The more the Presidents change, the more the rhetoric remains the same

This evening I picked my wife up from work and as we drove home she asked me if I had watched the inauguration of Barack Obama on television. When I responded in the negative she was surprised. She went on about the historical moment when a black man gets the top job, etc.

I thought about my indifference and I suppose it gets down to two things. The first is that the more things are hyped the more suspicious I become of the substance. I am a person who prefers the steak to the sizzle.

We went down this same road in Canada in 1968 when Pierre Elliott Trudeau won the election – all the same razzle-dazzle, all the same over inflated rhetoric about how he was going to change things for the better, etc., etc.

Four years later we wondered what the shouting had been about. The media were still fascinated by him, but all the things that everybody said he would do seemed quaintly naïve.

He was going to curb the Quebec separatists – they became stronger and organized a political party that won the Quebec election. He was going to make us self-sufficient in energy and ended up alienating western Canada so badly that it resulted in the fracturing of the federal conservative party and wrecked healthy democracy in this country for 15 years. He made his name as the former Justice Minister by amending antiquated divorce, marriage and sexual laws and was portrayed as a hip liberal reformer. However, as Prime Minister, he declared the War Measures Act in effect and suspended civil liberties in Canada, rounding up and detaining a rag-tag bunch of lefty socialists in Montreal – measures that a hard-ass like Dick Cheney could only have wet dreams about.

The second thing is that I have spent my life working in and around politics and politicians. I have done everything in politics there is to do except run for public office (and I turned down two opportunities to do that). One of the liabilities of such a resume is that I have listened to more than my share of political speeches. Further, I have written many of them. They bore me. Well, maybe not the ones I write, but all the others.

I turned on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to see what he would do with the inauguration spectacle. He had a hilarious bit in which he played portions of Obama’s speech that were nearly exact replicas of Bush’s rhetoric. No surprise.

It’s what they do that counts, never what they say they are going to do.

Speechless politicians

I am glad to see that Maureen Dowd in the New York Times feels very much the way I do about having a political leader that consistently cannot voice thoughts in coherent English sentences.

Is it too much to ask that heart surgeons not be suffering from Parkinson’s disease when they perform operations, or airline pilots fly with serious astigmatism, or musicians not be tone deaf and painters not be colour blind? Why oh why would we think it is charming and a positive quality for the highest political office in the land when a person cannot, with any consistency, express clear and concise thoughts.

American and Canadian political debates

This past Thursday night was political night on television. In the U.S., the Democrat nominee for vice-president, Joe Biden, squared off against the Republican Sarah Palin. And in Canada the leaders of the 4 national parties and the leader of the Bloc Quebecoise did a round table debate with the admirable Steve Paikin as the host.

I watched all of the American debate and the last 30 minutes of the Canadian.

First the Canadians

I have already made my mind up about how I am going to vote and this debate wasn’t going to change it. You would have to be a non-committed voter watching a televised debate to allow that spectacle to sway your thinking. Most non-committed voters are people who don’t really follow politics.

I was glad to see that the Green Party finally got media recognition and invited its leader, Elizabeth May, to the table. This has been overdue for a couple of election cycles and puts an end to the hypocrisy of inviting Gilles Duceppe of the BQ to the English language debate.

The BQ is not a national party; it is a regional one, running candidates only in the Province of Quebec. Its purpose in its creation was to try to pry Quebec loose from Canada and create a sovereign state out of that province. The sympathy for that has mostly died away in Quebec and now the party simply acts as a spoiler for the national parties trying to make inroads into the Quebec constituency. Duceppe has said that if he can’t free Quebec he will take Canada for all he can get for his province. He has been a federal politician long enough (18 years) to collect a handsome pension from Canada when he retires from politics. So I guess he will have achieved part of the second goal.

While I completely understand having Duceppe at the French language debate, he has nothing useful to say to the rest of Canada in the English debate and only wastes air time that could more usefully be employed for the leaders who matter. He is invited because Quebec would scream discrimination if he were left off the roster.

Another case of the French poodle’s tail wagging the English setter.

There were many glowing media reports about Elizabeth May and what a performer she turned out to be. I cannot judge because of the limited time I devoted to watching, but I found her irritating, as every time the Prime Minister tried to make a point she butted in from the sideline trying to talk over him. I was dismayed to find that electoral reform is part of the Green Party’s platform – they want to give us Italy’s government. Thankfully, they appear to be many years away from ever being a possible governing party. I should mention, while I am analyzing them, that they want to make water a “human right”. This is a really stupid idea.

