A thousand
seedlings will rise
by James Higdon
There is a wonderful old saying that the definition
of an honest politician is one who stays bought.
George W. Bush is the epitome of the honest politician. Not far behind
him, on the political
honesty scale falls the Democratic Leadership Council's own Joe Lieberman,
who chastised
the rightful president Al Gore recently for failing to stay bought.
Lieberman seems to me to be a Senator who would rather watch the network
news programs
than listen to his own constituents. He longs to be recognized by
the "cool kids" on the network
and tabloid playgrounds, who attacked Gore's populist rhetoric. "Populism
doesn't work in America,"
they chide. A politician's only loyalty should go to the entity that
puts the most money in the
politician's pocket. While Gore is guilty of playing politics (how
odd for a politician), it is clear
he does not do it for the coin placed firmly in his palm. Such "dishonesty"
has earned him the
constant derision of the playground elite. "We will never give him
a kind word," they boast,
"because he thinks he's better than us."
From all appearances, Al Gore may have abandoned the DLC, an organization
that he helped create.
The DLC was created to address the rightward swing of the political pendulum,
when Americans
were most concerned about the ability of the government to function in
the face of a massive,
seemingly uncontrollable national debt, mostly created by Ronald Reagan's
all out cold war
against the already crumbling Soviet Union.
A pig was placed on the American center stage in November/December of the
year 2000.
The mainstream media painted it with lipstick, and the Democratic leadership
kick stepped behind,
wearing pink tutus. Were it not for the massively armed military
orchestra in the pit, with weapons
aimed at all who fail to applaud, the world would respond accordingly,
with rotted tomatoes and
cabbages, to this misplaced vaudevillian joke. While it's always
tough to follow the animal act,
Al Gore is showing signs that he may just be the "real deal."
The anti-war movement that is now taking firm hold, while the Democratic
leadership attempts
to ignore its numbers, was given voice when Al Gore spoke out in San Francisco
against Bush's
imperialist adventurism. At the time, the press and the polls were still
claiming America to be a
pro-war nation. Yet Gore spoke his piece, perfectly aware of the
derision that he knew would
follow from the same spoiled fraternity brothers and sorority sisters that
portray the painted pig
as a graceful ballerina.
But do not mistake my intentions. It is not my purpose here to endorse
Al Gore for president
in 2004. Like many, I was disappointed with Al's response to the
2000 coup in Florida.
After spending months promising that he would "fight" for us, he quietly
sulked away after the
treasonous outrage committed by the felonious five on the US Supreme Court.
I am, however,
prepared to suggest that Al Gore has learned something during his time
away, and he may now
recognize the soul of the party that has given him political life, and
roots to his progressive traditions.
Al Gore spent two years listening and observing rather than talking, and
now seems a little stronger,
a little more energized, and a lot more confident. He seems to have
had an epiphany of sorts, and
our greatest leaders, from Lincoln, to Roosevelt, to Bobby Kennedy, became
great after they had
found the ability to touch the pulse of the nation with their own bare
hand.
Contrast Al Gore with the likes of Diane Feinstein. We in California
have long known that Feinstein
is no Democrat. Her one Democratic issue is her support for Roe v.
Wade. I have no doubt that if
the Republican party were to fully endorse a woman's right to choice, Diane
would change parties in
a New York minute. Do not forget that when the Clinton impeachment
foolishness was over,
Feinstein attempted to draw out the issue by asking for a congressional
censure of the President.
Do not forget that there is no judge too heinous for Diane to confirm to
the federal bench, so long as
he/she promises Ms. Feinstein that Roe v. Wade will not be overturned.
And never, never forget
that even though her constituents demanded that she not authorize an unelected
fraud the unlimited
power to wage war, in the neighborhood of 24,000 to 600, she just couldn't
resist the marching beat
of war drums. With only one Democratic issue in her bonnet, she is
merely an odd looking elephant
with long pointy ears.
I freely confess that, even possessed with this knowledge, I voted for
Diane Feinstein in her most
recent campaign. I did so because I was granted little choice by
the central leadership of the
Democratic party, which has decided that its primary role is to gain power
and fund raising capability,
and not to espouse a philosophy of compassion, honor, and decency.
The Democratic leadership no
longer looks for candidates who can lead. It looks for candidates
who can win, and is perfectly willing
to settle for an elephant in the garb of an ass. It is this philosophy
that emulates the modern Republicans,
and gives legitimacy to the claims of the Greens that the parties are both
alike. It is this turn of principle
that has led to the greatest leadership crisis we have ever faced in this
nation. And if our leadership has
lost its way, we ourselves, the grass roots of the progressive party, must
bare the responsibility.
To a degree I will acknowledge that any leader in a democracy must bow
to the wisdom of his
constituency. Especially when that constituency stands at 40 to 1,
as Ms. Feinstein's does against her
vote to grant Bush military dominion over Middle Eastern oil. But
let us not forget what leadership is.
