Issue 2 Article 8 9-23-1990 Recommended Citation O'Connell (original) (raw)

It is enough to turn you away from the political process to recall that neither candidate for the American presidency seriously addressed this issue in 1988. For Yeats "politics" was one thing and "that girl" another. She embodied simple beauty and love, the rhetoric of the heart. "But O that I were young again / And held her in my arms." By implication, "politics," for Yeats, meant difficult issues and complex analysis, the rhetoric of the head. The presidential election of 1988 obliterated Yeats's distinction. The "handlers"the campaign managers, speech writers, media consultants, spin controllers, flacks, advisers, friends, and wives of the candidatesdid their best to convince Americans that each candidate for the presidency-George Bush or Michael Dukakiswas nothing less than "that girl standing there," a worthy emblem of beauty and a sufficient object of desire. Since both Bush and Dukakis suffered from severe charisma deficiencies, each made his case by running down the other. Forget issues and analysis, implied both candidates in their misleading rhetoric and their manipulatory media messages. Come live with me and be my love, courted Bush through the long, hot summer and fall of 1988. Trust in me, cooed Dukakis. In November, America decided it liked Bush better, but all of us were diminished by the inane campaign. Small wonder that now, after the midterm congressional elections, on the brink of the 1992 presidential campaign, as a new millennium approached, we would like to forget all about 1988, a bad dream that continues to haunt the American mind. Try as they mightor as their mighty manipulators managedneither presidential candidate could match the beauty or lovableness of Ronald Reagan, the cover boy of American politics, still standing there; still smiling, nodding, joshing, and waving his way through the Iran/contra and arms-diversion scandal; still trying to remember what he knew and when he forgot it. (Reagan maintained "plausible deniability" of his subordinates' actions, though Oliver North, Reagan's point man on the Iran/contra extravaganza, assumed "that the president was aware of what I was doing and had, through my superiors, approved of it.") 6 J 06