Finally, I did not like the round table format. I have done this on television and it gives you too many opportunities to fiddle with your hands, twitch, look down at your hands, etc. You are never 100% sure which camera is on you and whether you should be looking into the cameras, at the moderator or at any of you fellow panelists. You don’t know whether you are leaning forward too much and looking too aggressive or sitting back and looking too laid back. It is very awkward. I much prefer the format that requires you to stand at a podium. It focuses your attention and helps you to control your body language.

The next day I listened to a radio call-in show and so many callers commented on this or that candidate’s posture or eye-contact (or lack of. None of that should be relevant to the issues– these are not movie or television stars vying for industry performance awards.

Now to the Americans

I had been following the Palin story with much interest and had viewed her dismal television interviews. I knew very little about Joe Biden.

Palin got quite a lot of complimentary coverage the day after her debate. Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal compared her performance in reviving McCain’s campaign as a pair of electric shock paddles used to restart hearts. Cute.

Frankly, I was somewhat appalled by her. She talks in clichés and slogans. She simply refused to answer some straight-forward questions and went back to topics that she felt she was comfortable discussing. This is a tactic I am sure that her handlers taught her and it works well in media interviews, but not in a formal public debate. There were just too many things that were asked that we do know what she thinks about them or whether she even has any thoughts about them.

There was a clumsy attempt to inject a Reaganism into the debate. At one point Palin accused Biden of always looking to the past. Later, when Biden again made a reference to the Bush record, she jumped in with a “there you go again, Joe, lookin’ at the past”, aping Reagan’s famous line that skewered his opponent. I cringed when she threw that one out.

There is a streak of admiration in America for small town or rural folks. We have seen this time and again portrayed in movies and on television: The Beverley Hillbillies, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, The Dukes of Hazard, and the Newhart show: you will recall the sophisticated Bob Newhart running a Vermont country inn and meeting two local characters, “Hi, I’m Daryl and this is 'mah' other brother Daryl”. Americans believe that such folk are genuine, honest and lack guile or evil motives. This is why such movie and television fare always commands a fairly respectable audience.

And, who can say whether that is myth or reality?

However, appealing as such innocent folk might be, do you really want the Duke brothers to be the President and Vice-President of the United States? Or Minnie Pearl, bless her heart and trademark price-stickered straw hat?

Many commentators, including Daily Show comedian, Jon Stewart, have lamented the “dumbing down” of the American voters.

The first time we saw this was when Dan Quayle was the Vice-President. After listening to a few of his Quaylisms everybody prayed for the health of Reagan. My favourite was when he opined that he regretted that he had dropped Latin in high school because he wanted to go to Latin America and be able to talk to the people there.

Then along came George W. Bush. He gave us such classic lines as, “There is a low voter turnout for elections because not as many people are going to out to vote.” We have had 8 years of his folksy bumbling and inarticulate mangling of the English language. And maybe those who like Bush see him as somebody they would sit down with in the local tavern and hoist a few, but, really would you see the guy you do go bowling with and stop off for a couple of quick drafts as the President of the United States?

A problem Americans need to understand is that one of the reasons the U.S. is considered in such a bad light by the rest of the world, aside from considerations of its policies and actions, is the perception that the person holding the highest office and representing the face of America talks like he is a dummy, and, therefore, perhaps he is one. There is hardly a top job in corporate America that would be filled by a person who spoke English as badly as George Bush if merit were the only criteria for the job. Most world leaders in the democracies have a good command of the language, even when their native language is not English.

[Full disclosure: we had our own folksy politico, Jean Chretien, who was not very adept in English, but he wasn’t elected for the same reasons I have attributed to Americans electing such people]

That brings us to Sarah Palin. She talks like a country hick: dropping the “g” off words ending in “ing” and constantly saying “gonna” instead of “going to”. She is full of “goshes” and “darns” and just shy of "gosh darns". This may appeal to America’s common folk and maybe the standards in such remote places as under-populated Alaska don’t require much in the way of sophistication to become Governor, but on the world stage – please.

