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Modernists and hinterland folk Tight election race can be described as clever people facing down not-so-clever people SEATTLE - Up here, in the northwest corner of the continent, there has been a great deal of shoutin' and fightin' and insultin' taking place. This week had the Pacific Northwest under siege by the Gore and Bush campaigns. The 18 electoral college votes that Washington and Oregon hold in their gift have become so sought after, so important, they may throw this tight presidential election either way. The fact they're even in play -- Washington has not voted Republican since 1980 -- is amazing. More amazing is that in each very liberal state, the candidates are neck-and- neck. Little wonder Green party officials in Washington are begging their supporters to throw their weight behind Al Gore. Polls show Ralph Nader is attracting 7% of voters in Washington and an astonishing 10% in Oregon. All advertising other than political has been suspended. The ads are so vulgar and deliberate in their fear-mongering they are impossible to watch. On a visit this week, Gore shouted about fightin' for ya at the Portland airport and fled for an appearance on Jay Leno. George W. Bush, who had appeared on Leno the night before, in his characteristic leisurely way, wandered up from a church group in San Jose, lunched in Portland, and settled down in Seattle for the evening, promising to uphold the honour of the office, as he does every time he speaks. Code for "I will not have sex with an intern." Now if cities had IQs, Seattle's would be in shouting distance of genius. This sleek modern city, positioned with the grace of Vancouver, but much, much richer, beckons us from the future. Its architecture is superb. Its many public spaces are spectacular. Its citizens have saved a few jewels from the late 19th and early 20th century, and every suburb is filled with houses pretty and original enough to make an esthete weep with joy. But it's the people who are the most impressive. Seattle is filled with cutting-edge, wealthy modernists, who flock to its dark paneled bars and old- fashioned clubs retooled for the hip, and to restrained, achingly cool restaurants like Ocean and Earth, small subtle letters on an Yves Klein blue board and written in a stepped- on red. Everyone in Seattle knows everything. Everyone is young and thin and very, very cool. Everyone is also rich. There are more millionaires under 40 here than in any other city in the world. Pound for pound there are more charities and foundations than even in Manhattan. Seattle has its own flocks of angels of mercy: sleek blondes and smart young men who retired at 40 and spend their days saving the world from the front seat of a top-of-the-line Beemer or Range Rover. The two daily broadsheets, The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post- Intelligencer could be described as very liberal, and over-the-top liberal. So why on earth did The Seattle Times, the newspaper of record, endorse George W. Bush? Mindy Cameron is still anguished. The editorial page editor, her short, white hair styled in almost a brush cut, draped in designer black, voted not to endorse, and has, since then, written column after column in favour of Gore, mostly along the lines of the lesser of two evils. I ask her what happened. "The prevailing sentiment among the 12 members of the editorial board was that Gore could not be trusted. His integrity was in doubt. His honesty was in doubt. He didn't distance himself from Clinton in the Lewinsky matter," she said. "Our paper was strongly critical of Clinton's behaviour during that time. We called for his resignation. And we see the same pattern of dishonesty with Gore." The Times made up for this endorsement by endorsing every other liberal candidate running for office -- its only other exception was Republican Jennifer Dunn who is running for senator -- but the damage had been done. The secret was out. On the other side of the bay, reaching toward the mountains, there is another section of the population, people who the modernists would seek to control, or at least restrain. These hinterland folk, who were lining up at the Bellevue Community College to see Dubya, are another breed entirely. The women have large bottoms and impressive racks, and big, loud laughs and open faces, and lots of gold jewellery from Kmart. The men, many retired military, have suspicious eyes and bloated faces. They had fought unquestioningly (and without calculation) for their country, then came home to drive the long-distance trucks and put food on the table for their families, every single day for 40 years. These are the people, who when they finally get some money, display unrestrained appetites for not-tasteful stuff. These are the people, who, basically, want the government to get the hell out of their lives. They were -- what's that phrase? Oh yeah. Working Families. Now this is stupid week in the campaign, so everything is either a lie or an exaggeration. But the Republican brass was jubilant: 1980 was cited over and over again. They can feel a landslide, they say, like 1980, when Ronald Reagan swept Jimmy Carter out of office and the national press missed the whole darn thing. Yep, the energy is good, very good, better than ever before. The Republican candidate for governor, John Carlson, stood up and claimed that in the last seven months, his team has found more donors and fielded more volunteers than Democratic incumbent Gary Locke had in five years. There was a smattering of country-club Republicans in Dubya's crowd, but everyone else was working or middle class. This election race, tight as it is, could pretty much be described as one group of clever people facing down another group of perhaps not-so-clever people, who fear the first group, as much as the modernists fear them, and who do not want to be managed by a bunch of absentee technocrats who spend their days thinking up ways to socially engineer them into black-clad modernists, whose kids listen to Eminem, dress in full-length black leather trench coats and pack shotguns. Dubya with his folksy inadequacy and his checkered past is their man. He is just one man, not five or six, like Gore. Their priorities are similar. As Dubya says every time he hits a crowd like Bellevue Community's, his priorities are faith, family and the U.S.A., in that order. And let's make no mistake. Ninety percent of the rest of the world (not the black-clad modernists in any country) want to live like these large-bottomed people, with the open, smooth, happy faces. In clean, new houses, with schools that teach values, where faith is important, and the toll-booth on the way to the middle is ungated and the future is rosy. Dubya is their man. They love him. If British writer Rebecca West is to be believed that the job of the intellectual is to teach the rest of us how to adapt to change, it must be said in the United States the intellectual classes have ignored half their students. Their putative pupils want the 1950s back again and, darn it, they see that it's within their reach.

© 2004 Elizabeth Nickson The material at this website is available only for personal non-commercial purposes, and it may not be reproduced without permission.