Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, and so on and so forth

[rozk]

For someone never elected to public office, someone who chose a life which stopped me ever standing, I have hung around politics for rather a long time and seen careers come and go. I don't think of myself as cynical so much as moderately well-informed and as having certain insights into character that come both from observation and a habit of trying to make plausible characters up.

Two careers just came to an end in which I had a marginal walk-on role.

I remember Peter Hain from when he was about twenty and I was about 18 - which is to say forty years ago, when he was newly here from South Africa and full of fire and idealism. We were both on the central committee of the Young Liberals, which was in those days the very radical youth wing of a not very radical centre party. (And, in a quick digression, that was a committee which produced a Labour minister of some distinction, the founder editor of an eco-feminist magazine, the heads of an Intelligence scrutiny campaign, the editor of a left Labour newspaper, a leading figure in a prisoner's aid organization and, in me, the deputy chair of a major civil liberties NGO. Not bad for a bunch of crackpot idealists.)

We were on opposite sides of some crucial rows within the organization - these days I would at least consider the possibility that he was on the right side and I may have been on the wrong side. The rows in question were about armed struggle and I was a Christian in those days and therefore a commited anarcho-pacifist, and a little too prepared to accuse other people of being prepared to fight to the last drop of someone else's blood.

He did admirable work in the 70s, organizing sports boycotts as a way of hurting white South Africa in the core of its spirit. He annoyed them so much that they tried to frame him for bank robbery. Like most of us, he got disillusioned with the Liberal party when Thorpe was its leader - which is a tale for another time - and joined the Labour party. And prospered, and acquired grey hair and a rather silly perma-tan, and dissented from much of the Blairite project, but never enough. Finally he stood for the Deputy Leadership, and took dodgy money for his campaign, and has had to resign.

There is a line in Bolt's A Man For All Seasons where More asks his former friend Rich, now one of his accusers, what the seal is that he is wearing on his neck and Rich replies that he has been made, as indeed Hain was, Secretary for Wales. And More says 'what shall it profit a man that he gain the whole world and lose his soul...But for Wales, Richard, for Wales??!'

Or indeed the Deputy Leadership.

It is all a terrible shame and a parable of the rake's progress of idealism.

The British Labour Party has never been especially frightened of dynastic politics - look at the Foots, look at the Benns, look at the Morrisons/Mandelsons - and one of the grandest of those dynasts was Peggy Jay who died the other week at the age of 92 here. She had the sort of public service career that was not about self-enrichment or self-aggrandisement but about hard work for good causes. She was never much of an idealist, just a hard-working woman who was part of an extended family who did things - she did not marry into politics, so much as marry through them.

Oddly, the obituary does not mention the context in which I had an extended encounter with her - in my first year in the Civil Service, I was part of the secretariat of a committee she chaired on the provision of services for what in those days were called the mentally handicapped. In the event, I wrote the final draft of what was published as the Jay Report - it advocated care in the community but not in the discredited sense in which the term was used under Thatcher and Reagan. This was the version of care in the community which was all about spending money to afford underprivileged people respect and decent lives, not about saving money by shrugging off responsibility for them.
I never knew Peggy personally - I admired her in the way you do when you are a lowly public servant providing drafting help to that sort of grandee. She has always been one of my models of what public service is like.

I wish Peter Hain had achieved more in the end. I know how much Peggy Jay achieved.

******

Or, to put it another way, I did not vote for Tony Blair for leader of the Labour Party - faute de mieux, I voted for Margaret Beckett because she was the sort of solid party hack about whom there is no whiff of bullshit.

I disliked Blair from the first time I became aware of him as Shadow Home Secretary, trying to sell the Daily Mail readership on the idea that a Labour government would be 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime' and trying to outflank the vampiric Tory Home Secretary Michael Howard on the right.

I went to hear him speak, because I still think that public speaking is one of those revealing things. I know how the tricks work, because I am not entirely bad at them - and that is why I have a lot of time for, say, Tony Benn, with whom I once shared a platform, even though I disagree with a lot of his actual politics, simply because he is the real thing.

