Politics, as We All Know It

It was less than a week before the election. The candidate stood just outside the supermarket door, passing out pamphlets. She was little, she was old, and she was, it seemed, someone who would not take offense at being called a lady. All she lacked to complete the cliche were tennis shoes.

“Hi,” she said shyly, sticking out her hand.

“Hi,” I said back.

“I’m running for state Assembly,” she said.

“Well, good luck to you!”

I placed her pamphlet in the grocery bag and forgot about it. Still, the exchange had given me a momentary lift. How nice that this sweet grandmother of a candidate had the gumption to take on the Sacramento boys. How swell to actually encounter a candidate on the street, as a civilian and not as a press conference attendee. This was Democracy in Action. This was the stuff of Rockwell, and of the sixth-grade civics texts.

Then I went home and picked through the mail. At the bottom of a fat pile of campaign fliers--decorated with pictures of garbage cans and gunshot victims and jail cells and border crossers, the imagery of modern politics--was a black-and-white photograph of my little old lady in tennis shoes. She had been transformed. Her tongue hung out of her open mouth. Her silver curls were wildly askew. Her eyes bulged. It could have been the police mug shot of a madwoman, booked for running down pedestrians with her Buick. Cartoon captions were strung above her head.

“I believe public schools teach creationism,” she said in one.

“I’m against banning assault weapons,” she said in another.

“Just a little too extreme perhaps?” the flier asked tartly.

*

What had happened? Well, either her opponent had decided to “go negative,” as they say, and muddy up grandma, or else she had been driven insane by the need for a reliable voting bloc and campaign money. Leaving the Book of Genesis out of this, no sane politician believes in assault weapons. Some of them, however, do believe--devoutly--in NRA money. Either way, my moment of democratic, small-d, bliss was over. Politics is politics is politics, and this was just one more reminder of that grim fact, and one more reason to rejoice that today at last the season is behind us.

Another is Bob Dole. It is both cruel and darkly comic what this campaign did to Dole. Here was someone who spent his entire adult life in Washington, D.C., a trusted broker of legislation, a force in the national government. He believed he was qualified for a promotion. He wanted to run the government, a logical leap given his resume.

And yet to do this, he evidently was instructed, it was important that he never discuss the one period of his life which most qualified him for the job. He could talk on and on about his Jayhawk boyhood and his war wound, about soccer moms and “character.” What he could not talk about was his career in Washington. It seemed that about the only time he mentioned his Washington record was to distance himself from previous positions on civil rights legislation and deficit reduction--government business.

The strategy was understandable. It probably played well in the focus groups. The country now favors politicians who say they want to run government because they do not believe in government, which might seem just a little crazy. Under this model, if the nation needed a brain surgeon, it would turn to a podiatrist.

*

This is being written Tuesday evening, with only exit polls available in the California races. The early indications are that Proposition 209, the anti-affirmative-action initiative, might be close. Nonetheless, I assume it will pass. I have assumed that since the day they produced ballot language that neglected to mention that ending affirmative action was what this measure was all about.

In any case, Proposition 209 already has served its purpose, win or lose. It provided Republicans a wedge issue with which to rally constituents and funnel GOP money. Pete Wilson, in his “secret” call to California CEOs, made clear that the initiative was the tactical sequel to Proposition 187, the anti-immigrant initiative.

Wilson has built a national reputation for this kind of politics. He clearly is proud of the way he has promoted Republican interests by dividing Californians on the delicate issue of race. The question now is what group will he choose to vilify next. Maybe for the next election Wilson will fashion an initiative that plays to any latent animosity out there toward Asian Americans. Or maybe he can revisit previous American scapegoats, go after the Italians, say, or the Irish?

The answer will come soon enough. One more thing about our politics: As soon as one election ends, the next one begins. Now there’s a happy thought to start a new day.