Wednesday, September 29, 1999

Down, Pat

Pat Buchanan, the ex-Republican-to-be, was on a national syndicated call-in radio show last week, promoting his new book on foreign policy--in which he defends so-called "enlightened" isolationism (and his firestorm-causing suggestion that the United States would have been better off had Western Europe not opposed Hitler in the run-up to the World War II)--when a listener in Florida named John Anderson got through.

"The John Anderson?" Buchanan asked.

Yes, the caller said, confirming he was indeed the last Republican presidential candidate who bolted from the party to run as a non-Republican. He then blasted Buchanan's anti-internationalist foreign policy views.

In 1980 Anderson, a liberal/moderate Republican congressman from Illinois, left the GOP in the middle of the 1980 primaries when it became obvious that the party was going to coronate conservative champion Ronald Reagan as its nominee. His followers waged petition campaigns across the country and placed Anderson on the presidential ballot in every state. He participated in the debates with President Cater and Reagan and collected 7 percent of the vote. In the years since, he has been an elder statesman among those aiming to break up the national political duopoly.

But he doesn't see Buchanan as the hammer to smash that system. These days--when he is not teaching at Nova Southeastern Law School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and fulfilling his duties as president of the World Federalist Association--Anderson is working to steer the Reform Party away from Buchanan. "As much as I want to see the present power structure challenged," he tells me, "it can't be with Buchanan with his absolutely misbegotten views." (Anderson is an advocate of an international rule of law; Buchanan's most chilling nightmare is world government that impinges upon American prerogatives.)

Since the Buchanan flurry began, Anderson has repeatedly spoken with Lowell Weicker, the former Republican Senator and former independent governor of Connecticut, urging Weicker to try for the Reform Party presidential slot. "You can't stop Buchanan with nothing," Anderson says. He reports that Weicker has indicated he would like to have the Reform Party nomination but hasn't yet resolved himself to putting in the time, energy and resources required. It would be an arduous task for Weicker--or any other Buchanan foe.

The rules of the party favor a candidate with a diehard grassroots following; the followers need not even be members of the party. And whoever wins the nomination will have to do some heavy-lifting. The Reform Party will only automatically qualify for the presidential ballot line in 21 states. The nominee must do the work necessary to make the ballot in the other states. "It's a little bit daunting," says Anderson. "You have to have someone in each state to coordinate a petition drive effort. It takes a lot of sweat-equity. You can pay for that. But it would be pretty expensive."

Weicker cannot match Buchanan in this organizational regard. How many troops does he have? Anderson acknowledges this: "Weicker's base is Connecticut and that's a small state." And he's not all that popular there. Moreover, Weicker's name recognition is high only among the most insomniac C-SPAN junkies. Surely, the stop-Pat movement needs someone with more firepower. What about Jesse Ventura's effort to recruit Donald Trump for a thwart-Pat candidacy? Anderson won't jump on that circus train. "Trump is obviously a man bent only on self-aggrandizement," he says. "I don't know if he ever said a word that has embraced the principles that a new party should have. And I'm also concerned about the growing inequity between the bottom quintile [of Americans] and the top 1 percent and I don't know if that has ever occupied his thoughts. As for foreign policy, outside of planning his trips to Paris on the Concorde, I don't know if he's given that much thought, either." Anderson is not happy that Ventura and his posse have been courting Trump: "I see them faltering and going down this ridiculous path of putting out the Trump trial balloon"

What bugs Anderson is that when the year 2000 election presents "a golden opportunity for a third party to emerge and be credible and give the Democrats and Republicans some competition," the Buchanan raid on the Reform Party--and the Trump talk--threatens to trivialize or marginalize the third-party movement. It was time for the Reform Party to shove Ross Perot off the stage and, in a sense, grow up. Buchanan--or Trump--do not represent political maturity.

