When Cynicism Meets Money, It’s Politics Noir

It’s a strange and dishonorable time in politics. A California governor’s race is starting with the lowest level of activity since the days before Pat Brown. A seemingly historic accord for a balanced federal budget, a once ballyhooed debate between the vice president and the House minority leader over the future of the Democratic Party, the second-longest state budget deadlock in California’s history--all either ignored or greeted with yawns.

Have we reached the end of politics?

Probably no more than we have reached the end of history. Yet there is a pervasive--dare it be said--malaise hanging like smog over the political landscape. Only the Senate hearings on campaign finance abuses roused even the barest hint of popular interest and that only with the increased likelihood that Atty. Gen. Janet Reno will at last accede to the obvious and appoint a special prosecutor. The public is disengaged and disgusted, the pols mostly jaded or going through the motions.

In the absence of anything compelling in a positive sense, popular consciousness has become privatized, dominated by a voyeuristic media culture, as transfixed today by the spectacle of Princess Di as it was by the O.J. Simpson trial before it. With the president taking his politics of affect onto “Siskel & Ebert,” is it any wonder that the strongest images of conviction and leadership this year have come from better actors, namely Harrison Ford and Jodie Foster in “Air Force One” and “Contact”?

Of course, there is no civil rights movement to infuse politics with a deeper sense of meaning and morality. Nor, from a rightward perspective, is there the battle against communism. Nothing obvious to bring a sense of passion and conviction to our political culture.

This is not because there are not fundamental problems to be solved. It is because fundamental questions are not being posed.

In any time of great change, as Robespierre noted, first principles are essential. There are two central questions: How do we deal with the ascendancy of radical capitalism? And how do we reverse the deterioration of the public sphere?

Radical capitalism is the dominant economic approach to this accelerative age. A capitalism taken to its root ideology of ceaseless change, unfettered markets, tax flight and the ruthless accumulation of wealth and power, radical capitalism is a logical mode for an era of ever advancing though still adolescent technology.

That it is logical does not make it just or even all that smart, especially when its ideological mantra of “efficiency” is examined from the standpoint of efficient for whom. In a society or at least a media culture obsessed with the pursuit of wealth, it’s ironically telling to note that while more than 70% of Americans have essentially no net worth, the richest 1% owns more than 60% the nation’s equity. Irony, of course, is best appreciated by the affluent, who, notwithstanding the ceaseless hype emanating from Wall Street about the democratization of capital and the vast expansion of “wealth” through minor investments in mutual funds, remain a small minority of Americans in this best of all possible worlds.

We’re not going back to the past, which is a major reason why the Al Gore-Dick Gephardt debate over the future of the Democratic Party has been a nonstarter. Technological advance and greater global economic integration are simply realities. To oppose them is to oppose the tide, which worked out poorly for King Canute.

But to recognize change is not the same as putting a smiley face on radical capitalism, as many acquiescent politicians who call themselves Democrats now choose to do. The pace and direction of change is a profoundly political and moral matter. It remains unraised in this time of foolish idolatry of the market.

With regard to the second question, reversing the decline of the public sphere won’t be easy. Making troubled public programs like education work is fundamental, especially after the decline and fall of the welfare establishment. But nothing matters more than ending the money-soaked culture of lying that has come to pervade politics. It may well be that, as a formerly liberal Democratic consultant told me the other day, it won’t matter if the White House is guilty of breaking the law because the public believes that everyone does it. It won’t matter, he meant, in terms of the next election.

Leaving aside the fact that not everyone in politics is corrupt, this all-too-typical cynicism provides the perfect underpinning for the delegitimization of politics and government. A wonderful result, at least from a right-wing perspective. Think of it as politics noir.