[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: All the Pretty Words

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All the Pretty Words

August 2, 2004
 By BOB HERBERT 



 

They were able to sustain the eloquence for most of the
week, which had to be a surprise. Bill Clinton told us that
"strength and wisdom are not opposing values." Barack Obama
called America "a magical place." John Kerry said, "The
high road may be harder, but it leads to a better place." 

There was no shortage of pretty words and promises at the
Democratic National Convention in Boston last week. But
there's a big difference between the rigidly crafted
reality at the heart of a political campaign and the
reality of the rest of the world. 

"Practical politics," said Henry Adams, "consists in
ignoring facts." 

The facts facing the United States as George W. Bush and
John Kerry joust for the presidency are too grim to be
honestly discussed on the stump. No one wants to tell
cheering potential voters that the nation has sunk so deep
into a hole that it will take decades to extricate it. So
the candidates are trying to outdo one another in
expressions of sunny optimism. 

President Bush and Dick Cheney deride "the same old
pessimism" of the Democrats. Mr. Kerry counters by saying
to the president, "Let's be optimists, not just opponents."


The voters deserve better in an era of overwhelming
problems. Consider Iraq. Neither the president nor Mr.
Kerry knows what to do about this terrible misadventure
that has cost more than 900 American and thousands of
innocent Iraqi lives. The war is draining the U.S. Treasury
and has made the Middle East more, not less, unstable.
Dreams of democracy taking root in the garden of Baghdad
and then spreading like the flowers of spring throughout
the Middle East have given way to the awful reality of
bombings, kidnappings and beheadings. 

You won't hear straight talk about this all-important
matter from either camp. And you can forget the chatter
about an exit strategy for American troops. There isn't
one. 

Or consider Afghanistan. Not long ago American officials
were claiming a decisive victory and the Bush
administration was trumpeting the liberation of Afghan
women from the clutches of the Taliban. But the
proclamations of success were premature. Osama bin Laden
and the Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar are nowhere to
be found. Warlords and insurgents are in control of much of
the country and the growth industry is the opium trade. The
extraordinarily courageous group Doctors Without Borders is
packing its bags and withdrawing from Afghanistan after 24
years because five of its staff members were murdered and
the government will not bring the killers to justice. On
Friday the U.S. government warned American citizens against
traveling to Afghanistan because of the danger of being
kidnapped or killed. 

Some victory. 

Employment here in America is another topic on which the
presidential candidates will not tell the voters the cold,
hard truth. There are not nearly enough jobs available for
the millions upon millions of unemployed and underemployed
Americans who want and desperately need gainful employment.
The population in need of jobs is expanding daily and no
one has a viable plan for accommodating it. Families are
being squeezed like Florida oranges as good jobs with good
benefits - health insurance, paid vacations and retirement
security - are going the way of the afternoon newspaper and
baseball double-headers. 

These are incredibly difficult issues and an honest search
for solutions can only come from a sustained effort by the
broadest array of America's brightest and wisest men and
women. What the U.S. really needs is leadership that could
marshal that effort. 

Unfortunately, we've become a society addicted to the
fantasy of a quick fix. We want our solutions encompassed
in a sound bite. We want our leaders to manipulate reality
to our liking. 

So there was President Bush in a hard-hit industrial region
of Ohio over the weekend telling voters, "The economy is
strong and it's getting stronger." And the Kerry-Edwards
team is assuring one and all that "help is on the way." 

The voters may deserve better, but there's a real question
about whether they want better. It may well be that
candidates can't tell voters the truth and still win. If
that's so, then democracy American-style may be a lot more
dysfunctional than even the last four years has indicated. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/opinion/02herbert.html?ex=1092467137&ei=1&en=650d668f782a0588


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