Anderson is a wishful thinker, something of a yesterday-politician, but a noble one. He has no clout within the Reform Party, just respect in certain of its quarters. Yet his dilemma--how to stop Pat?--is shared by a portion of Reform Party members (but not the Perot wing) and by non-RPers who would like to see the emergence of more political choices but not the choice represented by Buchanan. All their opposition will mean nothing if they cannot find a brawny Buchanan-buster. Anderson realizes that Weicker is not well-equipped to slay the Pat the Nativist Dragon. But Anderson (like the other anti-Buchananites) can't think of any other serious contender to send into battle--and he has been looking. "I don't know who that person could be," he notes with a sigh. "If there's someone out there. I wish they'd let me know."
 

Bradley Fakes Left?

Are liberals falling for Bill Bradley? Friends of the Earth endorsed Bradley, who as a Senator often fought lonely environmental battles against water and mining interests. (The group spurned Al Gore, who wrote a best-selling enviro book and whose green-ness earned the tag "Ozone Man" from George W. Bush's father.) The National Association for Socially Responsible Organizations, a do-good liberal outfit, also came out for the former New Jersey Senator and ex-Knicks shooter. Over at my home base, The Nation, an editorial (in which I did not participate) drooled over the potential of Bradley the Progressive.

On the campaign trail, Bradley has, in his abstract and laconic manner, talked up the issues that juice up progressives: childhood poverty, racism, the need for universal health care. His gun control stand has been stronger than Gore's. He is not shy in assailing the institutional corruption that pervades Washington, advocating campaign finance reform. (His halfway-there proposal for partial public funding of congressional elections covers general elections, not primary contests). Bradley has spoken against mandatory-minimum sentencing and called for ending the disparity in sentencing for those busted for powder-cocaine offenses (mainly white people) and those arrested for crack-cocaine offenses (mainly black people). Though he's a cheerleader of global capitalism and an ardent free-trader enamoured with the corporate-friendly World Trade Organization and NAFTA-like trading accords, he has tried to be a pal to union stiffs, urging changes in labor law that would render it easier to organize. All in all, not an inconsequential collection of liberal stands.

The question is, where was this Bradley during his 18 years in the Senate? It's not that he's pulling a total reverse-course. He was an ally of enviros when he was in Washington. He did decry the sleazy campaign finance system. But he also voted for Ronald Reagan's budget cuts and opposed a move to make income tax rates more progressive. He voted to aid the thuggish contra rebels fighting the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. When Hillary Rodham Clinton was peddling her Rube Goldberg health care plan, Bradley did not call for health care for all. Instead, he fiddled around with moderate Republicans to concoct a bipartisan plan--which never fully materialized. He was not known as a champion of the poor. He did give a few speeches on the Senate floor warning that racism was an untreated sore in American society; but he offered little leadership in doing anything about it. When he was recently on ABC's This Week, Bradley defended his support of NAFTA but conceded that the treaty has produced both winner and losers: "There are people who've lost their jobs in this country because of NAFTA, and I think we have to be sensitive to that and we try to have to help them in terms of health care, in terms of education benefits, in terms of understanding that they're, in many cases, making less money now." That's fine. But when he was a go-go free-trader in the Senate he didn't condition his support for no-holds-bar trade measures on the existence of such assistance for those screwed by free trade policies.

The cynical interpretation is that Bradley realizes what the most junior political analyst knows: you can't beat Al Gore among Democratic primary voters by running to the vice president's right. And Bradley needs to have some policy differences with Gore, otherwise he's only left with his I'm-a-better-and-more-decent-guy-who-didn't-grow-up-in-Washington argument. When politicians break with their pasts, there is reason to be suspicious, to wonder whether opportunism or principle is in the driver's seat. (See Pat Buchanan.) Maybe Bradley has, uh, grown. He has promised to soon start releasing policy proposals that will make good on his liberal--not his word!--rhetoric. The specifics of his health care plan will be telling. Still, even if it's a solid proposal that insures all at a reasonable cost--a la the Canadian system, say--there remains cause to inquire, Senator, why now? Why did you not pitch this when you had the power? Should his policy details actually match his progressive-sounding pronouncements, liberals might be right to team up with Dollar Bill. But they should watch out for the double dribble later in the game.
 
