The Times: Let's get silly!

It was deja vu all over again this past week, as the New York Times revisited one of its favorite themes: the clear undesirability of multiple electoral choices. The death toll?many elderly people and probably a few of the weaker young ones must have died of depression?from John Kerry's ridiculous victory in New Hampshire had not even begun to be counted when our celebrated paper of record started claiming its spoils. Kerry's win, according to the Jan. 28 editorial, "Defrosting the Primaries," made it possible to finally start clearing out the riff-raff:

"Representative Dennis Kucinich," the paper wrote, "has every right to keep campaigning despite his minuscule vote tallies, but he should not be allowed to take up time in future candidate debates. Neither should the Rev. Al Sharpton, who is running to continue running, not to win."

It's not enough for the Times that the corporate-friendly candidates like Kerry have a clear exposure advantage due to their ability to pay for television advertising. It's not enough that they can afford to travel in style (even Kerry has a "Real Deal Express" now; the last time I spoke to Kucinich, he was being chauffered in a dented minivan) or hire staff up the wazz to pound the pavement. It's not even enough that the "minor" candidates are relegated to garbage-time minutes in the write-ups after the debates, despite the fact that in many cases they were clearly won by the abovementioned Kucinich (at least once, in New Mexico) or Sharpton (at least twice, particularly in Detroit).

No, it is not enough that the smaller candidates be doomed to lose due to inherent systemic disadvantages. They must be physically excluded from the process. Of course it's a coincidence that only the candidates who are substantively different than the rest are the ones who shouldn't be "allowed to take up time" in the debates.

No one who follows the Times should be surprised by this. The paper has been harping on this issue throughout the campaign (see such articles as the Sept. 2 "For Many Voters in Iowa, the Field of Democratic Hopefuls Is Just a Blur"), but more particularly, came out with a nearly identical editorial four years ago. See if you recognize any similarities in this passage from the notorious June 30, 2000 editorial, "Mr. Nader's Misguided Crusade":

"We are equally reluctant to see the main election choices clouded by the spoiler candidacy of Patrick Buchanan on the Reform Party ticket, an effort that seems likely to pull votes from both Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush. Of course, both Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Nader have the right to run. But given the major differences between the prospective Democratic and Republican nominees, there is no driving logic for a third-party candidacy this year, and the public deserves to see the major-party candidates compete on an uncluttered playing field."

"Of course...he has the right" is one of those phrases that's never anything but a dead giveaway. It's almost the same expression as, "I like a good joke as much as the next guy, but..." We hear this kind of talk all the time from conservatives, never more often than during the anti-war protests last year. That was when we heard columnists like David Limbaugh say things like, "They have every right to belittle this nation as it prepares for war"?while the inevitable but half of his proposition insisted that, "You may dissent to your heart's content, but the substance of your statements will not be exempted from ridicule merely because you are exercising rights we consider sacred in America."

It takes a certain kind of mind to see real political choices as "clutter," and a powerful sense of self-importance to write without irony about who should and should not be allowed to conduct a public campaign for the presidency. But most striking in the Times' political thinking is the idea that the only legitimate campaigns are those that have a reasonable expectation of emerging victorious. It is this kind of thinking that has left us in the mess we're in today, where a quarter of the country votes for who it likes, another quarter votes against that horrifying candidate, and half the country stays home because it is literally too disgusted to participate in the process.

It is this kind of thinking that is going to leave us in a few months with a perfect illustration of the Times' democratic ideal: one stammering ex-Skull and Bones pro-war patrician dingbat against another stammering ex-Skull and Bones pro-war patrician dingbat. As far as "uncluttered" playing fields go, it doesn't get much better than that.

That said, there was something very weird about the Times editorial. On the surface it would appear that the paper believes that the minor candidates should drop out because their presence at the debates, and on the campaign trail in general, distracts us from the important business of learning in more detail the positions of the "serious" candidates. But the editorial itself, in its capsule descriptions of the candidates, does not even mention what the candidates actually stand for, and instead describes them only in terms of their electability.

Kerry is a "formidable candidate" with a "compelling personal story" who nonetheless seems "wooden" on the campaign trail, and his appeal to voters in the South and West, and among minorities, is still in question. Dean has shown "grittiness" and "appears to be finding at least a tentative balance between a flat policy speech and an angry harangue." Edwards? The best campaigner of the lot, and the "only one who understands that if an elderly woman in the audience tearfully announces that she is facing eviction, the right response is not to delineate the need to reorganize the federal housing department." We have no idea what Clark stands for, but his supporters "have a right [again with the rights!] to hope that his candidacy will improve with experience." Lieberman's sponsors, we are told, should reexamine whether he is a "credible candidate": since he has already run for vice-president, "he appears to have hit his ceiling."

Thus the Times' early assessment of the campaign reads almost exactly like that old Monty Python sketch. In the lead, the Silly Candidate. Behind him, showing grit in the face of adversity, is the Very Silly Candidate. Lurking as a dark horse is the Slightly Silly Candidate, an excellent campaigner, while the Extremely Silly Candidate may have hit his ceiling...

All of which begs the question: If the candidates' positions are not what identifies them, and their only identity is their relative strength or weakness along a predetermined spectrum of silliness, then what's the harm of leaving people like Sharpton and Kucinich in the race? Why is it so important that they not waste our time, when we're wasting our time already? It's not like Dennis Kucinich is going to get in the way of a contentious debate about free trade, or the merits of cutting the defense budget, between John Edwards and John Kerry. There is no such debate.

The real reason Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton must be removed from the race is because they're not silly. We must have silly elections and silly candidates for our silly reporters to write about. Three cheers for John Kerry. Onward Silly Soldiers!