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ess-than-flattering revelations about Bush's inner circle. The thundering hoofbeats of public opinion have got the attention of Republican legislators, who flocked to the banner of corporate reform as if they hadn't been opposing such invasions of laissez faire most of their lives. In recent weeks, Republican Senators suddenly found it seemly to vote unanimously for a reform bill on accountancy practices - a bill they had just been opposing, and that Bush now signed with scarcely a sign of embarrassment. On its face, the scandalous news about corporate malfeasance was a tremendous gift to the Democrats. Al Gore seemed to think so, breaking a long political silence with a New York Times opinion piece last week in full-throated populist mode, taking issue with his recent vice-presidential running mate, Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, who had been heard to opine that Gore had run too far to the Left in 2000.
Not all Democrats were pleased with Gore's return, and among the conspicuously displeased was Lieberman himself, a long-time defender of the accounting industry - a position harder to sustain than it used to be. Lieberman has been saying that too much reform was as bad as too little and that further reforms in the ways stock options are treated would hurt little guys. This Republican-style protectiveness loses some of its heart-rending appeal when you realize that stock options are almost exclusively benefits for the wealthiest.
On foreign policy, the Democrats remain squeamish, as if they are not so troubled to be out of power. With the interesting exception of Senator John Kerry, who is running for the presidential nomination from Massachusetts, an unlikely launch spot these days, they do not thunder against oil dependency. They do not follow Bill Clinton's idealistic appeal for a sort of Marshall Plan to dry up the swamps of terrorism. They don't like Bush's unilateralism but they don't much feel like denouncing it either. On the shape of post-Taliban Afghanistan, they do not stick their necks out. On Israel-Palestine, ditto. As for Iraq, in the name of what principle can they oppose Bush's evident intention to go to war? The Democrat-led Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings on Iraq the week before last, but softly.
Tactically obsessed, they did not deeply question the purposes of an Iraq war, did not hear from witnesses who either oppose war on principle or, for that matter, support it because they think it would revolutionize the Arab world in a revolutionary-democratic direction. In short, wishing the question of war would go away, they are hedging their bets. As New Yorker writer Hendrik Hertzberg put it: 'In Washington, one side wants war; the other wants debate about war.' The opposition, if that is the right word for it in Washington, 'is not so much anti-war as maybe war'.
Here wobbles America, then, plutocracy rampant, 11 months into shadowy war, economically troubled, suspicious of allies, suspected by allies, hated - and American politics remains becalmed and unready. A lot of weak wills wait for events to take the initiative they're not taking.
Todd Gitlin is Professor of Journalism and Sociology at Columbia University. His latest book is Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives.
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