Blair is not a good speaker, whatever his reputation, because he has learned a few tricks, like the randomly inserted pregnant pause between undistinguished phrases that thereupon sound like sound bites, and the breathy intensity that makes jejune remarks sound like the wisdom of the ages.

I distrusted him as a god-botherer from the beginning. Catholic converts are usually worse than cradle catholics because they swallow every bit of the nonsense. I remember once ending up after a concert at a dinner party full of Blairista apparatchiks, one of whom was dating a woman I intermittently flirt with, and they were all being gushy about his messianic appeal and slightly giggly about his Romishness.

I said that as a former catholic, I remembered my catechism and that one of the sins crying out to Heaven was cheating the labourer of his hire, and I suspected that Blair had not quite got that particular memo.

I left the Labour Party over the first Gulf War, but rejoined after a decent interval - I left finally when Blair persuaded the membership to abolish Clause Four. I was never a huge enthusiast for nationalisation on a centralized model, but I knew that Blair wanted people like me out of a party which was to be a vehicle for his personal power and whatever he chose to do with it.

At some other time, I will talk at length about what happened in Liberty, and how I fought the Blairistas inside the organization until my health failed and I had to go off and write about popular culture instead.

I voted Labour in 97 and I do not regret it. We got abolition of the hereditary peers, and gay partnership, and some trans rights, and the return of democracy to London. Unfortunately we also got the Iraq war, but the Tories would have been worse toadies to Bush, even.

I have known idealists who went stale, and I have seen people who evoked mass enthusiasm in spite of not being nearly as good as their fans thought, and I have known machine politicians who worked hard for the common good.

I don't know what to think about the American elections - a black President would be a good thing, and so would a woman President.

What I do know is that a husband and wife team is not a dynasty, and that people whose supporters go on and on inaccurately about dynastic politics should not be seeking out the endorsement of actual dynasts. Ted Kennedy is an admirable man whose opinion I respect - but not when he is acting as part of a dynasty rather than as a distinguished senator. Caroline Kennedy is wholly and solely a member of a dynasty, and her endorsement of Obama is a dynastic one.

'A President like my father' - by which I take it we are not supposed to understand a man who will nearly cause nuclear holocaust, who will get the US into another disastrous war, who will stand aside from important social causes.

I think better of Obama than that he is the over-rated JFK's natural heir.

What I do think is that I would rather have a battered pragmatic public servant than an untried personable spinner of wonderful empty words; I see the idealism that has focussed on him and I remember how many of my friends had real hope from Blair as opposed to voting for him because it was important to get the Tories out.

A Clinton Presidency is going to be unexciting, not especially idealistic and only better by comparison with Bush. But it will break no one's hearts.

I look at my friends list and see a lot of wonderful ideals and I worry that Obama will break your hearts if he attains power.

I hope that I am wrong.

Comments

[kindkit.livejournal.com]

More asks his former friend Roper

I believe you're thinking of Sir Richard Rich, not William Roper. Roper was More's son-in-law and one of his staunchest defenders.

[rozk.livejournal.com]

You are right of course. Blame an ageing memory not quite yet used to the idea that I now have to verify my quotations.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

I think, at this point, I am willing to take the gamble for something new, b/c the fail state is the same as a (Mrs.) Clinton presidency. I mean, I am aware that their politics aren't all that different. I don't think he can break my heart. He can, however, surprise me -- and, in fact, he keeps doing so.

[rozk.livejournal.com]

I hope you are right. HRC sometimes surprise me, though; she said some very insightful things about the protection of LGBT youth the other day that were attractively specific. Check out the clip at the Billerico Project here (http://www.bilerico.com/2008/01/hillary_clinton_talks_about_preventing_l.php)

[debg.livejournal.com]

"I have known idealists who went stale, and I have seen people who evoked mass enthusiasm in spite of not being nearly as good as their fans thought, and I have known machine politicians who worked hard for the common good.

