Let’s look at the record. I’m for peace and prosperity. I’m against global warming, cruelty to small, furry animals, and arson. Others may disagree, but darn it, someone’s got to show leadership at this critical juncture for our country and our world. And, my fellow American, let me make one thing perfectly clear: I’ll never lie to you.
Sorry, but I can’t help myself. This kind of talk seeps straight from the airwaves into my subconscious. This is a leap year, which means it’s a year of curious Olympic events, both hot and cold (do you really need to be alive to do well at luge?), and of curiouser packaged events in which candidates for the presidency vie for our votes. Except for 1800 and 1900, which didn’t have a February 29, the year of calendrical leap has always corresponded with the year of political lip. On endless newscasts and in debates sponsored by well-meaning folk like the League of Women Voters (not to be confused with the Luge of Women Voters), a posse of half- crazed politicians has been marinating us for months in a spittly sea of talk. They promise; they feint; they dodge; they sloganize. In 1964: All the way with LBJ (no irony intended then). In 1968: Nixon’s the one (and that he was). In 1976: Why not the best? In 1984: It’s morning again in America. Now here we go again. How about, It’s mourning in America? Or maybe, since the best couldn’t make it this time out, Why not the rest?
We are all used to staggering through this swarm of blather like ruined farmers in a cloud of locusts. But this year I don’t have the heart for it. There’s been such a spate of political people calling one another liars in public that I just ran out of credulity. Clarence Thomas versus Anita Hill. Bill Clinton versus Gennifer Flowers. Senator Brock Adams of Washington versus seven women willing to sign affidavits (personally, I’d hate to get into an argument with even one affidavit). Robert Gallo of the National Institutes of Health versus a number of people who say the discovery of the AIDS virus, like sauce béarnaise and the cult of Mickey Rourke, must be credited to the French. To live in Washington, it seems, is to live in denial.
What wouldn’t we all give to be able to sort out who’s actually telling the truth? Not by hooking people to electrodes and tubes and oscilloscopes and graphs--most of us would find it disconcerting to see a congressional hearing or a presidential debate wired up like an intensive care unit. I mean something subtler. What if we could sense the truth by studying words alone? If we could find, by analyzing plain speech, the hidden mutterings of the speaker’s heart?
