Review

About a month or so ago I came across this interview with Tony Kushner in Mother Jones. Again, for reasons of full disclosure, Kushner was a high school teacher of mine, and I credit him with forcing me to think--really think--about politics, history, lit., and so on.

I posted the same excerpt you see below--but it's worth a second look, I think, in light of A.B.B. getting closer and closer to being either Kerry, Edwards, or, much less likely, General Clark.

Kushner is an unrepentant socialist--but this doesn't prevent him from stressing that he'd even vote for Joe Lieberman if that's what it took to send Bush to perma-retirement (to paraphrase Bad Attitudes). Fortunately, Joh for Seven fell on his political sword last night, although we'll still have him to kick around in the US Senate.

Here are some excerpts from the interview:

TK: I have said this before, and I'll say it again: Anyone that the Democrats run against Bush, even the appalling Joe Lieberman, should be a candidate around whom every progressive person in the United States who cares about the country's future and the future of the world rallies. Money should be thrown at that candidate. And if Ralph Nader runs -- if the Green Party makes the terrible mistake of running a presidential candidate -- don't give him your vote. Listen, here's the thing about politics: It's not an expression of your moral purity and your ethics and your probity and your fond dreams of some utopian future. Progressive people constantly fail to get this.

The GOP has developed a genius for falling into lockstep. They didn't have it with Nixon, but they have it now. They line up behind their candidate, grit their teeth, and help him win, no matter who he is.

MJ: You're saying progressives are undone by their own idealism?

TK: The system isn't about ideals. The country doesn't elect great leaders. It elects fucked-up people who for reasons of ego want to run the world. Then the citizenry makes them become great. FDR was a plutocrat. In a certain sense he wasn't so different from George W. Bush, and he could have easily been Herbert Hoover, Part II. But he was a smart man, and the working class of America told him that he had to be the person who saved this country. It happened with Lyndon Johnson, too, and it could have happened with Bill Clinton, but we were so relieved after 12 years of Reagan and Bush that we sat back and carped.

In a certain sense, Bush was right when he called the anti-war demonstrations a "focus group." We went out on the street and told him that we didn't like the war. But that was all we did: We expressed an opinion. There was no one in Congress to listen to us because we were clear about why they couldn't listen. Hillary Clinton was too compromised, or Chuck Schumer -- and God knows they are. But if people don't pressure them to do better, we're lost.

I still am ambivalent about another Nader run: I voted for him in 2000, although I had the luxury of living in a State where Bush had a big lead and Al Gore had no chance at all to make it up. If I'd been living in a real swing state, my vote may well have been different (and, also for the record, I registered at a web site--forget the name now--that allowed me to 'trade' my Nader vote with someone in a close state who had misgivings about lessers of evils).

In similar circumstances, I'd vote the same way again. In 2004, though, I'm going to be VERY careful to ensure that whatever my choice, first and foremost we get rid of the worst president in my lifetime--and, considering I was born during the Johnson administration (imagine--that's another Joh for Seven), that's saying a lot.