I don't know what to think about the American elections - a black President would be a good thing, and so would a woman President.

What I do know is that a husband and wife team is not a dynasty, and that people whose supporters go on and on inaccurately about dynastic politics should not be seeking out the endorsement of actual dynasts. Ted Kennedy is an admirable man whose opinion I respect - but not when he is acting as part of a dynasty rather than as a distinguished senator. Caroline Kennedy is wholly and solely a member of a dynasty, and her endorsement of Obama is a dynastic one.

'A President like my father' - by which I take it we are not supposed to understand a man who will nearly cause nuclear holocaust, who will get the US into another disastrous war, who will stand aside from important social causes.

I think better of Obama than that he is the over-rated JFK's natural heir.

What I do think is that I would rather have a battered pragmatic public servant than an untried personable spinner of wonderful empty words; I see the idealism that has focussed on him and I remember how many of my friends had real hope from Blair as opposed to voting for him because it was important to get the Tories out.

A Clinton Presidency is going to be unexciting, not especially idealistic and only better by comparison with Bush. But it will break no one's hearts.

I look at my friends list and see a lot of wonderful ideals and I worry that Obama will break your hearts if he attains power.

I hope that I am wrong."

This is as beautiful a summation as I've seen. I would add, from the seat of the west coast of America where we keep some of the widest and starriest eyes, that of the three viable candidates for the Democrats, one is black, one is female, and one is a religious white male. And the best candidate by a mile, in these unstarry and rhetoric-allergic eyes, is the religious white male. Which, entre nous, is infuriating, but true.

And by the way, you aren't wrong.

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

Well, as a religious white male, I don't find that as infuriating as you do. (And, cynically, Edwards would be easier to sell to the poor white folks who've been seduced for decades into voting against their own best interests.)

[debg.livejournal.com]

As a completely irreligious white female - not to mention a progressive - I find it infuriating in a wry way. Because from where I'm sitting, belief in the sky gods has been the dominant paradigm for the past two thousand years or so, and they've done their best to reclassify me as a second-hand human, for having a vagina. They've also managed to murder more than a handful of my ancestors for not believing in the same flavour of sky god, and I don't see that changing.

I was really hoping for a candidate who didn't want to shove that down my throat. Not going to happen, apparently. But of the three, I do find it wryly infuriating that the one I could vote for the easiest is the religious white male.

Barring that, I vote for Clinton. Obama does not get my vote.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Said religious white male talks a good line, but it's not how he voted when he had a vote to give. Who is he, really, anyway? I find him hard to trust, almost a Democratic version of Mitt.

[debg.livejournal.com]

Well - when did he have a vote to give? And which issue are we talking about, here?

My own numero uno is the preservation of my civil liberties, which includes my right to choice. All three of the Dem candidates should be reasonably reliable on that one; hell, even my miserable senior senator - DiFi is a Vichy Democrat, a collaborator if ever I saw one - is reliable for that.

But for healthcare, which runs a very close second for me (I'm 53 and I have multiple sclerosis, and believe me, you don't want to know what the meds for this disease cost without coverage), Edwards was the first one out the gate.

I don't actually hold the war vote against any of the candidates (other than my aforementioned Vichy Democrat, who stood on the senate floor and used her five minutes to tell the world that her constituents could go to hell, SHE had inside knowledge, NEENER), because they were fed false information. I hold their stupidity in believing as a black mark against them, but the fact remains, all of them were fed BS.

The one thing I really, really do NOT like on Edwards' platform is his view on gay marriage. But none of them are good on that, which makes me pine for the candidate I really wanted, Al Gore, even more.

Obama, though? Every red alert button I've got, nonstop ping. And I can't listen to him talk. I want to slap him. He keeps bellowing CHAAAANGE, but yanno, a couple of specifics - just to show this isn't talking points and snake oil - wouldn't hurt.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

"When did he have a vote to give?" When he was in the U.S. Senate, which he used to be, you know.

