"I don't know just where I'm going, But I'm going to try for the kingdom if I can"

                                   Lou Reed

As I’ve noted in Part One, left-of-center blogger Mole333 has taken public issue with my DLC-tainted brand of neo-liberalism, essentially calling me outside to settle it in the streets. In response, I questioned  how far he’d evolved on the scale of  political evolution. Beyond my ideology, or lack thereof, Mole has also taken issue with my tendency to look at politicians realistically. “And some (like, it seems to me, our friend Gatemouth) simply think all candidates are pretty much the same and despair of finding excitement in supporting a candidate...in fact they seem disdainful of anyone who actually shows some enthusiasm for a candidate.”  He tends to conflate this criticism with my neo-liberalism, as if  they were one and the same, but my cynicism towards pols is a tendency I share with not a few of his friends on the hard left, while muddle-headed idealism tends to blind at least some who sit in my political corner, particularly those who refuse to look at Joe Lieberman in a critical manner.

However, Mole may have a point; both my neo-liberalism, and my cynicism have their roots as byproducts of a process which I call “growing up”.  Cynics are really just the fallen idealists, and neo-liberalism may be another name for the evolutionary process whereby those of us who’ve gotten up again after we’ve taken the fall learn to walk on two feet.  This then is the story of my evolution, although I suspect that others, including Mole’s partner in thought-crime, Michael Bouldin, might benefit from contemplating the tale I tell.   

 Although I rarely attend services these days, I can honestly say that the seminal influence in my life has been religion. From an early age I was sent to Reform Jewish religious schools. It was the mid 1960s, the teachers were young and politically left of center, and they concentrated on teaching us the importance of social responsibility. In 1963, this meant Civil Rights; the struggle of Black Americans was taught to us in the context of the story of Passover, and later in the context of the Holocaust; there was never any doubt that the issues involving the rights of Blacks and Jews were one and the same. At the time these lessons seemed as or more important than the Ten Commandments. Judaism was taught to mean a liberal social vision. It logically followed that working for political candidates who shared this vision was simply a matter of right and wrong.

Drawn by this vision into politics, I gradually evolved into one of those people best described by the term “political animal”, and I say this with pride, for it implies a level of dedication and professionalism in a field that is too often seen as lacking either. My life, both professionally and personally, revolved around politics; I drank in political bars, and dated those I met in campaigns. I became a political gypsy driving from job to job with a hatchback filled with my meager possessions. Eventually, my connections led to a job on a public payroll, and from there I rose steadily. Over time,  I went from political animal to political junkie; eventually, the only thing I was in it for was the buzz; still later, the buzz stopped coming, but try as I might, I couldn’t shake the Jones; buzz or no buzz, I had to have a taste. Politics was my wife and my life. A crash was clearly inevitable.                

Naturally, as proud as I may be of my many personal achievements, I now look at the field with somewhat mixed emotions. Like Saul Alinsky of “Rules for Radicals” fame, I have little patience for the “ends and means moralists who end up on their ends without any means”. Yet there must be limits. Malcolm X said “by any means necessary”, which doesn’t seem much of a limitation, but, he didn’t say “by any means possible”. Morality became the art of doing only what was necessary, and no more (the distinction best embodied in Leonard Cohen's line "When it all comes down to dust, I'll kill you if I must, I'll help you if I can"). Sometimes it seemed as if I was spending my life trying to navigate that tiny space between what was necessary and what was possible, as if the fate of the world depended on it. Somewhere, there are people on whose decisions rest the fate of the world; can they pass a sobriety test while navigating this forbidding territory?    

Of course, I operated on a much lower level. Still, I became discouraged by the number of supposedly “progressive” politicians who had gone beyond that level of analysis, and had reversed ends and means as if power had become the goal rather than a tool to be used for achieving worthy aims; and as if ends such as social justice or civil liberties were only tools to be used to rally constituencies in an effort to accumulate power. A candidate on the Upper West Side might say that his ends are preserving low cost housing, saving freedom of choice on abortion, and legal equality for homosexuals; and that his means to achieve those goals are acquiring a seat in the New York State Senate; what he really means is that his end is a senate seat and his means for achieving it are advocating those policies (In the same “getting it exactly backwards” manner; Brooklyn Regular Democrats will often engage in bloody turf wars over judicial candidates who’ve voters have never heard of the day before yesterday and will soon forget the day after tomorrow, but the same regulars have no problem keeping their clubhouse doors closed during general elections for Mayor, Governor, US Senator and President). 