Americans who think Palin is suitable to be the President are probably scratching their heads over the wildly enthusiastic reception that Barack Obama got on his short European tour. Part of it, of course, was the fact that he represented the possibility of a real change in America’s policies of a kind to which Europeans would be receptive, but part of it also is that he is a beautiful public speaker with a rich command of the language. To Europeans, the proper use of language is a very important cultural identity (French) and a sign of class (England). The gold standard of political language still remains with Winston Churchill. Bush and Palin wouldn’t even have been allowed into the same room with him if it were a public speaking contest.

On the other side of the stage was Joe Biden. He struck me as being not only intelligent, knowledgeable and thoughtful, but also articulate and polished. I could easily picture him representing the United States with dignity and respect. And he would be treated with respect by the rest of the world.

I don’t vote in the United States (although I pay taxes there) but the choice if I had to make it would be clear: an Obama/Biden ticket. And in saying that, I guess I have to take it back that I would not be swayed by a debate. I certainly was in this case.

Intellectually Incurious

There is a big political flap underway in the United States over a book called What Happened. It is a memoir of his days in the Whitehouse by former Press Secretary, Scott McLellan.

McLellan was an associate of George Bush when Bush was the Governor of Texas and he followed him to Washington. He was the second PS and fulfilled that role for a few years until he was replaced. I haven’t learned why he lost the job, but the impression left in the media is that it was not a voluntary departure.

I always chuckled at the name of his replacement, Tony Snow (who has since left the job for health reasons). I thought if gave new meaning to the term “snow job”.

Anyway, McLellan has turned on the Bush administration and made accusations about its rush to war, its ignoring intelligence pointing to another conclusion, and Rove and Scooter Libby outing Valerie Plame. This is hardly news. The public has already heard this stuff and made up its mind about it, so other than the novelty of a Bush insider rebuking him, which also is not news; e.g. Paul O’Neill, Richard Clarke, I cannot see why I would be interested in reading this book and why there is such a firestorm about it.

McLellan did savage Condoleeza Rice in the book, claiming she was too clever by half in hiding in cracks and crevices when the fickle finger of fate pointed around the room. But the media interest is not really focused on what he has to say about her, it is about the other characters in the administration.

The one thing I thought was an excellent example of the practice of his art as a wordsmith was his description of George Bush. He doesn’t call him stupid; he calls him “intellectually incurious”. That is a classic.

Understanding your enemy

I see that President Bush gave a speech in the Middle East during his recent tour, claiming, as if it were a bad thing, that Iran wants to take us back to the Middle Ages. As Dinesh D’Sousa quite rightly pointed out in his book, The Enemy at Home, this might not be a bad thing if viewed from a Muslim perspective.

What we call the Middle Ages are known in the Muslim world as the Golden Age of Islam. In this respect, Iran would like to go back to that glorified past. On the other hand, western civilization wants to escape from that time when ignorance, barbarism and cruelty reigned in Europe.

D’Sousa’s point is that if we keep looking at Islam through our Amero-Eurocentred prism, instead of trying to look at the world, and history, through Muslim lenses, we will never understand the enemy we need to defeat.

This is lesson the forces of good grasped in the Second World War. Allied intelligence knew that Hitler was superstitious and consulted with astrologers, so we used astrologers to consider what advice might be influencing Hitler’s thinking.

Dangerous conspiracy theories

I am behind the 8-ball on this one, and the fault lies with too many books to read and too little time to do it in. I just got to the Richard A. Clarke book, Against All Enemies, published in 2004. Clarke was the chief anti-terrorism expert in the White House under Clinton and George Bush, Jr. He had also worked at more junior levels but in similar work for the Reagan adminstration and George Bush, Sr. He quit his post over the obsession by the Bush administration blaming Iraq for the work of Bin Laden and al Qaeda.

He reveals that Paul Wolfowitz was convinced that Iraq was responsible for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre. Wolfowitz, as the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, was instrumental in persuading George Bush and his cabinet that Iraq was the true culprit in 9/11, not just al Qaeda. He was not alone. Richard Perle, another neo-con and the Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee under George Bush, also bought into the Iraq version of events.

But where did this conviction come from? It turns out they were infatuated with a discredited conspiracy theory put out by author Laurie Mylroie. You can read the full tale of her involvement in shaping U.S. foreign policy here.

It is sad to consider how many people have died, Americans and Iraqis, and what a mess the Middle East has become since the invasion of Iraq, and worse, that it may have all been started by a false conspiracy theory.