Nowadays Edwards sounds a lot like Russ Feingold, but here is what Russ Feingold has to say about him:

"The one that is the most problematic is Edwards, who voted for the Patriot Act, campaigns against it. Voted for 'No Child Left Behind,' campaigns against it. Voted for the China trade deal, campaigns against it. Voted for the Iraq war.... He uses my voting record exactly as my platform, even though he had the opposite voting record."

Your comment on Obama sounds like you're channeling this guy. You can do better than that. Listen to this guy instead.

[debg.livejournal.com]

Um - a skosh rude. You might ask Roz - who knows me, which you don't - if I'm likely to channel anyone. I don't channel - or drink the Kool-Aid offered by - anyone, period. My opinions are formed by me.

And you know, what with having the mind of my own, the very strong opinions that don't come from pundits or talking points, and half a century on the planet to have honed both to my own satisfaction, I feel no particular need to "do better than that" to please anyone else.

Short form: I've despised Obama since he walked out onstage at the Dem National Convention and mooed at me about how Democrats worship an AWESOME god in the BLOOOOO states. Dude, keep your invisible cloud guy out of my secular platform, 'k? One of the things I cherish about this country is the fact that I do not have to worship anything if I don't want to. Nothing out of his mouth has struck me as honest, bone-deep or even really his, ever since. He's so very very groomed for the gig he wants. I dislike his bleating about change, while he's palling around and doing cheap land deals with Atoin Rezko; that smells very much like same old-same old to me. I dislike his sanctimonious little speeches that don't say anything. Half the stuff he has actually *has* said scares the crap out of me, both on the economic home front and on foreign policy. The chants of CHAAANGE sound very much like BRAAAAAAAAAAINS to me, the chant of zombies from a B movie.

No thanks.

The only candidate from either party who scares me worse than Barack Obama is Mike Huckabee. And Huckabee - who is, in my eyes, a complete and total whackaloon - has at least displayed the occasional flash of humour.

The question's irrelevant, as it happens, since Edwards dropped out. That makes my primary vote a lot easier. It's going to Clinton.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

You could try reading what I wrote, for a start. I didn't say you were channeling Bruce Tinsley, I said you _sounded_ like you were channeling him.

Look, Roz considered it a worthwhile comment on Obama that Francis Fukuyama endorsed him. I consider it a worthwhile comment on your opinion of Obama that _you_ sound like Bruce Tinsley. Anyone who actually thinks that Obama just "keeps bellowing CHAAAANGE" and lacks "a couple of specifics" really, really isn't paying attention. To be charitable about it. And making an issue of the Rezko business is a true low, on the order of dredging up Whitewater.

I'm not pushing Obama over Clinton. And mindless, caricatured dismissal of one candidate is your right. But that says more about you than anything you've brought up says about Obama.

[debg.livejournal.com]

I did read what you wrote, thanks. And "you sound like you're channeling" and "you can do better" are - by my definition - rude, and on the patronising side. You're making the assumption that I've read or haven't read, and (editing to clarify: your assumption, not your opinion) - while certainly yours to do anything you wish with - is, in this instance, wrong.

So there you go. End of that argument; our opinions don't mesh on the starting point, so what's the likelihood of the rest of the threads meshing? Pretty low.

Repeating: I don't *care* who endorses a candidate. I look at said candidate and form my own opinion.

I live in the Bay Area. We produce, on any given day, an incredibly high percentage of starry eyes; I was surrounded by the Nader flavour in 2000, and that got us George W. Bush, since the chicanery would not have been possible without the Nader contingent's pre-election activities in Florida. I'm seeing it again with Obama, the same starry eyes.

