BEAUTY-CONTEST POLITICS

...Comprehensive mandatory health insurance remains a vision for a distant future...

...Even if we had "good leadership" today — Edward M. Kennedy, say, for those who are still captivated by visions of Camelot — it would not matter, for the problems confronting the United States are systemic, not incidental or aberrational...

...He intended, he said in a speech on May 13, 1976, to end the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other nations...

...American manufactured goods, which once dominated the world market, have fallen behind Germany's in the export trade, though Germany is a much smaller country...

...What the poor nations sold to the rich increased in price slowly, or actually declined, while the costs of Western goods rose steadily...

...Inflation is at double-digit levels again...

...Since the Vietnam war, however, such ventures are much more difficult to undertake, given the climate of American — and world — opinion...

...American technology is no longer number one...

...Leadership in the 1980s," he asserts, "must be based on a politics of substance, not symbols...

...No candidate — and, for that matter, no party — is required to deliver on campaign promises...

...to control inflation through "jawboning" and, if necessary, wage and price controls...

...In this state of affairs — a declining economy, a falling standard of living, a hobbled Pax Americana — what America needs is something more than a change in leadership: It needs a change in perspective...

...Fourteen weak nations have formed a "union" of oil-producing states (called OPEC) and are draining off wealth from the West in unprecedented amounts — $30 billion, $40 billion, $60 billion a year...

...An instructive example is the two-part interview granted recently by California Governor Jerry Brown, an almost certain challenger in the Democratic primaries, to Jerome Watson of the Chicago Sun-Times...

...economy...

...to reform the tax system — "a disgrace to the nation...

...Uruguay was thus left one bull poorer and the United States one bull richer...

...What this means only a psychic can tell, but it is the traditional rhetoric of Presidential campaigners...

...real wages are about where they were in 1969, or slightly lower...

...Since then, the "stable" dollar has fallen drastically in value: It was worth one-thirty-fifth of an ounce of gold in 1971...

...The proliferation of nuclear weapons continues...

...of reason, not bombast...

...Fifteen or twenty years ago, the CIA would have overthrown the governments of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria, for their drastic increases in oil prices...

...He would put Americans back to work — "the number-one priority" — and reduce unemployment to the Humphrey-Hawkins limit of 3 per cent...

...Balance-of-payments deficits — the sums we owed foreign nations for imports, shipping, and tourism — became intolerable, and President Nixon had to impose wage and price controls and divorce the dollar from gold in an effort to keep the United States competitive...

...to establish a consumer protection agency...

...What this means, says the First National Bank of Chicago, is that an oil-importing country like the United States must "expand its export of goods and services to pay for the more expensive imports" and therefore "consumers' real incomes must decline because there is less real output available for the domestic population...

...Here and there a Carter promise does reach fruition, in whole or in part, such as the pledge to "pardon" Vietnam draft resisters...

...Jimmy Carter spent twenty-two months campaigning for the Presidency...

...Asecond basic problem is that the three pillars of what is called "the American way of life" are crumbling: ¶ The principles of Keynesian economics, which have guided our economy since the New Deal, no longer provide answers to our economic disarray...

...For more than a century, the West drained off billions of dollars worth of resources from colonies and spheres of influence...

...If, for example, the money Uruguay earned in the sale of ten young bulls to the United States in 1960 was about what it cost Uruguay to buy a Ford, the price of bulls and Fords changed in 1961 so that Uruguay would now have to sell eleven young bulls to buy a Ford...

...The fault lies with the system per se, not just with the people who are tinkering with it...

...Afterwards, the White House published a compilation of all the promises he had made, and promised he would live up to them...

...Since 1971, however, Americans have become increasingly aware that it isn't working...

...Can the energy problem be solved without nationalizing the oil and utility industries...

...Arms sales abroad have increased substantially...

...The "big issue" of the 1980 election, says Jerry Brown, is "leadership...

