Biography in the service of politics is not new to America. It goes all the way back to Abe Lincoln and the log cabin and beyond. But as the Democratic Convention demonstrated, American politics is now seized -- obsessed -- with the politics of autobiography. The acceptance speeches of Bill Clinton and Al Gore, orgies of self-revelation, mark the full Oprahtization of American politics.
U.S. politicians routinely vie with each other for the Li'l Abner prize for most humble, most miserable upbringing. The Democrats in Madison Square Garden were no exception. After four days of speeches a foreign visitor could be forgiven for thinking indoor plumbing was a Reagan-era innovation.
Fine. To mine your own history is one thing. But to exploit your family is quite another. Gore brought tears to the eyes of millions with the invocation of his sister's death and his son's near fatal car accident. Clinton matched him with his father's fatal car accident and his mother's cancer. In between, a 14-minute Clinton bio had him telling the world of 12-year-old daughter Chelsea watching Dad's TV confession to "causing pain in my marriage" and then extending an intimate daughterly exoneration -- reported to millions.
It is an odd way to show one's concern for loved ones by laying out their most private tragedies for all the world to see. Of course, the point is not love or family but politics: endearing the candidate to the nation as a man of sensitivity and caring. Clinton pollster Stan Greenberg, reports the New York Times, said his polls showed that the candidates' "sense of revelation" had reduced the impression of their being "too slick and too political."
The Clinton speech was practically diagrammed. As his own spin doctors told the press, the idea was to connect biography with policy. Hence concern for Mom produces -- presto! -- national health care. Granddad's example triggers commitment to civil rights. Does anyone really believe that "if you want to know why I care so much about our children and our future, it all started with Hillary"?
This is not to say the feelings conjured up by Gore and Clinton were invented. There is no doubt how much Gore suffered for his son. And one can only imagine Clinton's closeness to his mother. The cynicism lies not in counterfeiting a feeling but in packaging a genuine feeling into a neat anecdote contoured for political effect.
Gore, for example, went so far as to liken America today to his son lying lifeless in his father's arms with "the empty stare of death . . . waiting for a second breath of life." Moving briskly from the pathetic to the political, Gore went on, "Our democracy is lying in the gutter, waiting for us to give it a second breath of life."
Shameful nonsense. Nonsense because no one can possibly look at America today and genuinely see a people, like little Albert, "limp and still, without breath or pulse." Shameful because the analogy is meant to exploit our sympathy for father Gore's pain to convince us that candidate Gore harbors equally deep feelings for the health of America. If he does, he is a lousy father. If he does not, he is a dissimulating politician.