Why is Rezko different from Whitewater? It may not be. But Obama has been hanging out with this guy even after Rezko was indicted, and he's going to be asked about it. So far, he's pushed it away. You really think that, if he gets the nomination, the Republican spin machine and the Scaife brigade won't rip him to shreds? Because there, again, we do not mesh. Whitewater was not a campaign issue in 1992, but Rezko would be one here. And I don't want starry eyes handing me John McCain or Mitt Romney. Been there, done that, still hate Ralph Nader.

And you know, really? Thus endeth my participation in the discussion. Because the end result of this kind of discussion only has value for me if some sort of agreement looks possible, and it doesn't here.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Well, I _said_ I was being charitable.

OK, then, you are paying attention. In which case to say what you said about Obama, you must be rampantly prejudiced or lying - like Tinsley. Take your pick.

Oh sure, the Republicans will attack the Rezko business. They'll attack anybody over anything. So that's no reason to pick on one candidate as vulnerable.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Here's an article basically saying that Edwards was as rote as you're claiming Obama is

[debg.livejournal.com]

Dude, let it go, already. I do not love John Edwards; I just like him better than the other two.

Enough with the article linkage. Because it's irrelevant: EDWARDS ISN'T RUNNING ANYMORE.

[glvalentine.livejournal.com]

This is all brilliant. Can we vote you for president?

I keep hoping (foolishly) that someone, anyone, will live up to their promises, and feel that, regardless, every choice is somehow a wrong choice. (The silver lining would be that none of them can be as bad as what we've got.)

[paratti.livejournal.com]

Me too.

But I think you're not.

[galamb-borong.livejournal.com]

"Blair is not a good speaker, whatever his reputation, because he has learned a few tricks, like the randomly inserted pregnant pause between undistinguished phrases that thereupon sound like sound bites, and the breathy intensity that makes jejune remarks sound like the wisdom of the ages."

Thank you for summing up just why — above and beyond politics — I find Blair so aversive.

"What I do think is that I would rather have a battered pragmatic public servant than an untried personable spinner of wonderful empty words; I see the idealism that has focussed on him and I remember how many of my friends had real hope from Blair as opposed to voting for him because it was important to get the Tories out."

It's weird, even though I was a kid, I really remember the sense of jubilation the morning Blair was elected; it was the first time I was aware of politics. I also remember the political divide among the teachers being quite openly visible, and one kid who was really messed up because his parents told him they'd have to put his dog down if labour won.
I have similar feelings to yours about Obama. I know my mother is very much on the Obama bandwagon ( though neither of us are American ), but in all honesty, I can't rally an ounce of enthusiasm aside from the prospect of a Democrat Whitehouse.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

My political heart is held together with Velcro these days. Break it, slap it back together, carry on. There is little or no chance of a good result as long as power is in the hands of people who would seek it. The electoral system has been hopelessly compromised and AFAIK no measures have been taken to make it more secure. Democracy is a game we are given to play while the men at the top decide which of their number will rule and which will oppose, and then they make it seem to have been our doing.

I have a small ivory box with a gold padlock on it, and inside is my last crumb of hope. I don't expect to be needing the key any time soon.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with debg up there in an earlier comment. See, thing is, while I live out on the West Coast of America too, I have deep ties to the famous Heartland and the people who live there. And I have no faith whatsoever that those people will elect either a woman or a black man. The amount of misogyny in this country is staggering; the amount of Clinton Hate equally so. While it's better hid these days (for the most part -- don't ask me about that n-word loving uncle of mine) there's still a lot of racism around. And dammit, Edwards is more progressive than either of them.

MKK

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

Of course, as soon as I hit the "post" button I remembered what I forgot. Yes, I think a President Obama would break a lot of hearts. I listened to his victory speech after South Carolina and he is certainly saying many of the right things. But he hasn't got either the connections or the experience to deliver them, especially since some of them would be to the detriment of his party.

MKK

[pnh.livejournal.com]

This is brilliant, but you're wrong. More specifically, you're misapplying the lessons of your political life to a situation that's seriously different, much the same way that for the neocons, all international affairs are an endless rerun of Chamberlain in Munich.

