Posted on 4/23/2002, 3:29:29 AM by Pokey78
A slightly left-of-center candidate runs for president. In a rational world he would win easily. After all, his party has been running the country, with great success: unemployment is down, economic growth has accelerated, the sense of malaise that prevailed under the previous administration has evaporated.
But everything goes wrong. His moderation becomes a liability; denouncing the candidate's pro-market stance, left-wing candidates — who have no chance of winning, but are engaged in politics as theater — draw off crucial support. The candidate, though by every indication a very good human being, is not a natural campaigner; he has, say critics, "a professorial style" that seems "condescending and humorless" to many voters. Above all, there is apathy and complacency among moderates; they take it for granted that he will win, or that in any case the election will make little difference.
The result is a stunning victory for the hard right. It's by and large a tolerant, open-minded country; but there is a hard core, maybe 20 percent of the electorate, that is deeply angry even in good times. And owing to the peculiarities of the electoral system, this right-wing minority prevails even though more people actually cast their votes for the moderate left.
If all this sounds like a post-mortem on the Gore campaign in 2000, that's intentional. But I'm actually describing Sunday's shocking election in France, in which the current prime minister, Lionel Jospin, placed third, behind the rabid rightist Jean-Marie Le Pen. Until very recently, Mr. Le Pen was regarded as a spent force. Now he has scored an astonishing triumph.
As I've implicitly suggested, there are some important parallels between the earthquake in French politics and recent political events in the United States. Let me draw out those parallels, then go to the big difference.
What the French election revealed is that in France, as in the United States, there are a lot of angry people. They aren't a majority; Mr. Le Pen received about 17 percent of the vote, less than Ross Perot got here in 1992. But they are highly motivated, and can exert influence out of proportion to their numbers if moderates take a tolerant society for granted.
What are the angry people angry about? Not economics; peace and prosperity did not reconcile them to Bill Clinton or to Mr. Jospin. Instead, it seems to be about traditional values. Our angry right rails against godless liberals; France's targets immigrants. In both cases, what really seems to bother them is the loss of certainty; they want to return to a simpler time, one without that disturbing modern mix of people and ideas.
And in both cases this angry minority has had far more influence than its numbers would suggest, largely because of the fecklessness of the left and the apathy of moderates. Al Gore had Ralph Nader; Mr. Jospin had a potpourri of silly leftists (two Trotskyists took 10 percent of the vote). And both men were mocked and neglected by complacent moderates.
Now for the important difference. Mr. Le Pen is a political outsider; his showing in Sunday's election puts him into the second-round runoff, but he won't actually become France's president. So his hard-right ideas won't be put into practice anytime soon.
In the United States, by contrast, the hard right has essentially been co-opted by the Republican Party — or maybe it's the other way around. In this country people with views that are, in their way, as extreme as Mr. Le Pen's are in a position to put those views into practice.
Consider, for example, the case of Representative Tom DeLay. Last week Mr. DeLay told a group that he was on a mission from God to promote a "biblical worldview," and that he had pursued the impeachment of Bill Clinton in part because Mr. Clinton held "the wrong worldview." Well, there are strange politicians everywhere. But Mr. DeLay is the House majority whip — and, in the view of most observers, the real power behind Speaker Dennis Hastert.
And then there's John Ashcroft.
What France's election revealed is that we and the French have more in common than either country would like to admit. There as here, there turns out to be a lot of irrational anger lurking just below the surface of politics as usual. The difference is that here the angry people are already running the country.
The funniest part is, many of his lefty academic colleagues no longer even take his technical economic research seriously, because after reading his progessively more insane Times rants, they think he's lost his mind and turned into an angry crank. In short, this entire article is one of psychological projection on Krugman's part.
You mean that 15-20% of the population that continued to be filled with massive, psychotic Bush hate even after 9/11? People such as yourself, Paulie?
There is little or no anger in this country, certainly not on the right...
The usual among blacks, but they are on the Left!
If the American people ever get angry, even a little, this author and everyone else will know about it.
Actually, another thread pointed out that the right of center candidates got 57%. Krugman is often engaged in adding up numbers, but at least in this case he got it wrong.
And then there is the statement that the angry folks in the US are running the country, equating such folks to the angry fringe voters in France. Even assuming that DeLay = Le Pen (with Ashcroft thrown in as a lagnaippe for spice), which is a huge stretch, that statement simply strikes me as bizarre. Bush has been called many things, but an angry right wing extremist is not one of them.
I agree with some of what Krugman writes, but most of that was some time ago. Lately he has been losing it, and become almost a comedic character in his chronic eggagerations, superficiality, errors, and polemicisms. He needs to take a rest, a long rest.
Le Pen represents a legitimate voting bloc among the French electorate. The media shouldn't demonize him, they should analyze the reason for his appeal to that minority of French voters. The media shouldn't attempt to categorize those voters as potential Nazis. These people have concerns that aren't being addressed (about the effects of Arab immigration, etc.)
That said, I myself have formed no opinion about Le Pen. That's a question for the French people to hash out--not the New York Times.
As an extreme leftist, Krugman considers anyone to the right of Mao as "hard Right."
In other words, Krugman's opinion is held hostage by his extremist pro-socialist ideology.
If you thought Krugman was an economic illiterate ... he knows even less about politics.
Like the NY Times editorial pages?
I'm always looking for the byline with a picture of Herve Villechaise and Ricardo Montalban announcing, "Welcome to Fantasy Island."
It is very hard to find a real comparison between Le Pen, the ideology of the FN and of other, populist (but more third positionist) politics to American conservativism.
But, whatever...
Yes, Barnicle is right when he notes that tens of millions of good people in Middle America voted Republican. But if you look closely at that map you see a more complex picture. You see the state where James Byrd was lynch-dragged behind a pickup truck until his body came apart -it's red. You see the state where Matthew Shepard was crucified on a split-rail fence for the crime of being gay -it's red. You see the state where right-wing extremists blew up a federal office building and murdered scores of federal employees -it's red. The state where an Army private who was thought to be gay was bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat, and the state where neo-Nazi skinheads murdered two African-Americans because of their skin color, and the state where Bob Jones University spews its anti-Catholic bigotry: they're all red too.
What is Ralph Nader, if not the Ultimate Angry Man? It is probably true that Ralph Nader won the election for Bush, just as Ross Perot won the '92 election for Clinton. Krugman is quick to see "anger" in the Perot voters, but he's blind to it on the Nader side. I guess when leftists do it, it's because they're "too happy." Timesink is right that this guy is little more than an ideological crank. Yet this is what the New York Times serves up as 'analysis.' Typical. |
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