All the Democrats' women

National Review, August 17, 1992 by Richard Brookhiser

New York

PEOPLE should pay attention to conventions, because there is always something to learn from them. Two things I learned from signs on the street when the Democrats met in New York were that GOD WANT [sic] Ross PEROT FOR PRESIDENT, and that bar codes are the mark of the Beast, in which case President Bush is wise to avoid supermarkets. But since God's will turned out to hold other things for Perot, maybe it is safe to shop.

There was more to be learned inside Madison Square Garden, though not much more. It was a rather flat convention, except for a few G-spot issues (see below). Several of the lessons were familiar. Mario Cuomo is still the only politician in America who speaks in paragraphs. Jesse Jackson, who came to New York with no delegates at his back, and hence no leverage, had to play the role of Uncle Remus, telling stories about the horrors of Bush's America. It was a sad ending to his career, though if the white-boy Castor and Pollux lose, Jackson will be resurrected. We were reminded, finally, that the English language has an irregular use of the terminal silent e. Such windfalls do not come along every day, and the Democrats were entitled to take advantage of this one except for former Massachusetts Governor Endicott Peabody who, when he was an active politician, was known chiefly for being named for three towns in his home state: Endicott, Peabody, and Marblehead.

We did not need to be reminded that it was the Year of the Woman, for the fact was drummed into us incessantly. Five (of the 16) Democratic women senatorial candidates were presented in a batch, and a raggedy lot they made, except for former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein. I fear that California Senator John Seymour, her cream-of-wheat Republican opponent, is not long for this world, though judging from Representative Barbara Boxer's peculiar blend of namby-pamby and frenzy, Bruce Herschensohn, her Republican opponent for the other California Senate seat, should do nicely. The most vivid female presence of the convention, though, was Anita Hill, who was not even there. Every hapless speaker who felt invention flag had only to invoke St. Anita to guarantee a roar. The other sure-fire crowd-pleaser was abortion ("Although the Berlin Wall has crumbled," declared Pat Schroeder, "we face a grave threat to our freedom" from the Republican abortion-Stasi). And so it went. Senator Barbara Mikulski argued that women brought a special something to politics ("we speak a different language," she said, alas incorrectly). But Mrs. Feinstein, more candid, admitted that feminist politics was not about "gender" but "an agenda"--the Democratic one.

Some lessons of the Convention were fresh, such as the fact that we have entered the age of politics as therapy. This insight came to me during an otherwise respectable speech by Al Gore, when he inserted the story of his young son's near-death after being hit by a car. Even as he and his wife were sustained during the child's recovery by letters of concern from people they did not know, so the unfortunate of America, Gore concluded, could be helped by fellow citizens they do not know. The son sat through the whole performance, like a sweet potato grown in a peanut-butter jar for show and tell; it was child abuse, pure and simple. But Gore was hardly alone. For we heard Bill Clinton and his family, on film and in person, telling of the car crash which killed his father, of his stepfather's drunkenness, and of his mother's cancer. Earlier in the week, Paul Tsongas spoke of his cancer, which had left him with the obligation "to tell the truth" (though not about his cancer's recurrence). Two AIDS sufferers told of their disease, and of Republican indifference to finding a cure. Jackson told of comforting a survivor of a fire at a sweatshop chicken factory in North Carolina.

Biographical anecdotes have been a feature of American politics since the first President. But older stories sought to demonstrate either the hero's virtue or his common touch, often dishonestly: William Henry Harrison, the "log cabin" candidate, was born on one of the richest plantations in Virginia. The new stories seek to bind pol and voter in what Kenneth Minogue calls a "suffering situation." They recall the rogue Vulcan in the Star Trek movie who went about the galaxy clasping wretches to his bosom and asking them to "share your pain."

The notion that suffering improves a politician's character is ludicrous--George Bush had a daughter who died of leukemia; does that make Democrats like him? Hitler had a niece who was murdered; does that make anyone, except perhaps David Duke, like him?--and the notion that political engagement is our balm in Gilead is creepy. But the politics of therapy was logically linked to the main intellectual theme of the Convention, which is to proclaim Democratic loyalty to the American family or community, suitably defined.

The theme was first pioneered by Cuomo in San Francisco in 1984, and has been homesteaded by assorted academics in the years since. It spread like a Hudson River School vista behind Bill Clinton's primary campaign, often blurred, sometimes in focus. Many speakers visited it in New York. Bill Bradley, in clumsily delivered but interesting remarks, scolded Americans for preferring "individual thrills to collective responsibilities" during the Reagan-Bush years; an ideal society, he said, would be like a basketball team whose members sacrifice for that NBA title. Bob Hattoy, the first of the AIDS sufferers, said to Bush, "Your family has AIDS, and we're dying, and you're not doing anything about it." Tsongas said that we have a duty "to leave behind a nation as enduring as that which was given to us"; Bush's failure to do so has thus been "genewationally immowal."