Despite being the author of a blog post, several months ago, entitled "Barack Obama Can Kiss My Ass", I've become moderately pro-Obama, but not because he speaks well, and certainly not because of the Kennedy endorsement. (I have a long history of opposing Kennedys, in fact.) I'm for Obama because he's got the clearest, smartest set of positions on open-government issues, digital rights issues, network neutrality, and a whole bunch of other really geeky things that I think are going to be absolutely critical to progressive politics during the next decade or two. I'm also for him because, within the constraints of our civic religion of American exceptionalism, he's got the best foreign-policy instincts and (by a mile) the best foreign-policy advisors and staff.

I'm also for him because I'm 49 years old, and since I began following politics in 1968 I've been hearing liberals and progressive talk about how they're going to change the game by getting young people to vote in quantity. They've never succeeded. Obama seems to be succeeding.

And I'm for him because, although Hillary Clinton would certainly be better than any of the clowns and vampires on the Republican side, at the end of the day she and Bill are a hundred yards to the right of the other leading Democrats. I would love to vote for a woman for President, but I'm not going to support a warmonger just because she's a woman. If it comes to a choice between hawkish Clinton and insane clown John McCain, or robotic sociopath Mitt Romney, of course I'll support the relatively sensible (even if hawkish) Clinton. But she ain't my first choice.

What I'm not is some dewy-eyed college student overwhelmed by Obama's beautiful words. That's the narrative being sold by portions of our corrupt media, and you ought to be suspicious of it.

[rozk.livejournal.com]

Fair points all of these, though a lot of my sense of Obama supporters as dewy-eyed idealists comes from my friends list on LiveJournal as much as from the US media.

And I really do not think that the idiocy of neo-cons about Munich should preclude our ever talking about the lessons of history.

[pnh.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course not. But as teachers go, history is a prankster with a nasty sense of humor.

[rozk.livejournal.com]

That is certainly true and there is probably a really good post in that concept.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

there is probably a really good post in that concept
(insert picture of cat of your choice here, captioned WANT!)

Many thanks--my brain always feels a little bigger after I read one of your bits, where it's politics or criticism.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Blair wanted people like me out

And he got what he wanted.

[rozk.livejournal.com]

Good point, but sometimes you just have to leave. And after people closely connected with the Blair Project had won an election against me by using my sexuality I really needed to stay gone.

[annafdd.livejournal.com]

You know what? tonight I was walking past one of the silent monitors in the deserted floor where Bush was giving the State of the Union Address and thought, two terms. Fucking unbelievable. And then I thought, well, not if you steal the election twice.

And then I thought: what exactly is stopping them stealing it a third time?

I have had my heart broken too many times to hope. I wonder what madman the Republicans will install next. And I realize that it's not that I don't dare hope: it's that I am really scared.

[vampwillow]

"I did not vote for Tony Blair for leader of the Labour Party - faute de mieux, I voted for Margaret Beckett because she was the sort of solid party hack about whom there is no whiff of bullshit."

Ditto. The options being The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Once the wardrobe (all style no substance) got the leadership and moved to the right I left. I did vote Labour in 1997 though and cheered for the first month or two ...

So far as the USA is concerned, I can't see anything good coming of it on the Democrats side; all three candidates who /might/ have a chance will not get a majority support in the General and I suspect a Republican will end up taking it.

[thesideshow.livejournal.com]

No, it's worse than that. If the polling is any indicator, the one Democrat who can solidly beat all Republican contenders is John Edwards. And the Democrats aren't going to give him that chance.

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

Shhh.... you're not supposed to say that out loud. The older, wiser heads in the Democratic Party's upper echelons will make sure that the safest, dullest candidate will get the nomination, and we will have the same sort of triumphant victories we had with Muskie, Mondale, Dukakis, and Kerry!

{Hint: what part of the North did the last three Democrats to win the White House come from?)

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Edwards _is_ the safe, dull candidate. Unless it was Joe Biden.