The early returns are in, and they are encouraging, providing preliminary evidence-no more can be expected-of an end to the era in which autobiography replaced ideas.
The evidence is that more than half the Democratic voters support one of the two candidates who talk more about the world and less about themselves.
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Republican voters might be similarly inclined. Alas, they have only competing autobiographies-or, worse, conflicting sensitivities-from which to choose.
Pat Buchanan is motivated less by conservative ideology than by an obsession with his own destiny. George Bush, as ever, is inspired by his own pettiness, whining about ” attack-dog tactics coming from the Left and coming from the Right.” Awww! The poor thing. Being president is such torture.
Not that Bush is the only candidate beset by delusions of persecution. One of those leading Democrats, Bill Clinton, contributed to his problems by his own brief surrender to the temptation of self-pity.
Following the bad advice of strategist Jim Carville, another in a long line of political geniuses who make dumb mistakes, Clinton cried foul after someone leaked a 23-year-old letter written by his 23-year-old former self.
As a result, the letter got far more attention than it otherwise might have. The evening after its release, scores of journalists in their setting of choice, a saloon, pored over each aged sentence, proclaiming new insights into the candidate`s soul. This must be what the boys in academia call post- structural textual analysis.
The letter revealed a writer who was self-absorbed, troubled, conniving and somehow both arrogant and obsequious. And who, at 23, was much different? Danger comes not from self-absorbed graduate students in their semi-youth but from self-absorbed candidates in their pseudo-adulthood.
To his credit, Clinton took but a day to figure this out. Whereupon he ceased talking about himself and turned his attention to what he called, incorrectly ”the issues.”
It`s an acceptable error because Clinton knows ”the issues” are not the issues. There is, he said, ”one big, defining issue,” which is not an issue but an outlook, a set of ideas, and because he and Paul Tsongas have been articulating a set of ideas they are the leading Democratic candidates.
That`s why Tom Harkin did himself little good last week when he seized on an issue, nuclear power; or why Bob Kerrey has not been able to make much progress by stressing an issue, health insurance; or why Jerry Brown has lit no sparks belaboring an issue, political reform.
To no small extent, each man`s issue is a metaphor for his autobiography. Harkin`s campaign is based on his insistence that he alone is ”a real Democrat.” Brown`s is that he`s ”an outsider.” Kerrey, though gradually fumbling toward the kind of comprehensive theme he needs, has run as the war hero who`s also a philosopher.
But the campaigns of Tsongas and Clinton do not start with the first-person singular pronoun. Yes, each man says, as any presidential candidate must, ”I`m a leader.” But beyond that, their unspoken message is, ”The world is more important than I am, but I have ideas about how to deal with the world.”
For 20 years, as politics edged ever closer to show business, such talk was unfashionable and useless. Now it is not, for which there is a reason that not even Tsongas or Clinton has starkly expressed.
The reason is that in the hour of America`s great postwar international triumph, its great postwar domestic accomplishment is in danger of
disintegrating.
That accomplishment was the creation of a society in which the average person, not just the privileged (and perhaps not the truly underprivileged)
could be confident that he or she could live in progressively increasing material comfort.
It was not automatic. Minimal intelligence and some effort would be required. But with them, and a bit of luck, people could expect to live better lives as they grew older, and to assume that conditions would be better yet for their children, and their country.
That confidence is shaken, perhaps because that reality no longer applies. Like the danger of death, the danger of poverty concentrates the mind. The public`s mind may be concentrated enough to care more about a candidate`s ideas than about his angst.
This has never been and never will be a totally either-or proposition, and probably it should not be. Elements of Clinton`s autobiography may be too interesting, and Tsongas` too dull, for either man to become president. And perhaps New Hampshire voters, who take their inaugural role seriously, are unusually thoughtful. But at least there is some reason to hope that this year, voters will pay more attention to what candidates say about the world than what they say about themselves.