I see nothing evil about power; unlike many “reformers”, I am more interested in the quality of the end results than the purity of the process (although Albany may merit an exception). But, I can no longer romanticize about the brass tacks politicians who aren’t afraid to “dig into the mud in order to make the bricks”. Too many of them are only interested in who controls the mudhole rather than what the bricks are used for. They are only the other side of the same coin from the reformers who are obsessed with such minutae as the ratio of water to dirt. Too few people are trying to make sure that the bricks are being used to construct affordable housing instead of Cheese Museums or Arts Centers for Leora Fulani (it may be possible I’ve stretched this metaphor a bridge too far).

My point is not about hypocrisy, for in politics that’s only a minor crime; to be a hypocrite, you have to have some principles to betray; nobody (except maybe Mo Gumbs) ever called Clarence Norman a hypocrite. The point is, I went into the trade for a reason. I wanted to improve the world (and get paid for doing it), and I wanted to do it in a way that was consistent with my belief that real change can only come when we acknowledge that we are operating in the world as it is rather than the world as we would like it to be. This meant acknowledging realities that were often unpleasant, and constantly grappling with questions about whether the wall you just hit was one of those real world realities you were supposed to acknowledge, or one of those things you had gotten into the business to change (or whether it was both). But, it also had its rewards, not only the times you were able to make a difference (one has not really lived until one has literally saved another person’s life), but also more selfish rewards; being on the edges of power is intoxicating and addictive (“the buzz”), and there are also some perks.

Eventually, in the late-1980s, there was an epiphany (the first of many), and although I was not a target, the word indictments did not go unmentioned; reexamination and re-evaluation seemed a healthy idea (at least that’s what my therapist told me). I stayed on the wagon for a while, but fell off more than once. Some call it a “Lost Weekend”; I call it the 1990s. But, where is the Betty Ford Clinic for political junkies? And, in the interest of symmetry, do we name it after Charlie Parker’s wife? No matter how long one stays clean, one is always a junkie. Once hooked, you never lose “the taste”. I consider my writing to be cautionary literature, but like so much junkie lit, including songs like the Velvet Underground’s “Heroin”, its cautionary value may be overwhelmed by the curiosity it unleashes; when I was rushing on my run, I really did feel like Jesus’ son; and I guess that I just don’t know, I guess that I just don’t know.  

I still believe that an elected official’s first obligation is to their own political survival. I know firsthand that a committed elected official can accomplish a lot of good. If an official is voted out of office, the good they can accomplish ends. The primary goal of an elected official’s staff must be to protect or extend that official’s electoral base. To do that, they must service the needs of constituents to the constituents’ satisfaction. That serves a public good in and of itself. Once that is done, more lofty goals can be attempted. That is the “good politician’s” pact with the devil.

It is also the evil politician’s pact; thus the dilemma of the conscientious legislative aide. A good aide must work hard to make their employer look good even if the employer is not. Such aides might rationalize by pointing to the number of tenants they’ve assisted, or worthy programs they’ve helped to fund, or a list of other worthwhile accomplishments. Odds are that the aide has done much good. But, can such aides really be proud? Or are they the equivalent of Mussolini’s Minister of Transportation, who helped the Italian straphanger by making sure the trains ran on schedule, but whose success allowed a corrupt dictator with imperialistic designs to implement an odious program while hiding behind a veneer of competence? It could be argued that the more the Minister accomplished, the more responsible he was for the evil which ensued (Does this analysis make Michael Brown the secret hero of Katrina?).

An outsider might say that such an aide should quit. Unfortunately, the outsider has not volunteered to feed the aide, pay his rent or send his children to school. While political people possess many and varied talents, the outside world, by and large, does not recognize them as such. Career mobility is limited, meaning that moral outrage become a luxury. Ironically, an aide who entered upon a career for reasons of principle is often forced by that career to jettison those very principles. Or, one could enter the more lucrative field of lobbying, which is the prostitute’s equivalent of agreeing to do anal. Or, as Lou Reed says, "you can all just take a walk."

So the answer is that I do not feel disdain for those who show excessive enthusiasm for any candidate; more like a mixture of pity, jealousy and nostalgia.       

"I really don't care anymore about the Jim-Jims in this town and all the politicians making crazy sounds and everybody putting everybody else down"

                                   Lou Reed    

NOTE (11/24/06): This piece has been re-dedicated to the memory of Ellen Willis (who would have understood why).