The Road to Nowhere (1996)

TV Review from the October 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

If you are unlucky enough to be reading this in the middle of the British party conference season, spare a thought for those who stayed up into the middle of the night a few weeks back to watch the Republican and Democrat conventions in the US choose their Presidential candidates. Ignoring wiser counsels, this reviewer stayed up till four in the morning in an attempt to understand the alleged significance of it all, but to little avail.

In one sense it was an education — it certainly taught me a lesson. But in virtually every other sense it was at best a badly acted pantomime. The purpose of the BBC’s Road To The White House coverage (BBC1, 1 a.m., various nights) appeared to be to convince British viewers that mainstream politics over here does really have a purpose and is really about issues, in obvious distinction to its American counterpart. If so, it almost succeeded — but not quite, for the obvious similarities between the two served to override any superficial differences. Most notably there was an unashamed party of the Right opposed by a party heading at a rate of knots to meet it from the other direction. taking all the liberals and reformists with it. Then there was the glitz, choreography, leader-adulation and even much of the phraseology that was used which could so easily have graced Blackpool or Brighton just as it graced San Diego and Chicago. And to the extent that any issues were addressed— however fleetingly—they were the same too: jobs, mortgages, crime, education, health care, war and the other problems that flourish under the market economy. The "solutions" offered were little different — tax-breaks and subsidies, the restoration of “family values", and economic growth as a panacea without the first idea where it was going to come from.

Deep doo-doo

This was all as bad as it was familiar. But there was worse—much worse — and it would be possible to fill a whole edition of this magazine with examples of it. For those of you who missed it, there are just three samples of the political excrement served up at the conventions, and which will no doubt be manifesting itself here in some form or other shortly as the General Election campaign gets underway.

1. The pathetic sight of former Superman Christopher Reeve, paralysed from the neck-down and barely able to speak, wheeled on stage at the Democratic convention during TV prime-time to boost Clinton’s re-election chances with a halting plea for more compassion for the poor and disabled. Though Reeve isn’t actually a member of the Democratic Party, his appearance was exploited to the hilt by the Democrats’ spin doctors and even made the headlines on British TV news bulletins. Hasn't anybody told him the Democrats— like the Republicans—aim to crack down on welfare expenditure not increase it? Or that Clinton has in this very policy field just signed one of the most anti-working class pieces of legislation to be passed through Congress in recent years?

2. Bob Dole during his acceptance speech for the Republican nomination declaring that anyone in his party with racist views "knows where to find the door marked Exit". This of a party supported and funded by people who think the United Nations is run by an international Jewish cabal, whose candidates for office have included former (and unrepentant) leaders of the Ku Klux Klan, and half of whose membership believes that anyone without faith in the Christian god will burn in hell for all eternity (quite literally). Oh, and Dole’s party supports tougher immigration controls against the Mexicans, courting the Southern Redneck vote with all the subtlety and aplomb of an old-fashioned lynch mob.

3. Vice-President Al Gore, bringing tears to the eyes of the would normally have been expected to be in a catatonic trance during one of his mind-bogglingly tedious speeches. The reason for this unexpected bout of audience participation? The Veep's stomach-churning display of ham acting over his sister’s death from lung cancer caused by smoking cigarettes. This was so wooden and contrived that it would have been sufficient grounds to have him removed form even the most mediocre of amateur rep companies. If you are tempted to think this assessment is just a touch harsh, remember that Gore's wealthy dynasty of a family made much of its fortune through its ownership of Tennessee tobacco farms . . .  a fact which he didn't mention once.

There was a lot else besides worthy of comment from Pat Buchanan’s sinister appearance on the Republican platform to the sickening parade of rat-bag Kennedy’s for the Democrats, each one feted like royalty. But BBC pundits Charles Wheeler and Gavin Esler summed it all up quite nicely in their comments that the conventions really are too long these days, with viewers turning off in their millions. The fifty percent-plus of American voters who refuse to go to the polls in November will be demonstrating a similar contempt for a political process which increasingly relies on ignorance, trickery and blind acquiescence to sustain it. One day—just one day—they might turn their passive resistance to this nonsense into something more energetic and vibrant, and leave the political tricksters to play with their placards and balloons to their heart’s content, just like a baby shakes its rattle while grinning inanely at passers-by. They and the rest of the world who have seen through these fakers can then get on with doing something really useful—shaping a world truly fit for intelligent human beings to live in.

Dave Perrin