Leadership is the combination of having the charisma to make oneself heard,
the mental agility to
perceive the high ground, and the argumentative capacity to convince the
constituency to go there.
While there is a certain political safety in bending with the wind, no
willow has the capacity to
out-survive a sequoia.
Before I give Greens the warm fuzzy feeling that I am now endorsing third
party candidacies, which
merely, in these times, hold the likelihood of torching the willow groves
before the sequoias can
germinate, allow me to say that the clear and present danger in this county
is the neo-conservative
movement. For those who have yet to notice, the neo-conservative
movement in the United States
of America is purely and simply the neo-Nazi movement with a kinder and
gentler vocabulary. That
movement does not bare any resemblance to even the most conservative of
Democrats. It does not
even bare a resemblance to traditional conservative Republicans.
Before we determine it is time to patch our sails, we must first resolve
to patch our hull and prevent
our ship from sinking. Now that they are armed with the unlimited
power to wage war (which at
least the majority of Democrats in the House voted against), we must find
the way to put Karl Rove,
John Ashcroft, George W. Bush, and Tom Delay (among many, many more) out
to pasture before
they earn themselves a glass booth at an international war crimes trial.
I propose that our first order of business is to send the message of our
discontent by first reducing the
modern Republican party to a loud and toothless minority by voting on November
5, 2002 for the
strongest opposition. Remember that even a grove of willows, given
sufficient numbers, can break
the winds of fascism. And that, my friends, is our most immediate
and important work.
Once that is accomplished, we can, and we must begin to clean our own house--even
if we are
ultimately faced with no other choice than to go outside our party for
leaders who will answer to
the Democratic base. We must demand that the Democratic leadership will
provide strong
progressives to run in primaries. And Democratic leadership should,
and must do that according
to the model laid out by Paul Wellstone before his death.
"We need to build a progressive force that does a lot of organizing within
the Democratic Party
- especially candidate recruitment and elections. But this cannot be the
only goal. This new force
must not only introduce new and exciting perspectives into the political
dialogue of our country,
it must also recruit candidates; provide training, skills, and resources
for successful campaigns;
build an infrastructure of field directors and campaign managers to support
progressive candidates;
have a savvy media presence; apply effective grassroots organizing to electoral
politics, and
otherwise build political leadership at the local, state, and federal levels
of government.
"This is more a democratic than a Democratic challenge, though I hope there
is a strong connection
between the two."
Paul Wellstone, a committed Democrat, had a progressive vision as broad
and expansive as his heart.
He was never afraid to confront an issue on the basis of its morality,
and not on its popularity.
Paul Wellstone was a Sequoia and not a Willow, and he would have survived
on November 5th.
Now that Mr. Wellstone is gone, we must find the strength to honor his
memory, and not to mourn it.
We can do so, not just by preserving a Republican minority in the Senate,
but by recreating a
Republican minority in the House. We can do so by demanding that
the Democratic majority refuse
confirmation of even a single Bush appointed judge. We can do so
by demanding that our Democratic
representatives repeal the USA PATRIOT ACT. We can do so by insisting
that Democrats re-establish
the Fairness Doctrine, returning the people's airwaves back to the control
of the people. We can do so
by reminding ourselves that we once demanded compassion, fairness, reason,
and freedom. We can
recommit ourselves to the important work we left behind in the early 1970s.
America's idealism was not lost because bullets pierced the flesh of
JFK, RFK, and MLK.
Our idealism was lost because we left the work of these great men
unfinished. Perhaps we can
regain our idealism if we demand of our leadership that it is Paul Wellstone
who needs replacing, and
not just a Democratic candidate who can win. Let us not do the same
injustice to Paul Wellstone that
we have done to Abraham, Martin, John, and Robert. It is not incumbent
upon us to mourn the loss of
a redwood, but to replenish the forest, without which the survival of a
single tree would mean nothing.
Before his death, in his tribute America and Americans, John Steinbeck
reminded us that when the need
has been great, we have found people of greatness. Yet there is not
a single individual in our history who
we view as "great" who has not been a flawed individual. All were
seedlings once who out grew the rest,
and we, as Americans, responded to their promise by fertilizing their soil.
Their compassion grew out of
our compassion, and their strength out of our strength. It was the
American pursuit of justice that watered
the roots of Martin Luther King. It was our compassionate desire
to end suffering that provided nurturing
sunshine to the long boughs of Robert Kennedy.
Maybe it is our love of democracy that will cause Al Gore to grow just
a little bit taller than the rest.
But whether or not this is so, it is our idealism that has provided rich
soil. And that should be both
our promise and our warning. We are not a tree, but rather a forest.
For every sequoia that has been
cut down before its time, a thousand seedlings will rise in its stead.