Yankee Hype Thrives In British Politics

I rushed to England. Tony Blair needed me. He only had a few days left to prove he was up to it.

So many wobbly men, as Margaret Thatcher might say, so little time.

I could help. I was, after all, an American with valuable insights into how our politicians had effectively drained presidential campaigns of substance, replacing ideology with biography and principles with focus groups.

The man who would be prime minister was trying to pull off an unusual trick, cloning himself from a clone. Tony Blair had aped Bill Clinton, who had aped anything and everything that worked.

The candidate for New Labor, the 43-year-old Oxford-educated lawyer with the impressive lawyer wife, has saxophones and a rock anthem and TV stars at rallies, rapid response in the imitation War Room and a campaign bus with the banner, “Into the Future.” For extra verisimilitude, Stan Greenberg, President Clinton’s old pollster who is now working with Blair, was on the scene.

It made me proud to be a Yank, really. At least we have the original opportunist. Tony Blair can switch positions and drag out all the Stephanopouli and technocrats and investment brokers he wants. Our president was the first to use the word “Internet” in an inaugural address and “Burger King” in a State of the Union.

Only a decade ago, it was the Democrat Joe Biden who was pilfering some passionate rhetoric from the Labor leader Neil Kinnock. Now Labor pilfers banalities about community, responsibility and opportunity from the Democrats. That’s progress.

The gentlemanly Brits are working hard to be as slick, negative and superficial as we are. Labor’s big announcement this week was that Blair would be seen in new posters with a purple (royal) background instead of traditional (Bolshevik) red.

The Blair team has learned the dangers of self-consciously copying Clinton, at least with American reporters disillusioned with the president. It made headlines here when Joe Klein wrote in The New Yorker, edited by the Blair supporter Tina Brown, that the candidate had “magisterial vacuity” and came across as “an anxious sales clerk peddling toaster ovens.”

Privately, his aides grump that unlike Clinton, Blair does not need to be loved and is not ruled by his appetites. Indeed, some reporters said that with his strong Christian background and talk about saving the soul of the nation, he came across more like Jimmy Carter.

With Brits getting jittery about the European Union, Blair tried to show he could be a strong leader. Apparently co-opting the Tory bulldog for an ad was not enough. So Tuesday, when he called John Major weak, he scrunched up his face in a stern look that made him resemble Alfred E. Neuman’s father and punched words for emphasis.

Blair also tried to convince critics that, just because he thinks it is okay to have aspirations, that does not mean he is devoid of convictions.

At a rally last night here in the town of Stevenage, a middle-class community north of London, Blair offered a spirited argument that he was not turning his back on traditional Labor concerns.

“If we had 60 million pounds to spend, we would not be spending it on a royal yacht while people were lying in hospital beds,” he said. “We have elderly gentlemen, hovering between life and death, sitting in the House of Lords making decisions for us. We do not need hereditary peers.”

He said ambition must be combined with compassion. “For me, New Labor is not some public relations gimmick, or some salesman’s patter,” he said. “I am sort of one man, if you like, from the rock and roll generation, the Beatles, color TV, all the rest of it, that’s where I come from. My beliefs are simple. Women should be able to go out to work if they want or to stay home if they want to. Women and men should have equality. I abhor and loathe racism in all its forms. I believe in a society where people’s sexuality is up to them. I also believe that those who abuse, hassle and cause violence to the elderly and the vulnerable deserve to be punished. It doesn’t matter where people came from. It’s what they are that counts.”

Afterward a Blair staffer asked the reporters on the bus, hopefully, if they had put the word “passion” high up in their stories.

Yes, replied a tabloid reporter dryly, “My Night of Passion With Tony Blair.”

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