Editorials/The Death of Radicalism/Mayor Jesse
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
EDITORIALS THE DEATH OF RADICALISM by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. olossal ironies are upon us. On the faculties of American universities and in the newsrooms of American media, middle-aged nostalgiacs...
...Can the democratic capitalists do the same in the years ahead...
...Yet as to democratic capitalism's capacity to capture hearts and minds as socialism once did, I hereby file a caveat...
...I mean, as orators go, he is a mere intoner of jingles...
...Jesse Jackson does not strike me as being quite as stupid as his analysts in the press corps presume him to be...
...Or viewed from a slightly different perspective, how stupid are they...
...Notwithstand- ing my otherwise low opinion of him, the Rev...
...The socialist shares the Roman emperor's insight that what the public really needs is bread and circuses...
...It is an ideal town in which to make national headlines, and as mayor of the capital of the United States a headline creator of Jesse's prodigious virility could make headlines worldwide and every day...
...But the major reason the fever for democratic capitalism cannot totally supplant the socialism it has overthrown is that democratic capitalism does not stir the human heart or appease its longings...
...Today's rising capitalists and democrats, if they are to make society tolerable, will need the assistance of artists, the reverend clergy, and, I suppose, the shrinks...
...The 1980s," this longtime Reagan adviser writes, "has been a decade of stunning change...
...10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1989 MAYOR JESSE y ou will forgive me...
...But how stupid do these pundits think Jesse is...
...It takes all one's energy and imagination...
...Over the years parties of the left have done a superb job of providing expensive bread and magnificent circuses...
...Jesse has never had to bear responsibility for anything he has ever said or done...
...Marx as a dangerous crank...
...The party has been fragmented for years...
...Thatcher or a Ronald Reagan calls it quits at the end of the day—not so their opponents...
...doubts as Angola, India, and New Zealand...
...Which brings up another point, namely: practically every utterance of the person of the left is campaign oratory...
...It is caused not by one stupendous rabblerouser named Jackson but by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of rabblerousers, all dependent on one or another of the various incompatible zealotries that compose the crazy-quilt tapestry of the modern Democratic party...
...This spring's demonstrations have put me in mind of a passage from Martin Anderson's informative memoir of his years in the Reagan Administration, duly titled Revolution...
...Well, possibly—in Australia the socialist Labor party is moving toward Reaganism, and even Britain's Labour party now extols the magic of the tax-cut...
...Meanwhile, today, in the streets of Peking and the Soviet Empire the youth of the present bellow hopes and dreams very similar to those of an American Boy Scout...
...Until the party zealots pipe down and the party itself adopts some grand and persuasive unifying themes, the Democrats are going to have a very hard time of it capturing the White House...
...But surely Jesse knows that if he were to become mayor of Washington he would still have all the rights and privileges of a United States citizen...
...In 1985, Italy's socialist prime minister, Bettino Craxi, observed that the success of the Reagan Administration's economic policies should "make not only Italy but the whole of Europe think...
...The place could continue to go to seed for years to come and Jesse could with the utmost plausibility blame it all on the present buffoonish municipal administration or on Congress or on racism or on sunspots...
...And by overseeing the District's $4-billion-a-year budget and48,000 government employees he will be able to demonstrate management skills heretofore in doubt...
...By winning the mayoral race he will demonstrate that he is capable of winning national election...
...The world is now in the midst of a profound intellectual and political revolution that may rival in scope and importance the transition from the Dark Ages to the Enlightenment...
...What is most curious is that the Democratic partisans in the press and elsewhere do not face up to the true condition of their party...
...There is no reason that the mayor of Washington should not run for the presidency of the United States in 1992 or in any other year...
...To be sure, Washington is in worse shape than any city its size in America, but why should that hurt Jesse...
...Then with this extraordinary record behind him he will be prepared to accept the presidential nomination of a grateful Democratic party sometime after 1992...
...A Mrs...
...Actually the mayor's office of the District of Columbia would be a splendid launching pad for a presidential quest...
...Democratic capitalism addresses itself to material concerns...
...As mayor, the pundits assert, Jesse will gain immense prestige throughout the land...
...What is more, 10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1989 there is no reason to think a Democratic nominating process free of the Rev...
...The left campaigns ceaselessly, transforming every aspect of life into politics...
...Socialism addresses itself to the imagination, thespirit, mankind's lust for drama...
...For nearly a decade they have denied the obvious, which is yet another reason that they lose presidential elections...
...The infernal capitalist mysteries were even piercing the Iron and Bamboo curtains...
...The capitalist provides widgets in abundance and at a good price...
...Short of Communism, I can think of no philosophical system more akin to the Dark Ages than that of these Anglo socialists...
...Though America's entertainment tycoons inflict upon us 1960s soap opera, those who observe events worldwide will note that post-World War II radicalism is dead...
...But in their we-know-what'sbest-for-Jesse mode they do explain why entering the 1990 mayoral race is best for him...
...Ah, wouldn't it be pretty to think so...
...Jackson would be free of "internal battles...
...Why, they do not explain...
...The fragmentation of the Democratic party preceded Jackson and will continue in 1992, no matter the good preacher's whereabouts...
...Its death began in the late 1970s in Paris, where in cafes and lyceums Jean Paul Sartre was increasingly seen as an embarrassing fuddy-duddy and Dr...
...I doubt it...
...Jackson's decision to become Washington's mayor—to wit: his absence from the 1992 presidential race means a Democratic nomination free, as columnist David Broder tells us, "from the divisive internal battles that have hobbled their nominees in every year since 1976...
...By the middle 1980s, democratic capitalism was rousing the interests of the concerned citizenry in such diverse socialist reAdapted from RET's weekly Washington Post column syndicated by King Features...
...Providing cheap goods in abundance is a full-time job...
...The socialist puts on a good show and could not care less how his countrymen's widgets came into being...
...These are today's expert soothers of the troubled heart...
...They say that if he entered the 1990 mayoral race in Washington, as he has recently suggested he might, he could not run for President in 1992...
...On the faculties of American universities and in the newsrooms of American media, middle-aged nostalgiacs of 1960s radicalism preserve the poetry and legends of their good old days at the barricades: fists clenched, marijuana fumes wafting heavenward, mom and dad standing by the telephone to send bail money if the need arrives...
...The result is a Democratic nominee who is vaguely distasteful to ordinary American voters...
...This divisiveness dates back at least to the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1989 11...
...No one candidate can gain the Democratic nomination without paying obeisance to each shrieking interest group...
...Finally, it is very curious to hear the pundits announcing that a Jesse-free Democratic presidential race in 1992 would also be free of "divisive internal battles...
...Socialism is in fact one of the longest-playing religious soap operas in history, with bankers and bosses enslaving and impoverishing the rest of us, compassion and sweetness struggling against greed and brute force, good against evil...
...Littletime is left to create the stirring myths, the heinous scoundrels, the exploited victims of greed and oppression that enliven socialist campaign oratory...
...Why should he suddenly be held responsible as mayor of Washington...
...What really put the kabosh to radicalism, however, was the economic performance of Ronald Reagan's America and of Margaret Thatcher's Britain...
...The pundits in the press corps act as though he would not...
...As a presidential thinker, he ranks slightly higher than the Abby of Dear Abby...
...The socialists have known how to dramatize...
...Oh, and there is one more balmy benefit accruing from the Rev...
Vol. 22 • July 1989 • No. 7
