Moore shows what’s needed by the next democratic presidential contender
Then I’ll start deleting the jokes and cartoons sent by friends, some of which will be mind-blowingly and frankly unbelievably awful.
It boggles the mind that websites exist where amateur animators can jog the mouths of Bertie Ahern and Mary Harney up and down so they seem (if the viewer is good at suspending all critical faculties) to be singing some song or saying things they’d never normally say.
Now and then, a nugget survives — like the quote from Maya Angelou which suggested that you can tell a lot about a person by watching how they react to a wet day or lost luggage. A profound, or maybe a trivial truth.
Once in a very blue moon, an unsought gem arrives. This weekend, a Democrat pal in New York, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, sent a message to my in-box headed “Whatever you think of Michael Moore, read this!” Smart subject line.
Michael Moore’s big hairy baseball-capped face is not a draw, for me. His film about the Bush administration, self-touted as the factor that was going to shift the American voting public to put John Kerry into the White House, not only didn’t get the Democrat elected, but was scattered, self-serving and difficult to follow.
It did, however, make the point Kerry recently and critically failed to make: that it’s the under-educated underclass in America who are dying in large numbers in Iraq. What Moore has now done is write a letter to disheartened conservatives, of whom there are many.
The transfer of power in Congress to the Democrats is a significant contributory factor, with defeated Senator Arlen Specter furiously stating that if President Bush had got rid of Donald Rumsfeld before, rather than after, the election, it would have made all the difference and he — Specter — would still be chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
But the electoral trouncing is not the only issue embittering Republicans.
The management of the war in Iraq has disillusioned former neocons to such an extent that Kenneth Adelman, who celebrated the initial success of that war in Dick Cheney’s home, back-slapping the vice-president on the victorious invasion, is now not speaking to Cheney, having already stopped communicating with Rumsfeld several months earlier.
Where Tony Blair in recent days described that war as “a disaster” (never mind the post-factum parsing by his PR people), Adelman referred to it as a “debacle.”
Anyone who believed Bush’s promise of bipartisanship, post-election, must have felt a fool when a slew of appointments were made in the last few days which placed individuals with extremely conservative views in judicial and other positions for which consent by senators or members of Congress was not required.
One of those appointments was of a new head of national family planning services.
The obstetrician/gynaecologist appointed will be responsible for advising on the distribution of information on contraception and methods to prevent pregnancy to women all over America, especially poor women. He has served in a Christian, not-for-profit pregnancy counselling service with radically different priorities, called A Woman’s Concern.
“A Woman’s Concern is persuaded,” the service’s website states, “that the crass commercialisation and distribution of birth control is demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness”.
Just how a man with that kind of background and viewpoint can now credibly run a Federal programme advising five million women on birth control and supplying contraceptive devices and medicines, is unclear.
It’s seen by family planning and women’s health groups as a deliberately provocative appointment demonstrative of how out of touch is the Bush administration, in its dying years, with the real priorities of ordinary Americans.
If the objective of these appointments was to rally and reassure the grassroots of conservatism, it doesn’t seem to have worked.
On all sides of the president, an increasingly embittered impatience is developing.
And it’s into that mindset Michael Moore has fired his latest offering, a pledge to disaffected conservatives.
Moore has crafted a list of promises on behalf of the newly powerful Democrats. Those promises are not being made, party-manifesto-style, to the voters, but to the defeated conservatives.
“We will always respect you for your conservative beliefs,” Moore’s pledge begins.
“We will never, ever, call you ‘unpatriotic’ simply because you disagree with us. In fact, we encourage you to dissent and disagree with us. We will let you marry whomever you want, even when some of us consider your behaviour to be ‘different’ or ‘immoral.’ Who you marry is none of our business. Love and be in love — it’s a wonderful gift.”
Moore’s pledge is gently-written, in stark contrast to the bulk of his previous tub-thumping rhetoric.
It nonetheless manages to deliver digs and reproaches, wrapped up in positives.
He reminds conservatives that they have consistently opposed environmental regulation, promising ironically that when the Democratic majority cleans up America’s air and water, they’ll make sure to let the opponents of the clean-up breathe the cleaner air and drink the purer water.
The polemicist doesn’t miss the chance to hammer home the fact that voters with strong religious beliefs moved to the Democrats in the recent election.
Moore promises to respect conservative religious beliefs, even when their owners themselves don’t put those beliefs into practice.
“In fact,” he writes, “we will actively seek to promote your most radical religious beliefs (’Blessed are the poor,’ ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ ‘Love your enemies,’ ‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God,’ and ‘Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’).
‘‘We will let people in other countries know that God doesn’t just bless America, he blesses everyone.”
For Democrats, the pledge is a mixed blessing.
They cannot argue with promises like Moore’s vow to root out corrupt politicians, starting with those on the Democratic side of the House, nor with his call on the Republicans to pursue the Democrats to deliver on this commitment as part of their important duty as “the loyal opposition.”
On the other hand, major figures within the Democratic Party, not least those with presidential ambitions, must wish he had offered the pledge to one of them, to be issued under, say, the name of Hillary Clinton.
Because, along with its barbed wit, Moore’s pledge captures the idealism and magnanimity which will be essential prerequisites of whichever man or women is chosen as the next Democratic presidential contender.
“Thank you for your years of service to this country,” Moore tells the conservatives in his conclusion.
“And for giving us the opportunity to see if we can make things a bit better for our 300 million fellow Americans — and for the rest of the world.”
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