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by Seth Rogovoy
WILLIAMSTOWN, Aug. 3, 1996 -- It's feeding season for political junkies, as the national, state and local races start heating up on their way to the climax in November.
In "A Race Too Far?" in the August Atlantic Monthly, senior editor Jack Beatty offers an incisive analysis of the contenders and the race for the U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts.
"It's a strange race," writes Beatty, "pitting a rich Harvard guy raised on a Long Island estate who married a Roosevelt against a rich Yale guy raised abroad who married a Portuguese catsup heiress. How will this play in South Boston?"
It's not quite clear from Beatty's piece how he thinks the race between Gov. William Weld and Sen. John Kerry will play in South Boston, or in the commonwealth as a whole, for that matter. But along the way he does come up with some strikingly cutting observations about the Massachusetts political scene, and by extension, that of the country as a whole.
Beatty faults Weld for running the wrong race in 1994. Had he taken on Sen. Edward Kennedy in the race for Washington that year rather than Mark Roosevelt in the battle for Beacon Hill, Beatty convincingly argues that Weld would currently be contending against Bill Clinton for the White House from a seat in the Senate -- which Beatty thinks he would have won -- rather than against Kerry for a seat in the Senate. Instead, Weld "may already have lost the one big chance of his career," writes Beatty.
Beatty is critical of Kerry, too. He faults him for his "cool, cerebral manner," and in one of a number of beautifully rendered observations about the candidates' personalities, he writes, "Archaeologists have searched, but have been unable to discover a single Kerry joke."
In the end, Beatty is nearly as glum about the electorate as he is about the candidates. "Falling incomes, a shrinking middle class, a growing number of will-work-for-food immigrants -- this is the state of the American Dream in Massachusetts," he says. He seems to feel this state of affairs makes for a volatile, unpredictable outcome, not just in Massachusetts but nationwide.
"The whole country is in for a rough time," he warns, "as both political parties turn their backs on its overriding problem, leaving a civic void to be filled, soon enough, by extremists -- the jackals of American decline."
An equally incisive profile of a candidate is found in the Aug. 5 issue of the New Yorker, in which political correspondent Michael Kelly deconstructs Bob Dole and his fast-fading candidacy for the White House.
"Watching Bob Dole campaign for the Presidency is a curious and dislocating experience, like showering clothed or eating naked," writes Kelly. "Dole is not simply an unattractive candidate, like Michael Dukakis, or an exhausted one, like George Bush. He is something more interesting and more problematic. He is a sort of nega- candidate."
Kelly portrays Dole as totally ill-equipped to be a modern-day candidate, where "campaigning on a national scale is largely about pretending." He contrasts great political performers like Clinton, who "are great because, on some level, they aren't pretending," with Dole, who he says, "hates it so much that he can hardly bring himself to go through the motions."
Dole is so wholly incapable of playing the game, says Kelly, that the only possible way for him to get across to the American people is to make this weakness his virtue. "There is something sneakily, cumulatively refreshing about a man who can't be bothered to keep up the pretense that he really cares whether you like him or what his position on abortion is supposed to be....But it's a perverse way to get to be President."
The August Harper's features a candid and refreshing interview with Pema Jones, a 13-year-old Tibetan lama who now lives in Wyoming and is one of the youngest Buddhist teachers in the U.S. Jones discusses the difficulties of reconciling Buddhist teachings of nonviolence with the ugly realities that surround him -- namely, being beaten up by his Asian-hating schoolmates.
"I consider it a good day when some goof in a pickup truck doesn't try to run me over," says Jones, who reveals that his survival strategy includes belonging to a "gang" of fellow Asians, including numerous Chinese. Apparently the shared experience of racism is enough to override the antipathy of Chinese and Tibetans, who a continent away are sworn enemies. "Some skinhead doesn't care whether I'm Tibetan or Chinese," says Jones. "He just wants to stomp my head."
As for how this mutual defense organization of Asian schoolmates lives up to the Dalai Lama's teachings of nonviolence, Jones says, "The Dalai Lama is an awesome old dude and a killer teacher. But he's got, like, a dozen bodyguards around him when he's traveling. What do you think would happen if some butthead pulls a gun on His Holiness? Do you think those dozen bodyguards will practice nonviolence or bust some karate move on him? No way, man. A bodyguard sees this dweeb with a gun and he's gonna pop a cap in his ass."
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