Progressive Eclipse - Chapter Nine
January 1999
WE MET AT the start of a mind-boggling week.
President Bill Clinton was two days from launching a new round of Iraq bombings
– on the eve of his own impeachment. As Vermont’s sole representative in the US
House, Bernie Sanders had already made up his mind about Clinton: yes to
censure, no to removal from office or resignation. But he was equivocating on
the subject of intervention.
A critic of high defense spending who had voted against the
first Gulf war, Sanders nevertheless thought that military action was sometimes
appropriate, in Yugoslavia or to oust a dictator like Saddam Hussein. “I do not
want to see a man like this develop biological or chemical weapons,” he
explained. “So, it’s not an easy situation.”
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| President Clinton's impeachment photo op; Bernie Sanders stands behind Hillary Clinton |
The real trouble wasn’t militarism. he asserted; it was education
and public opinion. Unlike the broad opposition that emerged to the Vietnam
War, Sanders explained, about “80 percent of the American people” were currently
willing to support just about any decision to use force. “That makes it
difficult for people in Congress to oppose it,” even though “the
tactic often backfires.”
More sobering, he didn’t expect that situation to change in
the near future, “until tens of millions of people say no.” And he didn’t think
most peace activists were on the right track. “Winning credibility is the first
step to building a broad-based movement,” he counseled, and the way to do that
is to take on bread and butter issues. “I don’t think you can just look at the
issue of war and peace,” Sanders said. “People have got to know you are on
their side.”
“I have long been concerned that some ‘progressive
activists’ do not stand up and fight effectively or pay enough attention to the
needs of ordinary Americans,” he explained. “Right now, one of the issues I am
terribly concerned about is what is being proposed for social security, which I
think would be a disaster. It affects senior citizens today. It affects future
generations. How much discussion is there of that issue among activists and
intellectuals, who should understand it? I’ve heard very little.”
Before arriving in Congress, Sanders himself had little idea
of how the legislative branch really operated. The same was true during his
early days as Burlington mayor, when he learned hard lessons about dealing with
an unsympathetic city council and entrenched bureaucracy. Being a congressman
change his perspective; years later, he knew how the game was played. But it
still galled him that “what we read in the textbooks about how a bill becomes a
law just ain’t the case.”
As an example he pointed to conference committees, which are
supposed to iron out legislative differences. “How many people know that when
you have the House and Senate agreeing on a position, the ten people in that
room can junk it completely – even when there is agreement?”
It was the kind of rhetorical question that peppered his
speech, this one conveying an angry belief that the public is kept in the dark
about routine abuses of power and corruption of democratic processes. “I get
outraged at both the television and newspapers about their refusal to educate
people about how the process works,” he complained.
A key lesson of his early years in Congress was that winning
often involved working with people whose stands on other issues you abhorred.
In fact, much of his legislative success came through forging deals with
strange ideological bedfellows. An amendment to bar spending in support of
defense contractor mergers, for example, was pushed through with the aid of
Chris Smith, a prominent opponent of abortion. John Kasich, whose views of
welfare, the minimum wage and foreign policy could hardly be more divergent
from Sanders’, helped him phase out risk insurance for foreign investments. And
a “left-right coalition” led by Sanders helped to derail “fast track”
legislation on international agreements pushed by Bill Clinton.
Now at the mid-point of his US House career, Sanders had
become skeptical about the urge to “moralize and be virtuous and not talk to
anybody.” While acknowledging that it felt odd at times having
ultra-conservatives as political allies, “the job is to pass legislation– and I
say that in a positive sense – so you seize the opportunity to make things
happen."
Still, closer to his heart was another role – provocateur.
“I respect people who are in the political process,” he put it with a smile. He
also obviously enjoyed flushing out political elites. “Issues affecting
billions of people with the world not knowing what’s going on,” he complained.
“I think, as a result of the role I and other have played, there may be more
transparency. But obviously the issue goes beyond that.”
We were getting to the root of his worldview: international
financial groups protecting the interests of speculators and banks, at the
expense of the poor and working people behind a veil of secrecy. Governments
reduced to the status of figureheads under international capitalist management.
Both major political parties kowtowing to big money flaks. Media myopia fueling
public ignorance. And himself, a truth-teller whose message changes history.
His task, Sanders had long ago decided, was to raise
political consciousness and expose the real agendas of the powerful.
Yet when I asked whether he would consider a run for
president he laughed. It would be fun, he admitted, and predicted that “we’d
get a good response.” At that point, however, before his election to the
Senate, the calculation was that staying in Congress gave him more influence
than running an “educational” campaign.
Sanders said he considered it “imperative that people keep
working on what is a very difficult task; that is, creating a third party in
America.” But he had no plans to help develop one, in Vermont or elsewhere. “I
am very much preoccupied and work very hard being Vermont’s congressman,” he
pointed out, deflecting such a responsibility with customary bluntness: “I am
not going to play an active role in building a third party.”
This sounded like a contradiction, but also reflected his
experience and political predicament. He endorsed the idea of building a third
party – in principle. But he had maintained an arms-length relationship with
political parties since his races in the late 1970s. He seemed sincere when
expressing the hope that the Progressive organization he’d helped to build
would expand beyond Burlington – and he sometimes endorsed Progressive
candidates. But he also backed Democrats, and sometimes discouraged
Progressives from running, while generally avoiding involvement in
party-building – especially since that could lead to calls to support
Progressive candidates against Democrats.
Over time Sanders had made peace with the Democratic
leadership. And he had never been embarrassed about playing to win. After all,
he was making history, as he pointed out more than once. If the choice was
between a “virtuous protest” and “popular appeal” he naturally went with the
path to success – as long as it didn’t violate any core beliefs.
Meanwhile, he could justifiably claim that there were “not
very many members of Congress who hold my views. The President does not hold my
views. The corporate media does not hold my views. That is the reality I have
to deal with every single day.” His job, as he had defined it, was to
understand the constraints of politics and “do the best you can with the powers
you have. You don’t just stand on a street corner giving a speech.”
The remark sounded almost ironic. After all, giving a speech
– pretty much the same one – is what Sanders does best. Over the years it had
already taken him from third party obscurity to the most private club in the
world. And after the 2008 financial meltdown and election of Barack Obama, it
was only a matter of time until his pungent mix of middle-class outrage and
“flexible” populism went from C-SPAN to prime time.
NEXT: The
Lockheed Conundrum
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