Q&A

Follow the money

by Ben Geman

Texan Jim Hightower, the former state agriculture commissioner turned populist radio voice and writer, bears no in-state loyalty to George W. Bush. His recent book If the Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates (HarperCollins) takes aim at the corrupting influence of big money on Bush, Al Gore, and other politicians. He spoke recently with the Phoenix.

Q: What are some disappointing things about Bush that we may not have heard in Massachusetts?

A: Start with all these claims about his being such a terrific governor. He keeps saying, If you want to know what kind of president I'll be, come to Texas and look what I did there. I certainly hope people will do that, because we rank number one in children without health insurance, number one in air pollution, number one in water pollution.

Let's say it for what it is. As governor, he has been another corporate wet dream. You put the money in through his campaign, and you get policy and subsidies paid back to you.

Q: Let's pick on Al Gore here. What are their similarities?

A: They are both drinking and eating at the same money trough. There's a list [released] just a couple of weeks ago of 66 major corporations that have put at least $50,000 into both the Bush and the Gore campaigns. Al Gore is just like Bill Clinton, another corporate Democrat who is, in my view, to a real Democrat what near beer is to beer. He is the guy who was telling Clinton, Don't even try and push to get environmental and labor standards into NAFTA.

Q: You note in your book that the 2000 election could have been a chance for a national referendum on several issues.

A: We are a nation at a breaking point on so many issues, but most fundamentally . . . there is no longer a sense that we are all in this together. This is the social glue that holds us together, the notion of the common good. Yet both the Republicans and the Democrats side with the elite interests of, at best, the upper 20 percent of our economy, of our people, but more realistically the upper five percent . . . through policies that allow them to continue to separate their good fortunes from the well-being of the majority of the country. The Federal Reserve figures show that eight of 10 Americans have not enjoyed this prosperity. They have seen their incomes stay flat or go down.

Q: If that's the case, then there should be a natural constituency out there for a party that does speak to these needs.

A: We are going to see it, and it is going to come in a number of forms, most significantly in Ralph Nader's run on the Green Party ticket. Ralph is really putting a campaign together this time.

If he gets in the debates, which he is angling to do, then this becomes an entirely different race, particularly if you have Pat Buchanan and Nader along with Gore and Bush. This is a whole different animal. They are going to have to talk about issues that they hope to avoid.

Jim Hightower will speak at several local events this Saturday, April 8, beginning with the Toxics Action Center's annual conference at Northeastern University (call 617-292-4821). He'll also be at United for a Fair Economy's Economic Justice Revival Meeting, which begins at 4 p.m. at the Church of the Covenant, on the corner of Newbury and Berkeley Streets (call 617-423-2148), and at the annual dinner of Citizens for Participation in Political Action, which begins at 7 p.m. at the Howard Johnson in Cambridge (tickets $40; call 617-426-3040).