...just seven-and-a-half years later, it is worth only one-seventh as much, one-two-hundred-and-fiftieth of an ounce of gold...

...Rather, the candidates will peddle their pap about "tough leadership," "discipline," "planetary realism...

...Just consider what happened to the pledges Carter made only three years ago...

...guidelines for 'planetary realism...

...Secrecy in government has reached such alarming proportions that, according to the General Accounting Office, between 70 and 100 million documents a year are classified secret and withheld from the public...

...But no one could assert that even a small fraction of the Carter or Democratic Party platform of 1976 has been implemented — or is likely to be...

...But now there is a shift in the opposite direction...

...Or, "Didn't Carter also promise, when he was running in 1976, that he would work for 'alternative fuels' and would balance the budget by 1980...

...he favored, he said, a "minimum of secrecy in Government and a maximum of privacy in our personal lives...

...Our only recourse, then, is to inject (he basic issues into the political discussion over these next sixteen months — by raising them constantly at political meetings, by thrusting them at the candidates, by organizing protest actions around them...

...arsenal, despite the vast amounts spent on our bloated military apparatus, the United States was unable to prevent Indochina from going communist, or to keep Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, and — worst of all — Iran, from seceding from the Western sphere of influence...

...New trading patterns are also shredding the fabric of synthetic prosperity...

...What makes your promises more credible...

...The standard of living of the working class has not improved in a whole decade...

...The implication was clear: All other political philosophies than Jerry Brown's are based on fantasy...

...And all will be inventing (or having their speech writers invent) such catch phrases as "planetary realism" or "new foundations" to describe politics that are either warmed-over Harry Truman or warmed-over Herbert Hoover — or a blend of the two...

...Keynesianism worked during the years of the Great Depression (there were still 20 per cent unemployed in 1939), and it worked well after World War II, as the Government pumped more than $2 trillion into the economy in military expenditures and foreign aid...

...Moreover, the mountain of debt, internal and external, is beginning to choke the U.S...

...Except for minor party candidates, no Presidential aspirant — not even Ted Kennedy — will address such fundamental questions...

...Carter also said, "I will never lie to you...

...The favorable "terms of trade" which permitted the industrialized states to grow rich at the expense of the poorer ones are turning unfavorable, especially where petroleum is concerned...

...The Government pays for this extravagance by going into debt — "deficit financing...

...of frankness, not false promises...

...Even the Carter Administration recognizes that if we are to continue along the present path we must reduce living standards — as Carter himself is now doing by imposing a "voluntary" wage guideline of 7 per cent a year, while prices are rising 10 to 13 per cent...

...He might have asked, "Suppose Carter's so-called attack on inflation and the energy shortage had come earlier — would he have met your Sidney Lens is a contributing editor of The Progressive...

...That, or discipline, investment, hard choices, a focusing of our strength and our capital — that's the path of leadership...

...If we can mount such efforts and sustain them, we may move American politics a little closer to true realism and a little further from Jerry Brown's planetary fantasies...

...George Bush, the Texas millionaire who is seeking the Republican nomination, also believes it is a matter of "leadership" — except that he feels "my practical experience in foreign affairs and national security would qualify me" more than others...

...The answer would have to be, of course, that they are not...

...For the next sixteen months or so, the American electorate is sure to be treated to a steady diet of vapid rhetoric and empty promises...

...He promised to institute a "comprehensive mandatory health system...

...It needs to ask and answer some hard questions like these: ¶ Can the economy be rescued without economic planning and without a significant redistribution of income and wealth...

...But he noted that we "have little right to ask others to deny themselves such weapons for the indefinite future unless we demonstrate meaningful progress towards the goal of control, then reduction, and ultimate elimination of nuclear arsenals...

...All the declared and almost-declared candidates — Philip Crane, Howard Baker, John B. Connally, Robert Dole, Ronald Reagan, perhaps Gerald Ford — will be talking like Bush (or like Brown and Carter on the Democratic side) about the need for "strong leadership," "strong defense" (at bargain rates), reduced levels of inflation, a balanced budget...

