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Of course, Democrats do not have a monopoly on this sort of bathetic exploitation of family tragedy. In the 1988 campaign, George Bush made a point of referring to the lingering death of one of his daughters. Two weeks ago, fending off hecklers, he did it again. Conjuring up the memory of bereavement is a useful way to humanize one's image. It says, Yes, I too -- I of Andover and Yale, I of the two middle names -- have suffered.
Nor is the politics of biography unique to the U.S. Just before the British election, the Conservatives broadcast a 10-minute TV commercial that consisted almost entirely of John Major talking of his past as he rode through the working-class neighborhoods and passed the modest homes in which he grew up. Brilliantly done, but still the same stuff.
And it works. Major won. In Madison Square Garden, tears flowed. Across the country, the Clinton-Gore polls shot up. Why does it work? The obvious answer is that it appeals to a television audience Oprah-trained to demand of its celebrities a psychic striptease.
But there is a less obvious answer. Beneath the tears, even the most moved audience feels a bit of a wince. We know how debasing it must be to reveal oneself and expose one's family in the pursuit of power. We know that to use family is not to embrace it but, at the deepest level, to renounce it. What the candidate is really saying is this: "To be your President, I must prove that I am totally devoted to you the people and to my own ambition. To demonstrate that devotion, I submit to all the ritual self-denials our political system has evolved: giving up my private life, opening my finances, forgoing all normal human contact and -- the final sacrifice -- betraying the most private pains, the deepest secrets of my most loved ones."
Exposing oneself and exploiting one's family are, in the end, simply other forms of debasement that a modern democratic public now demands before it is prepared to confer high office on anyone. Like the 5 a.m. factory-gate handshake and the other absurd ordeals that we demand of our candidates, it is a kind of revenge of republicanism. We say to our candidates, You want to be exalted over us? First, some humble pie. You want Hail to the Chief played whenever you enter a room? First, you will have to suffer. You want to be President? First, betray your family.
And they do.