color. This too is a tricky matter because it's not clear whether or to what extent Nader's reticence to speak forcefully and often about, say, racial profiling, police brutality, and capital punishment reflects a lack of deep concern about these issues or, perhaps, reflects short-term electioneering tactics -- if the former, Nader may not be deserving of support from any progressives; if the latter, I think he's miscalculated badly. And, in any event, why hasn't he visited Al Sharpton in Harlem? Sharpton asked why in a speech at the "Redeem the Dream" rally in Washington, and I daresay no white supporter of Nader had or yet has a ready answer.)

One of the benefits of AGUM, then, is to make it more difficult for white progressives to continue holding their noses as they support pseudo-liberal Al Gore. Corporate media pundits have droned on in this election season, wondering if or how much of Clinton's muck will adhere to Gore. Too many white progressives have joined them, complaining about Clinton (and, by implication, Gore too, since he is, by his own and Clinton's admission, the most powerful VP in the modern era) but not following through on those complaints by critically examining, and then rejecting, Gore -- or at least making the reluctant, realpolitik nature of their support for Gore very plain. In this way, white progressives have made common cause with corporate media pundits in defending Gore.

Too many white progressives have chosen to ignore, and thus excuse, Gore's muck. Unlike Cockburn and St. Clair, that doesn't amount to raking, to say nothing of opposing, it.