Word: hartfulness
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...monetary conference to bring currency exchange rates back into line, export-promotion measures, and new penalties against blatantly unfair practices by American trading partners, but no outright protectionism. If these and other proposals seem designed to rub against the grain of a largely contented electorate, that is no accident. Hart concedes that "there has to be a unifying theme" to his ideas, and he is currently pushing the slogan of a "true patriotism" that requires a "belief in deferred gratification, not materialism." Those are not exactly barn-burning appeals, as Hart acknowledges, but then, in his words...
...could be wide open in both parties. On the Democratic side, New York Governor Mario Cuomo, Senators Joseph Biden of Delaware, Bill Bradley of New Jersey and Dale Bumpers of Arkansas, Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt and former Virginia Governor Charles Robb are all potential rivals. None can yet match Hart's name recognition, but for that very reason any of them could become what Hart was in 1984 and cannot be again: an exciting new face. As one political expert notes, the fact that Hart is well known is his biggest advantage, but also his biggest disadvantage. In any case...
After a respite of barely a year, with the banality of the refrain still ringing in the ear, "the politics of the future" is back. When Gary Hart announced a fortnight ago that he would retire from the Senate (to run, he all but admitted, for the presidency in 1988), he couldn't lay off the word. In a four-page statement, he reached for it eight times. In 1984 he had "pointed our party toward the future." For '88, he pledges "to help move our party and our country into the future." Why? Because even now "we are drifting...
This kind of talk is rhetorical emptiness at its most pristine. Why does Hart do it? It's not as if he has nothing to say. He has a host of important ideas. Whether or not they are new is irrelevant. A good idea is a good idea: military reform, national service, a notion of sacrificial patriotism, as opposed to the superficial I-Love-Miss-Liberty kind now in vogue. (Though, unfortunately, even here Hart cannot resist defining patriotism as "more than slogans celebrating past achievements. It's an opportunity to draw a blueprint for our future...
This makes Hart a reformist liberal, a venerable, once honorable political label. Admittedly both ends of the term have poor p.r. value nowadays. Perhaps he does need a better handle. But what is the pull of the future? It sounds good--for about ten minutes. Even in 1984, voters quickly grew cynical about it and its companion, "new ideas...