Daniel ThwaitesTHE WHOLE world is getting an unprecedented view of the American electoral system, and it isn't pretty to look at. Those locals who until recently held it out as the ultimate object of all our national aspirations have seen their argument decisively blown out of the water. Good.
Most people I have spoken to are squarely behind Al Gore. I am too. Still, some of Gore's history could raise one's eyebrows. Mind you, Boy George Bush has an even worse history. Meanwhile, the US election is chugging along like the little train that could. So let us peek at some of the inputs that went into the heavyweight candidate that Jamaicans like most.
All of the information is quite readily available in the excellent book "The Buying of the President 2000" by Charles Lewis of the Centre for Public Integrity. And with due respect to Omar, all the money figures mentioned herein are converted into Jamaican dollars. If you have a stable exchange rate, why not use it?
Most people think of Boy George the Shrub as the representative of Big Oil and of Al Gore as the dyed in the wool environmentalist, but in fact, Gore has an interesting history with the Oil fellows as well. In 1995 Gore presented to Clinton, as part of his "reinventing government" programme, a plan to auction off oil-rich publicly owned land.
Some of the land has an interesting history. It had been set aside as Navy reserves in 1912, but the oil industry always saw it as a prize. In 1922, Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall accepted a huge bribe from some oil men for secret leases to drill on two fields, the Teapot Dome field out Casper, Wyoming, and the Elk Hills field in Bakersfield, California. The ensuing Teapot Dome scandal saw Fall go to prison for the deal with Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Company (later Atlantic Richfield Company, or ARCO).
In 1973, Nixon took a stab at opening up the Elk Hills oil field. Reagan tried in '84, '86 and '87. These men failed to get the job done; Gore did by "reinventing government".
On October 6, 1997 the US Energy Department sold Elk Hills reserve to Occidental Petroleum Corporation. Occidental Petroleum was built by a man called Armand Hammer, who was a steady corporate sponsor of Al Gore's father, Senator Al Gore Sr. After Al Sr. left the Senate, he settled into a job from Hammer where he received $22.5 million per annum. By 1992, the elder Gore owned over $30 million worth of Occidental stock.
Hammer and Gore Sr. were always close. Even while in the Senate Gore Sr. was on the payroll of a cattle farm Hammer had in New Jersey. Hammer was an interesting guy - he was once called "the Godfather of American corporate corruption" - at once a ruthless capitalist and scheming communist. He was certainly not the sort of fellow who should have had a Senator on his payroll. He laundered funds for the Communist Party of Russia in the United States, recruited Soviet spies into the US government, and through graft and fraud made a steady stream of donations to Stalin's government.
Gore Jr. was already in the House of Representatives when it was announced that zinc ore had been discovered on Gore land in Smith County, Tennessee. Hammer generously bought it for $7.2 million, yet later kindly restored it to the Gores, with Hammer's company paying royalties for the rights to mine the land. Every year since then Al Gore has received a cheque in the mail for about a cool million based on this deal. Hammer never did actually mine the land.
The Gore's hosted Hammer at Reagan's 1984 inauguration and at Bush's 1988 one. The close relationship with Hammer continued until his death, and continues with his company, Occidental. Since 1992 when Gore became part of the Clinton's campaign for the White House, Occidental has given well over $20 million in soft money to the Democrats. Occidental's current Chairman, Ray Irani, slept in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House two days before handing out $4.5 million to the Democratic National Committee.
Again, in terms of infractions of decency, the Republicans methodically outdo the Democrats. And further, there can be little doubt that Al Gore is the better man for the job. But politicians are a mixture of idealism, practicality, and ambition. Alas, they have to be just that.
Daniel Thwaites is involved in teaching and writing.
