THE
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
At
any rate, the interview – with "Battleline America" – turned
out to be a Crossfire-type show, with me up against Tim Heightman,
a columnist for The Georgetowner newspaper (how Establishment
can you get?) and a nationally syndicated columnist: Nathan
addressed him as "Doctor" and touted him on the air as being
some kind of "expert" on electoral politics, but his doctorate
seemed to have been in the Conventional Wisdom, and the bromides
came fast and furious: "Pat is 'entertaining,' but he can't
win; Pat is a 'fringe' candidate, and is 'hijacking' the Reform
party; he's at one percent in the polls and will stay that
way."
IN
THE BLINK OF AN EYE
Fer
cryin' out loud, give me a break: the "experts," as usual
are wrong on all counts. This obsession with polls – which
capture popular sentiment in any given moment – is an indication
of a "mental disease," as George Orwell put it, typical of
intellectuals and the chattering classes in general: it is
the conviction (expressed in terms of a virtual certainty)
that what is happening now will continue to happen into the
indefinite future. Translated into political terms, this means
that whomever is winning now will continue to win – that those
in power now will continue to be in power, an assumption particularly
attractive to those intellectuals – not a few, unfortunately
– who worship at the altar of Power. Groveling comes naturally
to the kind of mid-level intellectuals who inhabit the punditocracy
and the world of journalism. Those who live by the word tend
to be overly impressed by the sword: but swords, as we all
know, can change hands in the blink of an eye . . . .
THE
COMING WAR CRISIS
Which
brings me to the point I made on the radio: the September
(or October) surprise. War can change polling numbers – and
much else. As the only candidate who has made a major issue
out of the Kosovo war, and pledged to get us out of the Balkan
quagmire within weeks of taking the oath of office: as the
only White House aspirant who condemns in frankly moral terms
the murderous sanctions against Iraq; as the only man in this
race who has put foreign policy front and center in his campaign
– it is Buchanan who will benefit politically from the coming
"surprise" that ought to be a surprise to exactly no one.
As I have pointed out in this column before, the timing of
the coming crisis in Iraq couldn't be more serendipitous as
far as the Clintonians (and their Republican enablers) are
concerned. At the end of August the UN arms inspectors will
be clamoring to be let into Iraq, and the proudly defiant
Iraqis are bound to refuse as long as the sanctions remain
in place. By the first week of September, perhaps, US and
British warplanes will be ready to move, awaiting only the
order from their commander-in-chief – who has every reason
to give it.
SO
MUCH FOR THE "EXPERTS"
For
this will galvanize the War Party behind the Vice President,
shift the focus away from the Republicans, and give the Democrats
a bump in the polls that they sorely need. Surprisingly, Dr.
Heightman agreed with me – but there was no time to get into
the implications of this. Heightman seemed to believe that
the Republicans would steal Pat's thunder on the war question,
but one can only wonder which convention he was tuning into
last week. There was Norman Schwartzkopf, blustering and scowling
from the deck of a battleship, touting his great "victory"
over a virtually helpless Third World nation – these
guys are going to steal Pat's thunder? I don't think so: but
then who am I to be arguing with the "experts"?
DAY
OF THE LIVING DEAD
The
whole strategy of the anti-Buchanan brigades has been to provoke
violence: I report this with complete and utter amazement,
not only because it seems so out-of-line, but because of how
– once again – the conventional wisdom is turned on its
head. It is the Buchananites who are supposed to be the "bullies"
– the favorite epithet of Mangia and his crowd – and
their media echo chamber – is that Buchanan and his people
are "brownshirts." But the real brownshirts seem to be the
very physical and easily excitable opponents of Buchanan,
including, surprisingly, the Hagelin people. Having split
off from the official convention, the dissidents effectively
seized physical control of the room where the Credential Committee
was meeting: the official convention had to go find another
room because the wackos wouldn't leave! John Hagelin and his
glassy-eyed followers staged a march through the Convention
Center lobby, and up the stairs to the main hall, carrying
signs and chanting "Democracy! Reform!" The idea was to literally
storm the hall, to physically take it – so as to delay, derail,
and discredit Buchanan's (seemingly) inevitable victory. And
these are the guys who want to send Transcendental Meditators
to Kosovo – a move, they claim, that will bring instant peace
to that wartorn region. But what about right here in Long
Beach, I asked one of their leaders – instead of picking a
fight with Buchanan and his brigades, why not just send in
the big guns among the "yogic flyers" so Hagelin and his friends
can meditate their way to victory? The guy I asked this question
to looked baffled, and his glassy stare was replaced, for
a moment, with a look of genuine perplexity. But there is
no room for such questions in the strictly circumscribed worldview
of these folks, and his uncertainty vanished like mist in
the morning: "I'd have to ask someone about that," he said,
confident that his leader (or his press secretary) would have
the correct answer.
Read
previous dispatches from the Reform Party convention:
With
Buchanan in Long Beach: The Inside Story
8/10/00
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