For years now, the political and media power brokers who really govern this country have underestimated the depth of political alienation and anger among the American people. They just keep interviewing and quoting one another, carefully selecting their "expert analysts," and then telling the rest of us what informed opinion is on a whole variety of issues.
The media decide which people, groups, and opinions to make recognizable to the American public, and then they conduct their own polls to see which are most recognizable. They call that public opinion, and then have the audacity to say they're just following it.
Enough! screams a rapidly increasing number of Americans around the country. They feel the self-serving elites that run the country are ruining it and have created a political system that is completely out of touch with ordinary people. Powerful vested interests, the expense of political campaigns, image makers, political handlers, negative campaigning and attack ads, television sound bites, and poll-driven politics all combine to institutionalize a process run by insiders and characterized by deception and hypocrisy.
In the face of massive political disaffection, it is clear that most of our politicians and media personalities still don't get it. It is the year of the outsider, the media announce in one more sound bite, and all the candidates--including the quintessential manager of the system, George Bush--say they too have a message of change and are running against Washington. But--from official Washington's point of view--an alarming number of voters are finding such pretensions absurd and disgusting.
The tremendous energy around the country for the insurgent candidacy of H. Ross Perot was generated by the image he successfully created as "a man who gets things done." He promised, above all, to break up the "Washington gridlock." That seems to be what many Americans want most to be done.
But there was an enormous problem with this populist scenario. The reason--and the only reason--that Ross Perot was a viable candidate for president was that he has more than $3 billion and said he was willing to spend $100 million of his own money to win the presidency. Does anyone really believe Perot would have been a serious candidate if he didn't have so much money? Even his supporters invested their time and energy because of his ability single-handedly to buy the kind of campaign and media that many believed could actually win the White House.
WHAT DOES THAT say to us about the American political process? Everyone knows and complains about the fact that both political parties are controlled by big-money interests. That has become such a normal assumption now that we forget how devastating it is to the possibility of a genuine democratic society. Indeed, it makes one impossible. Any suggestions or efforts to transform the electoral process are
quickly suppressed or dismissed by the experts as unworkable.
Apparently, many Americans have also given up on the idea of a country run by anyone but rich people. Perot's supporters said they didn't like the system but seemed to accept the irony of relying on another incredibly rich man to change it. Whether any millionaire or billionaire would ever really change the system is, of course, the question. And the great fear of Perot was what such a person--whose enormous wealth makes him accountable to nobody but himself--might do with the power of the presidency.
H. Ross Perot is, of course, a fraud as an outsider. No billionaires are outsiders. You simply don't get rich by being outside the system. You milk it for all it's worth, which is exactly what Perot and others of his ilk become expert at. Some of the Texas billionaire's history in that regard had begun to come out, as did other realities beneath the fabled myths of the bold entrepreneur's career. The computer general has always run his businesses like the military and some felt he might try to run the country in the same way. Perot's intense fascination with secret missions, soldiers of fortune, and clandestine activities seemed to go along with his past expressions of disdain for constitutional protections and his own admission that a Perot administration's plan to clean the streets of crime would "not be pretty."
But if Perot the candidate was suspect, the wide public enthusiasm for him was a fresh sign of political re-engagement. If the Texas tycoon was not a worthy recipient of the hopes of millions for real change, their longings for something different remain deeply significant. With his withdrawal, many are feeling disillusioned and even betrayed. Ordinary people have again been "jerked around" by a rich man who finally decided that a presidential campaign was becoming too hard, too scrutinizing, too complicated, and not "fun" anymore.
Those who supported Perot simply could not stand the thought of an election which posed only a choice between George Bush and Bill Clinton. They wanted to believe Ross Perot was as sincere about wanting to change things as they are. They are not unlike the Democratic Convention delegates in New York City who warmed to the rhetoric of Bill Clinton's "new covenant." Millions of Americans want change and are desperately searching for political leadership who are genuinely willing to help bring it about. To honestly tell the American people what change would require from all of us and then to challenge the attitudes and institutions that prevent it from occurring would be the essence of political leadership.
At this juncture, it's far from clear whether Bill Clinton and Al Gore, or Ross Perot, or (need I even mention) George Bush and Dan Quayle have any clue about what a "new covenant" would mean or have any willingness or capacity to deliver such a promise. But, indeed, nothing less than a new covenant with each other, with our forgotten neighbor, with the Earth, and with our children's children is now necessary to keep our society from further crumbling.
We are in the midst of a social and political crisis. And the people who run the country are, in fact, destroying the economy, the environment, our cultural values, the changes for racial justice, and the opportunity for a really new international order.
The truth is that there are far better choices for political leadership on every level than the ones currently offered. Some are teachers, farmers, or poets, others are community organizers, workers, scientists, doctors, or community-minded business people. There are prophets and visionaries, creative idea generators, and practical implementers in many areas of American society. The problem is they are not rich people or controlled by those who are--which means they have little chance of entering the political process and, because they have too much integrity, wouldn't even consider it under current circumstances. That is what must be changed. Anything less will lead to one disappointment and betrayal after another.
On November 3, many people of faith and conscience will again have to do what they think best. Some will vote for a step in the right direction, some on a single issue, some for a symbolic gesture, some not at all. But afterward, we must join with any others ready to undertake the long road of real political transformation that is needed in our country.
Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners.
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