Works of Lars Eighner at Lars Eighner's Homepage

Republicans should be the happiest people on earth.

Barring a political cataclysm of unprecedented proportions the voters will elect a president this November who reflects old-fashioned Republican values and politics. Although he is beholden to the likes of Archer-Daniels-Midland and others who rely upon corporate welfare, he promises to gut what little remains of the social welfare system, dismantle affirmative action, and balance the budget.

This man, a Southern Baptist who openly confesses Christ as his savior, has been in the forefront of efforts to keep smut off television and away from underage computer hackers. He has challenged the Hollywood moguls to "create movies, CDs and television shows you would want your own children and grandchildren to enjoy." He has made it very clear that he intends to take what action he can to prevent legal recognition of same-sex marriages and he has been involved in enacting into the law the prohibition of gays in the military.

The man who will be elected in November will be president, if he lives so long, when the new century arrives on January 1, 2001. That will be a century, or so we are promised, in which public assistance and budget deficits are things of the past. He will be a law-and-order president, with a record of favoring more cops on the streets and of doubling the number of federal wiretaps. I could go on about this man's apparent dedication to so many deeply-held Republican values.

For Republicans there is but one fly in the ointment: the man who will be elected in November is named Bill Clinton.

The Republican candidate—that is, the one offered by the Republicans—is a born-again budget-buster. Although skeptical at first, he has finally succumbed to the urgings of his running mate to feel the power of the supply side. This is the Republican ticket for 1996: the guys who missed the bus.

But the Republican plight can hardly be encouraging to Democrats who, after all, have the Republican candidate who will win this election. Surely only the Democratic party hacks can take much joy in Happy Days are Here Again being replaced by the new sax solo You Could Do Worse, You Know. For First Amendment rights, minorities, working people, human rights, the environment—all the traditional Democratic constituencies—what they will get out of their winning candidate is (as someone has described the offer of domestic partnerships to same-sex couples in lieu of marriage) like offering Rosa Parks air-condition the back of the bus.

The outlook is bleak all around: the Greens offer us Ralph Nader—whose take on human rights issues of importance to gays and lesbians was that he had no interest in genital politics Ross Perot is back with his charts and graphs, which illustrate the problem better than the major parties care to have it illustrated but do not improve on their Trust me solutions. (In the Trust Department, Perot makes Clinton and Dole look like Schweitzer and Schindler.) Meanwhile the Libertarians seem to have a lot of interest in the Second Amendment, and very little in any of the others.

Most of this bleak news—or at least the broadcast version—is underwritten by Archer-Daniels-Midland whose every dollar of profit on ethanol costs the taxpayers thirty dollars. (I guess this is the karmic payback the nation gets for having put down the Whiskey Rebellion.) But for the nonce, I will concentrate on Republican bleakness, partly because there is so much of it, and partly because it is such a profound, uncanny sort of bleakness.

The history of Republican bleakness is very extensive, but can be summarized thus:

At its birth the Republican party was the dominant party in America and remained that for 70 years. Founded on a belief in the primacy of the national government, the party was conservative in the traditional sense of the word. It used the power of government to subsidize industry and to regulate it in various degrees. It freed the slaves, enacted civil rights laws (which remain dormant for almost a hundred years), busted trusts, reformed the civil service (several times over), and enacted the first consumer-protection legislation. But in those days the business cycle was thought to be something like a natural law which government might influence no more than it could the tides, and except in the coinage of money, no one saw much of a role for government in managing the economy—until the bottom fell out in 1929.

After 1929, Republicans had no chance, really, on the national scene until after the Great Depression, FDR, and the end of the Second World War. When the dust settled, some curious things had happened. The meanings of the words "liberal" and "conservative" had traded places, and to a large extent the constituencies of the parties had shifted. The extent of the reshaping of American politics can be judged by this fact: before the Great Depression, in 1925, William Jennings Bryan, great orator, progressive, Democrat, free-silver advocate, upheld the yahoo position in the Scopes monkey trial, claiming the Bible was to be interpreted literally. And no one in those days saw those positions as especially contradictory.