...to slash arms sales abroad...

...When asked what ideology he espoused, Brown described himself as "a planetary realist" — not a liberal or a conservative or a socialist, but a "realist...

...The Keynesian economic pattern, adopted by all major capitalist nations in the 1930s, calls for "compensatory spending" by the Government to take up the slack in consumer purchases and capital investments...

...Despite the stockpile of nuclear weapons in the U.S...

...Issues and ideologies have little bearing on the choice...

...Our synthetic prosperity is no longer sustainable...

...The term "leadership" looms so large in American Presidential campaigns because the electoral system is rigged to make the average citizen believe that there is nothing basically wrong with the structure of our society — that only "bad leadership" prevents our nation from fulfilling its great destiny...

...Unfortunately, the opposite is true...

...He intended to maintain a "strong defense," but he would reduce the military budget by $5 billion to $7 billion a year...

...The Pax Americana, a system of military power and economic aid which enforced "discipline" in world affairs for a quarter of a century, has been falling apart since the war in Vietnam...

...Not one of these major promises has been kept...

...Can inflation be checked without breaking up the conglomerates and multinationals which now set prices by conspiratorial agreement among the three or four corporations which dominate each major industry...

...I think," Brown said, "the [Carter] attack on inflation and on the energy shortage came too late...

...The country is facing a crossroads: indulgence, decadence, feeding off the past...

...These favorable "terms of trade" were a major factor in the high living standards of the West...

...It lasted so long — a full generation — that most people began to believe it was a natural prosperity that would endure into the distant future...

...If the CIA had been unable to do the job, Washington would have sent in troops...

...In the next election, as in previous ones, our votes are not likely to count in any way thai will affect foreign or domestic policy...

...To achieve an impact on such issues as the arms race, energy, inflation, we must organize outside and apart from the electoral process — through lobbying, vigils, protest marches, demonstrations, civil disobedience...

...Among Carter's pledges was one to open up the Government...

...We hope our officials will "vote their conscience," but how can we know what is on their conscience today, or what will be there tomorrow...

...Regrettably, the reporter to whom this wisdom was imparted failed to put some follow-up questions to Brown...

...Unemployment is at 6 per cent...

...Can war be avoided without reversing the nuclear arms race and establishing international institutions to deal with such problems as proliferation, pollution, poverty, and population...

...The American electoral system is not made for accountability...

...Our politics are beauty-contest politics: We vote for so-and-so because he or she "seems like a nice guy," or "sounds sincere," or is of the ethnic or religious or age or sex group we favor...

...the electoral system provides no way for most citizens to have a real impact...

...Nuclear arsenals have grown, and will grow even more under SALT II...

...As a result of this new form of "compensatory spending" — militarism — the United States forged a synthetic prosperity for a quarter of a century...

...They may still be undertaken at some point — a 100,000-man intervention force is being trained for just such purposes — but the chances of such an effort succeeding without unleashing World War III grow smaller day by day...

...The Keynesian approach has reached its outer limits...

...The first problem is that the electoral system provides no way for most citizens to have a real impact on what the Government does...

...Finally, there is the empirical evidence that the Pax Americana is no longer workable...

...During that time he delivered 1,495 speeches, and his wife, mother, children, and other surrogates made hundreds more...

...We pride ourselves on voting "for a man, not a party," but that merely means that every two or four years we put an "X" in a box, without any assurance that the candidate or the party will perform according to the promises...

...Israel unquestionably has the bomb, South Africa and Taiwan may have it, Pakistan is arranging to have it, and other nations are preparing to join the "nuclear club...

...The lack of aggressive conservation and development of alternative fuels is a serious problem and, in retrospect, the heavy [budget] deficits also have been a serious mistake...

...And how does his "planetary realism" differ from the mundane "realism" of, say, Jimmy Carter...