 

Not Going to That Chapel

Bradley portrays himself as the bold alternative to the cautious Gore. But like so many Democratic pols, Bradley turns timid on the subject of gay marriage. "The reason I don't support gay marriage," he said recently, "is because...marriage is not simply a legal state. But it is a sacrament. For example, in certain Christian faith, And that there are many leaders who are opposed to it. And therefore, in a world where you're weighing constantly the relative merits and balances of right and wrong, on this issue I tilted toward religious faith." Now apply this same logic to abortion. Certain Christian faiths adamantly oppose the right to an abortion. Many religious leaders want abortion to be illegal. Why not "tilt" toward religious faith? Bradley, who is pro-choice, does not. Is that because abortion is an issue of life-and-death? So is he willing to grant religious leaders influence only on less weighty matters? (By the way, you can find some religious leaders who are not opposed to gay marriage.) On the dicey topic of gay marriage, his citation of "religious leaders" comes across as a ruse, not a reason. Bradley seems either to believe himself that gay marriage is wrong or to worry that supporting gay marriage would be too dangerous for his career. I'd feel better about his standing as a progressive leader if he took an honest position on this matter.
 
 

Advertisement for Myself

It's hard for me to pay attention to the presidential race these days. Not because it's thirteen months to the election or because the contest overflows with inanities. (Just wait for George W. Bush's book to come out!) No, my problem is that I spend too many hours of the day behind the computer visiting the Amazon.com bookselling site. As I mentioned two columns ago, I have a new novel out. It's a political thriller entitled Deep Background, in which a president is assassinated and an unofficial investigation conducted by a White House aide, a CIA analyst, and the disgraced White House security chief uncovers inconvenient secrets pertaining to the First Couple, the Vice President, and other Washington players, some of whom might seem familiar to those who follow real-life politics. Intrigue ensues, mayhem occurs, and the corruptions of politics--large and small--are revealed. By the way, the widowed First Lady is an ambitious woman who wants to run for office. (I swear I finished the manuscript by the end of 1997, Before Monica, and before Hillary Clinton became the sympathetic First Victim who could even contemplate a Senate bid in New York.) My three-second pitch: Robert Penn Warren meets John Grisham in Washington.

In the past, anxious authors--which means all authors--obsessed over reviews, which trickle out over the course of several weeks. (Thank you for asking; so far the reviews for Deep Background have been quite strong. E-mail me and I'll send you a sample of the write-ups.) Now there is something else for an author to be consumed by: Amazon.com's sales ranking. Each of the 2 million or so books in the Amazon catalogue is assigned a sales ranking, and these rankings can change frequently. Thus, several times a day, an author of a new book is tempted to log on and check. If you're not Frank McCourt or Stephen King, the ride can be hurly-burly. Deep Background started out in the 64,000 range. The highest ranking I have spotted for the book is 461. (Wow, that puts it in the top .02 percent!) But often in a day the book can drop from the 500s to 4000, rise to 1300--Mom, did you buy a bunch?--and then move again. (Imagine if the Dow Jones varied so much.) The ranking is aggravating because it does not reveal how many books were sold. Can a sales spurt of five books propel a book from five-figures to three-figures territory? If I purchased 50 copies in one swoop, could I turn Deep Background into one of Amazon's top 100 books?

In the midst of my Amazon addiction, I managed to get out of the house to attend a party, where I overheard someone mention that an employee from Amazon.com was present. I sought this person out, introduced myself, and when I started to explain I was an author of a new novel, the Amazonite interrupted and said, "And you want to know about the Amazon sales rankings, right?" I confessed. He was patient, explaining that the ranking only indicates how a book sold in comparison with the others in a particular period of time, say an hour. Which tells you nothing about the overall performance of a book. He did not know--or would not say--how many book sales would comprise a noticeable bubble. "Total sales figures would be more relevant and meaningful," he added. "But there's no way Amazon is going to release that sort of data. It would be very useful to the competition if they knew how much of what Amazon was actually selling. So try not to sweat the ranking."

Easy for him to say. He's never dropped 3000 spots in an afternoon. (I have one writer friend who says she constantly checks the ranks of the books of her enemies.) In any event, this item is supposed to be a not-too-sly plug for the book. Since I am glued to my screen, I'll be able to see if it works. Unless, of course, you all believe in supporting real-life bookstores.

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