As they crawled out of their foxholes, Republicans found themselves to be of two varieties: the ideologically pure—which meant racists, fundamentalists, goldbugs, and libertarians—and the people-who-want-to-win-elections. As it was, the people-who-wanted-to-win-elections had first crack at it. To everyone's surprise Dewey lost, and the ideological Republicans were certain they would get the next shot with their man Robert A. Taft, Jr. It wasn't in the cards: the people-who-want-to-win-elections persuaded Dwight Eisenhower that he was a Republican and they persuade the Republican party with the four words that still ring in the ears of the Republican right: Only Ike can win. Ike did win and the Republican right has never forgiven the people-who-want-to-win-elections.

In 1964, when perhaps no Republican could have been elected, the right wing finally got its chance. To their credit they nominated one of the most honorable men in American politics, but still led the party to the greatest election disaster up to that time. In 1980, with Ronald Reagan, the Republican right believed it had won at last. Reagan was, of course, the tool of the people-who-want-to-win-elections, but he had the ability to do the symbolic things and say the words that made the right wing feel good without actually doing that much to further their social policies. This ruse was so effective that much of the Republican right-wing rank and file is not yet even dimly aware that it had been had. In terms of hard policy, George Bush was virtually identical to Ronald Reagan, but without Reagan's ability to cloud the minds of the right. They saw him for what he was, and felt he had to be dispensed with. The could not deny him renomination, but they could administer the blow that told the nation Bush was beatable and which helped Perot—and thus Clinton—to perceive an opening.

While Ronald Reagan is now revered by many of the religious right, he reached office without owing them much of anything. They supported Reagan, they voted for him, but they did not have an on-going national organization of any note and they were a rather minor part of the large majority Reagan won in 1980. Instead, it was they who owed him—for he provided sense of possibility in the Reagan years that encouraged them, often by stealth, to begin to subvert the Republican organization precinct by precinct.

Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority—little more or less than Falwell's mailing list—came to the fore and rather rapidly disintegrated during Reagan's term. It remained for Pat Robertson to put together a real grassroots organization aimed not merely at persuading the Republican party to adopt positions agreeable to the religious right, but at taking over the Republican party. How Robertson did that is detailed in Robert Boston's The Most Dangerous Man in America? Pat Robertson and the Rise of the Christian Coalition (Prometheus, 248 pages).

This then is how it stands today: the Republican right has been very successful in shifting the whole battlefield of American politics far to the right, they have gained control of enough of the Republican apparatus to play spoiler. They cannot win presidential elections because they cannot formulate their uncompromisable principles in a way that is acceptable to the majority and they cannot realize this is their problem because they believe they are divinely inspired. To a certain degree, the Republican right—the religious right—can maintain its high opinion of itself precisely because it is in no danger of governing and exposing itself and its leaders to the kind of scrutiny to which elected national officials are exposed.

For example, the Republican right believes Bill Clinton committed adultery, and despite his willingness to sign the Defense of Marriage Act, they blame him for the whole issue of gay rights and gay marriage. They call these character issues.

But let us look at Republican marriages: Robert Barr, author of the Defense of Marriage Act—on his third wife, has been sued for failure to pay child support; Pat Robertson, lied for years about the date of his marriage to cover up the fact that his wife was five months pregnant when they married; Newt Gingrich—divorced his wife when she was suffering from cancer, also sued for failure to pay child support; Ronald Reagan—divorced the mother of his child; Bob Dole—divorced his first wife who nursed him through the war wounds we hear much about, leaving her with a young child; and reams of similar situations involving Republicans that are matters of public record which can be discovered without staking out sleazy motels. None of these situations seem to bother the religious right—who claim to believe the Bible is to be taken literally—although according to Bible Jesus equated divorce with adultery and never uttered a word about homosexuality.

