[The following article appeared under the headline, "Cheer Up! You Can Be President of the United States," in the March 15 issue of Combate, weekly newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR), section of the Fourth International in the Spanish state. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
To become president of the United States, you must have three absolutely indispensable prerequisites: 1) have no physical defects, such as black, yellow, red, or overly brown skin, feminine gender, or a marked Latino accent; 2) have no mental defects, such as being an atheist — or even a nonpracticing believer — a communist, a socialist, a homosexual, or a drug addict; and 3) last but not least, have a heap of money.
You can perfectly well be an obscurantist, an anticommunist psychopath, a warmonger, a male chauvinist, violence-prone, a (discreet) alcholic, lack ideas, and say to the world's poor and hungry, "Let them die — it's their fault!" None of this will prevent you from becoming president, so long as you are a white man, a good American, go to church on Sunday, and have enough money to convince all kinds of pressure groups and multinational enterprises to finance your election campaign.
It's been this way now for 208 years. In perfect alternation between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, the 50-odd presidents since the Declaration of Independence have all been white men, upstanding Americans, assiduous Bible readers, and millionaires — either through family ties or through connections forged in previous political posts (usually as senator or governor of certain states).
There are and have been Black, women, Chicano, poor, and socialist candidates, but thanks to the handy system of primary elections, a filter impenetrable to such rarities, they have never gained the "nomination" (a euphemism that in plain language means: being named by the ruling class or one of its factions). The electoral contests between those "nominated" are real pitched battles — leaving in their wake tons of confetti, hats, pennants, balloons, dove droppings, and echoes of insults and bad jokes. But in the end, all the presidents, Republicans and Democrats alike, have managed to find the way to God and to show the world that the United States knows how to defend its universal vocation. Some use the dollar, others the fleet and missiles, others the CIA and conspiracy. On the domestic front, some ally with the petroleum multinationals, others with the steel and auto companies or the
GARY HART
banks, with the Midwestern farmers or the military industries of California and Florida, but in the end they all arrange things so that the poor keep getting poorer, the Blacks and Chicanos remain in their ghettos, women stay oppressed, and the businessmen increase their dividends. And all of them want to finish off Castroism in Cuba, Sandinism in Nicaragua, Qaddafi-ism in Libya, Khomeini-ism in Iran, and, in general, "communism" throughout the world.
It's not surprising then, after so many years, that a lot of people in the United States skip the elections. The television networks and the newspapers join the campaign. The ratings and the press runs may go up, since people must enjoy watching how the candidates insult each other. But despite all such efforts, it's been quite a while since even half the voters went to the polls. The Reagan-Carter battle, four years ago, was decided by a tiny number of votes; the cowboy was elected by a little more than a quarter of the U.S. electorate. Between that and the 99.8 percent achieved by Chernenko in the recent Soviet elections, the difference is merely of appearance or form.
The U.S. communications media are now rubbing their hands over the appearance in the primary race of an "outsider" - the candidate Gary Hart. This promises to lend some color to the campaign and boost the press runs and television ratings. His immediate rival in the Democratic Party, Walter Mondale, is quite a classic type, who was already vice with Jimmy Carter — a rather dusty model.
After Gary Hart got twice the votes of his rival in the New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, and Wyoming primaries, the team of journalists accompanying him jumped to 80 (it was scarcely half a dozen to start with). The Washington Post has devoted lengthy columns to his biography. His career is studied with a magnifying glass. And everyone is trying to find the key to such tantalizing enigmas as why the candidate changed his original surname from Hartpence to Hart and says he was born in 1937 when his birth certificate says 1936.
An outsider? Not exactly: he's white, a man, he goes to church, he has a tailor and a wife, and, as senator from Colorado, has known how to put together abundant bank accounts. He does insist on his "new ideas": "This is not a campaign about the past" — an obvious allusion to Mondale and Reagan — "but rather about the future." An overwhelming future: the United States must preserve its world economic primacy on the basis of high technology in electronics, robotics, and communications. The industrial reconversion he proposes will quickly put an end to unemployment: "Jobs will appear almost by magic. And with the help of God, of course.
He proposes the nuclear freeze, has hesitations about the strategic MX supermissiles and the B1 superbomber, and wants to negotiate with the Soviets to ban the production of plutonium, the raw material of atomic bombs. But his pacificism does not go much beyond that. An expert in military affairs, he wants to outfit the U.S. army with the most advanced technological gear, so as to "improve the costefficiency ratio." Efficiency? God save us.
A member of the campaign committee that brought John F. Kennedy to power, director of the campaigns of George McGovern and
Jimmy Carter, he knows everything there is to know about vote-catching. He is seeking votes both among those who are struggling in the "freeze" movement against nuclear rearmament as well as among the "liberal" capitalists who want less state interference in private enterprise. In face of Reagan's political and rhetorical somersaults, he proposes to carry out a more tranquil but no less "effective" policy.
If Hart gets elected, it will be the first time since John F. Kennedy - 24 years ago - that the United States has a president less than 50 years old. If Reagan wins — at the age of 74- world politics, including the danger of a nuclear war, will be in the hands of two men who are at death's door. Senility has now penetrated so deeply into the institutional structures of a historical era condemned to die, that a 46- or 47-year-old candidate dares to brag of his "youth" as an electoral argument.
One of Gary Hart's preferred slogans is copied from his idolized former boss, John F. Kennedy, who upon taking office said, Today the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans." A new generation that did not break with old traditions: Kennedy attempted to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, began sending marines to Vietnam, and threatened to wipe out the Soviet Union with missiles.
Even so, it is possible that if Gary Hart beats Mondale and defeats Reagan as well on November 6, many of us will sleep more peacefully that night. Not because he has won, but rather because his victory will at least reflect the fact that forces remain alive and are growing among the U.S. people that oppose Reagan's dangerous game. And on such forces the fate of many people all over the world depends.