9-08-08, 9:35 am
The surreal Republican convention has ended. Sneering, smirking reactionaries took the platform to mock Barack Obama's work in the 1980s as a community organizer in Chicago.
The 1980s, unlike the 1960s, were a time when it was hard to be a community organizer since national and local power structures were treating poor communities the way they treat stray cats and dogs: with neglect, until they make trouble and then locked up and removed from public view.
If Barack Obama had become a stockbroker or a banker at a savings and loan, or a shopping mall real estate developer, or had gone to work for John McCain's father-in-law in the beer distribution business, he would have been at home at this Republican convention. (But only if one ignores the fact that he is African American, and even the tiny number of African American delegates to this convention didn't quite feel at home in a party which has written them off, even as tokens.)
Republicans don't like community organizers, and you could see it on their faces. They don't like environmentalists. They sneer and cheer when their leaders tell them that journalists, teachers, people in the not so highly paid professions are 'elitists' and corporate leaders, bankers, billionaires are representatives of 'ordinary folks.' They are against lobbyists even though the great majority of lobbyists work for the firms and interests that bankroll their party.
The ultra right, as was noted nearly 100 years ago by progressives (some of whom at the time were Republicans), cravenly serves and protects the 'vested interest,' the large corporations, banks, great financial syndicates represented at that time most of all by Morgan and Rockefeller, and denounce the 'special interests,' labor unions, reformers fighting for workmen's compensation, housing reform laws, women's suffrage, the abolition of child labor, as seeking special privileges against the interests of the American people.
The absurdity of the Republican convention did not make the McCain-Palin ticket less dangerous. Palin's speech was an attempt more than McCain's to recreate Ronald Reagan, who was expert at using Hollywood movie myths to advance his interests. Palin pretended to assume the voice of small town America (like the old Frank Capra movies, whose critics called them 'Capracorn'), though the George W. Bush-style policies she wants to advance aren't shared by small town America.
That the US is an urban-suburban country, that the bulk of the industrial labor and real wealth production of the country has been in urban-suburban regions for at least 120 years didn't matter to Palin. Palin also pointed to her husband, a 'proud member of the United Steelworkers Union,' and sportsman. Maybe Palin should visit Cleveland or Pittsburgh and see what has happened to the Steelworkers and steel industry since Ronald Reagan and under George W. Bush, who liked to say that he was the only president who ever led a union (the Screen Actors Guild) became president. Also, Alaska has been a producer of raw materials, a state separated from the rest of the country where all sorts of goods that Americans take for granted have to be imported.
Meanwhile, in what old fashioned conservatives would consider both tasteless and shameless, Palin's baby was being held for the cameras and her children were on camera as she continued her speech. she tried to drive a wedge between de-industrialized Scranton and San Francisco (which in right-wing Republican parlance means liberal and homosexual), denouncing the 'Washington (media) elite' for daring to suggest that her qualifications to be president are suspect (a simple 'Hockey mom' who happens to be a telegenic former TV sportscaster). And the delegates ate it up.
If anything, McCain's speech was far worse. McCain played the absurd role of good cop, trying to separate himself from the worst of the Bush administration, despite having voted for the Bush agenda more than 90 percent of the time. He talked about 'reforming' the 'broken' federal government, despite is role in helping to create the mess over the past 26 years. That the Republican platform was a testament to the national party's domination by the extreme right made McCain's speech as trustworthy as a Groucho Marx comment in the classic comedy, Horse Feathers to an outraged husband who caught him in his wife's bedroom: 'who are you going to believe: me or your own eyes?'
The Republicans have nominated an ultra-right-wing ticket and have produced a party platform which the press reports was heavily and directly influenced by Phyllis Schlafly, veteran far right activist and leader in the 1970s against the Equal Rights Amendment. The defeat of the ERA was perhaps the most important political defeat for the women's rights movement in the second half of the 20th century.
McCain-Palin hypocritical criticism of 'lobbyists' is perhaps the greatest con game of all, since the number of Washington lobbyists on the McCain campaign itself is astounding. Also, the number of overwhelmingly pro-corporate and business allied lobbyist grew exponentially during the 1980s during the Reaganite 'deregulation' period. Indeed, the elimination many regulations essentially turned Washington over to the lobbyist, and John McCain was there both to reap the rewards and to use his seat in Congress to advance their interests. This culture of corruption culminated in the George W. Bush era with the likes of Jack Abramoff, Tom Delay, and now Palin's close friend Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens.
McCain and Palin are attempting to craft a campaign in which they both attack Obama and at the same time 'run' against aspects of the Bush administration. This deceptive goal is something they also share with Ronald Reagan, who ran in 1984 as the candidate of 'recovery,' following the biggest recession of the postwar era, a recession his administration created.
--Norman Markowitz is a contributing editor of Political Affairs.
