The Pornography Of Self-Revelation

By Charles Krauthammer

Biography in the service of politics is not new to America. It goes all the way back to Abe Lincoln and the log cabin and beyond. But as the Democratic Convention demonstrated, American politics is now seized -- obsessed -- with the politics of autobiography. The acceptance speeches of Bill Clinton and Al Gore, orgies of self-revelation, mark the full Oprahtization of American politics.

U.S. politicians routinely vie with each other for the Li'l Abner prize for most humble, most miserable upbringing. The Democrats in Madison Square Garden were no exception. After four days of speeches a foreign visitor could be forgiven for thinking indoor plumbing was a Reagan-era innovation.

Fine. To mine your own history is one thing. But to exploit your family is quite another. Gore brought tears to the eyes of millions with the invocation of his sister's death and his son's near fatal car accident. Clinton matched him with his father's fatal car accident and his mother's cancer. In between, a 14-minute Clinton bio had him telling the world of 12-year-old daughter Chelsea watching Dad's TV confession to "causing pain in my marriage" and then extending an intimate daughterly exoneration -- reported to millions.

It is an odd way to show one's concern for loved ones by laying out their most private tragedies for all the world to see. Of course, the point is not love or family but politics: endearing the candidate to the nation as a man of sensitivity and caring. Clinton pollster Stan Greenberg, reports the New York Times, said his polls showed that the candidates' "sense of revelation" had reduced the impression of their being "too slick and too political."

The Clinton speech was practically diagrammed. As his own spin doctors told the press, the idea was to connect biography with policy. Hence concern for Mom produces -- presto! -- national health care. Granddad's example triggers commitment to civil rights. Does anyone really believe that "if you want to know why I care so much about our children and our future, it all started with Hillary"?

This is not to say the feelings conjured up by Gore and Clinton were invented. There is no doubt how much Gore suffered for his son. And one can only imagine Clinton's closeness to his mother. The cynicism lies not in counterfeiting a feeling but in packaging a genuine feeling into a neat anecdote contoured for political effect.

Gore, for example, went so far as to liken America today to his son lying lifeless in his father's arms with "the empty stare of death . . . waiting for a second breath of life." Moving briskly from the pathetic to the political, Gore went on, "Our democracy is lying in the gutter, waiting for us to give it a second breath of life."

Shameful nonsense. Nonsense because no one can possibly look at America today and genuinely see a people, like little Albert, "limp and still, without breath or pulse." Shameful because the analogy is meant to exploit our sympathy for father Gore's pain to convince us that candidate Gore harbors equally deep feelings for the health of America. If he does, he is a lousy father. If he does not, he is a dissimulating politician.

Of course, Democrats do not have a monopoly on this sort of bathetic exploitation of family tragedy. In the 1988 campaign, George Bush made a point of referring to the lingering death of one of his daughters. Two weeks ago, fending off hecklers, he did it again. Conjuring up the memory of bereavement is a useful way to humanize one's image. It says, Yes, I too -- I of Andover and Yale, I of the two middle names -- have suffered.

Nor is the politics of biography unique to the U.S. Just before the British election, the Conservatives broadcast a 10-minute TV commercial that consisted almost entirely of John Major talking of his past as he rode through the working-class neighborhoods and passed the modest homes in which he grew up. Brilliantly done, but still the same stuff.

And it works. Major won. In Madison Square Garden, tears flowed. Across the country, the Clinton-Gore polls shot up. Why does it work? The obvious answer is that it appeals to a television audience Oprah-trained to demand of its celebrities a psychic striptease.

But there is a less obvious answer. Beneath the tears, even the most moved audience feels a bit of a wince. We know how debasing it must be to reveal oneself and expose one's family in the pursuit of power. We know that to use family is not to embrace it but, at the deepest level, to renounce it. What the candidate is really saying is this: "To be your President, I must prove that I am totally devoted to you the people and to my own ambition. To demonstrate that devotion, I submit to all the ritual self-denials our political system has evolved: giving up my private life, opening my finances, forgoing all normal human contact and -- the final sacrifice -- betraying the most private pains, the deepest secrets of my most loved ones."

Exposing oneself and exploiting one's family are, in the end, simply other forms of debasement that a modern democratic public now demands before it is prepared to confer high office on anyone. Like the 5 a.m. factory-gate handshake and the other absurd ordeals that we demand of our candidates, it is a kind of revenge of republicanism. We say to our candidates, You want to be exalted over us? First, some humble pie. You want Hail to the Chief played whenever you enter a room? First, you will have to suffer. You want to be President? First, betray your family.

And they do.