Of course all factions of all parties have their sex scandals and unpleasant domestic situations, but for Republicans character issues are problems only Democrats have—and Republicans' opponents are not claiming to have the word on what a family is and how to be one, directly from God. The relevance of Republican family values is that Republicans have raised the cry of family values—otherwise none of this would be anybody else's business. And in the same way that they blind themselves to the peccadillos of those enjoying their favor, the people of the religious right blind themselves to political reality. When they run a Buchanan who expresses sympathy for the Nazis—the real German Nazis—they can garner enough votes to win a primary, but they cannot possibly elect such a man president. When, as he sometimes does, Pat Robertson claims the separation of church and state is communist slogan, he is going to turn people off—including many people who would have no problem with a "nonsectarian" prayer in the public schools or a manger scene in the state capitol at Christmas.

The function of the Christian Coalition is become the role of good cop—to the bad cop played by whichever candidate is carrying the banner for the religious right at the moment. Make no mistake about it, the Christian Coalition is Pat Robertson's organization, but it exists to say reassuring things when Robertson proposes making America a theocracy, or when Buchanan's anti-Semitism is too baldly revealed. This gives candidates the option of winking at racism or other lapses in political taste, while providing the movement with a thin veil of plausible deniability.

The job of keeping the home organization squeaky clean has fallen to the squeaky-clean-looking Ralph Reed, and his contribution to this year's bumper crop of election-year books is Active Faith: How Christians Are Changing The Soul of American Politics (Free Press, $25—described on the Christian Coalition's web page as a suggested donation; 311 pages). It is a tricky business to be Pat Robertson's vehicle while appearing to be at arm's length from Pat Robertson's positions, but there could hardly be a better person for it than the adroit Reed. So far the we-want-to-win-elections Republicans (of whom Reed, despite his born again clothing, is one) have prevented the religious right from making an absolute shibboleth of the abortion issue, a great favor to the party. Because if the right ever succeeds in its objective of expelling all the prochoice Republicans the debate will be over, and the Republican party will become the asterisk in election returns.

So what kind of man is Bob Dole? How would the next four years be different if Dole were elected instead of Clinton?

Election year books have come a long way since A Texan Looks at Lyndon. This year we have Unlimited Partners by Bob and Elizabeth Dole (Simon & Schuster, $24, 379 pages), remarkable only in that it has probably set a speed record for this sort of book—it went to press after Dole resigned as Senate majority leader. It is of course, all sweetness and light. What a blessing it is for America to have at the same time two such saintly people—-and such a coincidence that they happen to be married to each other. I have looked pretty hard for the dirt on Dole and one of the worst things I can say about him is that his name appears on this book.

The truly amazing offering is Senator for Sale: An Unauthorized Biography of Senator Bob Dole by Stanley G. Hilton (St. Martin's, $22.95, 308 pages). What is amazing about it is that it seems to be trying very hard to be a hatchet job, but when you get past the name-calling and down to the nitty-gritty Dole doesn't come off so badly. Does he flip-flop on issues? Does he do big favors for his friends and campaign contributors? Does he discover elaborate rationalizations to avoid the blame when things go wrong? Well, yes, and lot more stuff like that. He has been senate majority leader twice—what does Hilton expect? But Pat Robertson is not going to move into the White House if Dole ever goes there. Dole's not going to run the ship of state aground. He has been off and on the supply-side several times, and although he's on it at the moment he'll be off it again at the first sign that it is a liability. He is perfectly capable of handling foreign policy and the Republican party's foreign policy assets are as weighty as they are slick. Dole would direct, but not second-guess the pros.

The main disaster Democrat apologists predict is that Dole might get a Supreme Court appointment or two. Well, Supreme Court nominations are crap shoots to begin with—ask the Republicans how happy they were with their appointment of Earl Warren. Moreover, I think it is highly doubtful that a Clinton appointee is to be trusted any more than a Dole appointee—I might have bought this argument before I saw Clinton govern.

There is really little reason to prefer either of the Republican candidates. The Republican candidate offered by the Democrats will almost certainly win the election. But the Republican candidate offered by the Republicans would not be any worse if he were elected, and on the only-Nixon-could-go-to-China theory, might be a comparatively pleasant surprise.

Duggen's going with Nader, and I'm going fishing.