Bonfire of the Vanities

One of the best lessons of George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia (1938) is the fratricidal viciousness of the left's internal squabbles, seemingly more passionate about fighting each other than about fighting General Franco. An unforgettable vignette from Monty Python's Life of Brian parodies a similar dysfunction, with the Judean People's Front, the People's Front of Judea, and -with only one member- the Popular Front of Judea all too busy in petty internal disagreements to have any effectiveness against mighty Rome. Highbrow or lowbrow, a common thread is inescapable: allowing for exceptions and varying degrees, the political left tends to divide itself and amplify internal differences, while its opponents on the right do exactly the opposite.

To the disbelief of most observers, Silvio Berlusconi became Prime Minister of Italy for the third time a couple of weeks ago, commanding a coalition that stretched from the political center to the secessionist and xenophobic Lega Nord. The anti-Berlusconi camp, appalled that the wealthiest man in Italy, routinely indicted and prosecuted for corruption, and owner of more than half of all media outlets, was too divided to prevent Berlusconi's resounding success.

This pattern can manifest itself not only in multi-party, parliamentary democracies, but also in bipartisan, presidential ones like the United States. American progressives usually blame the corporate media, or, more abstractly, the "system" for their electoral under-performance, but sometimes, and not only when Ralph Nader shows himself, they should blame themselves. The Democratic primary is still ongoing, despite being almost mathematically clinched since the Wisconsin primary two months ago. Barack Obama, now running out the clock, would prefer to use this time to pool some of Clinton's advisers and money, campaign in Florida and Michigan, win over skeptics in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and peel off McCain's support among independents instead of courting white, working-class Democrats. Both candidates are getting scratched up and battered, more by the insufferable and exhausting length of the race than by a gaffes-obsessed media. The Democrats, who are right about the issues but are quite clumsy about process, are readying themselves to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and lose another unlosable election.

If ignorance is the cardinal sin of the right, vanity is the cardinal sin of the left. Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama's former pastor, spent the weekend on a vanity tour that could only damage the electoral prospects of the member of his church. But it is not just Wright that is vain or narcissistic. Since Obama won eleven contests in a row and emerged as the front-runner, the senator has received as much venom from allegedly liberal journalists as from conservative ones. Tavis Smiley, for example, is less than enthusiastic about Obama, partly because his views don't go far enough for his political taste, partly because Obama did not show up at his State of the Black Union event in New Orleans. In response, Bill Maher summed up the feeling of many viewers when he said: "I know, he won't do my show either, but if that's what he has to do, and it's working for him, maybe we should accept it and get over ourselves." Paul Krugman, who many expected to support the anti-war candidate, has spent most of his columns this year attacking Obama over disagreements with details of his health care reform plan. Markos Moulitsas, a strong Obama supporter, spoke in the harshest terms against Obama's decision to be interviewed by Chris Wallace in FoxNews. Obama may be the first liberal Democrat to be elected in a long, long time, but all of us have left-leaning friends that refuse to join the bandwagon because of disagreements over the candidate's policy on Israel, or a specific trade deal, to name only a few.

On a New York Times' article commenting Reverend Wright's exercise of narcissism, Alessandra Stanley closed with a quote from Chuck Todd (and a Carly Simon song): "You're so vain, I bet you think this campaign is about you." But that's all of us. It's who we are, and it's why we lose. We are so vain, we think this campaign is about us. And not "us" as in community, or country, or even the progressive movement, but "us" as individuals.