National Party of Yearners

On the morning after Colin Powell scratched himself from the presidential race, they were selling commemorative T-shirts at a small storefront on Crenshaw Boulevard. The red-white-and-blue shirts were decorated with the general’s likeness and a quotation: “Country and Family as One.” Priced to move at $15, these no doubt would fit nicely in that same drawer where a certain segment of the nation keeps its “Run Jesse Run” and “Ross for Boss” T-shirts--souvenirs of previous disappointments.

This is how it goes for candidates like Powell. One day he is the favorite of pollsters, the hero of the grass roots. The next day he’s reduced to a collector’s item--a T-shirt or bumper sticker, to be bought, stored, forgotten. While the party that supported him wanders off in search of the next would-be savior. . . .

This party is not, as even Powell himself appears to believe, the Republican Party. Nor is it the Democrats. It is not necessarily Ross Perot’s group, although he would claim otherwise. Rather, this is a larger, more loosely organized party. It appears on no ballot. Its strength is best measured, not by registration rolls, but by the growing percentage of Americans who don’t vote. It is a party in need of, not only a standard-bearer, but also a name. So let us give it one here and now:

The National Party of Yearners.

*

Enter the storefront on Crenshaw Boulevard, and meet a member in good standing. His name is Emmett Cash. The 53-year-old is an entrepreneur who acted as a grass-roots organizer for Powell’s stunted campaign. Cash operates under the belief he is a Republican. He is mistaken. He is a Yearner. The proof can be found in his pained reflections on the Powell candidacy, in his yearning for a leader strong enough to transcend politics as usual and stitch the country back together again.

“Americans are looking for something,” Cash says. “We want to wake up in the morning and feel good about America, even if it’s raining. If it’s raining, we want to say: ‘At least it’s good for the grass. It’s good for the farmers. It’s not just about floods and disasters.’ We need to understand we can’t have it all our way. We need someone to bring us together, not divide us.

“I saw Colin Powell as a man who could bridge all the gaps, all the camps, all the divisions, and help make this great country of ours into what we know it all can be. . . . If you look at the rest of the field, these are people who are running on slogans rather than substance: I’m more conservative than you are. . . . And I say to them, yes, but what about America? What are you going to do for this country?”

Cash can carry on like this for some time, making sense in a way that always wins approving nods from the “public,” but is easily dismissed by the political experts who run the game. To the political experts--party operatives, money people, politicians, commentators--Yearners are annoyingly naive, locked in their romantic quest for a Capra-esque character to come along and break apart a system that has worked so splendidly for all those, well, involved (see money people, etc.).

*

These pros saw Powell for what he was. They spotted a Yearner candidate who happened to be running as a Republican, just as Jerry Brown last time around happened to run as a Democrat. Brown was a Yearner product as was Perot before him, and Jesse Jackson before Perot. This was only one thing these outsiders held in common.

Another was that they failed, and in a tellingly similar fashion. For a time, ignored by the system, they thrived. As soon as their candidacies began to look plausible, however, they fell apart--or, in the conspiratorial Yearner view, were crushed. In this way, the worst thing that happened to Brown in 1992 was winning the Connecticut primary. That guaranteed his days were numbered. An interesting thing about Powell was the certainty with which the experts forecast his popularity would vanish once he entered the race. They made it sound like a prophecy they were qualified to fulfill. They made it sound like a threat.

And so he got out, leaving the people engaged in the business of politics free, once more, to give the country their campaign of Clinton and Dole and blah, blah, blah. Once more, they will dress it up as a great national struggle for hearts and minds, and hope that not too many people out there notice it’s really just one more intramural competition between like-minded check-writers. As for those who yearned for something more, who yearned for Powell, they get another nice T-shirt.