On January 18th 1990 the Mayor of Washington DC, Marion Barry,
was caught, red-handed, smoking crack cocaine with a prostitute
in the city’s Vista Hotel. With the whole incident caught on camera
– only to be played and replayed relentlessly on television – Barry
would produce the most memorable quote of his career to the
world: “I’m damned…The bitch set me up.” Gary Younge in New York.
The Politics
of Dan Dandy
or most people that would have been the end
of their career; let alone their marriage and
their desire to show their face in respectable
society. Not Barry. His six month stretch in jail for
possession came and went. He was released in
1991. In 1992 he was elected to the City Council.
By 1994 he was re-elected Mayor.
F
A poor role model? Certainly. A terrible person?
Probably. But boy, what chutzpah. Whatever
happened to characters in mainstream politics? Not
‘character’, – the issue of whether you are tough,
religious, married and usually rich enough to pay
people to market you as they would a c an of beans.
But characters, – the incorrigible dandies and
irresistible deadbeats. People whose personal,
emotional and sexual dramas are so completely and
evidently entwined with their political ambition that
it is impossible to tell them apart.
‘Character’ is where the dull reside. It feeds the
need for someone tepid, insipid, conformist and
mediocre. The aim is not to find someone who will
excite but to ensure you have someone who will not
offend. In flight from human frailty, those who sell
character seek out people who have never made a
mistake because they have never really lived. All
exceptions including United States president George
Bush – a former alcoholic and marijuana smoker –
are willingly accepted. They just show the power of
money and connections to erase memory and
reinvent image.
True characters, on the other hand, are vivid human
personalities with a penchant for politics. As
politicians they fill the public’s need for someone
exciting, unpredictable, ostentatious and idiosyncratic.
Their aim is not necessarily to help the public and
may well be to help themselves. But they wear their
human frailties on their sleeves like badges of
honour.
It is worth making it clear at this point that whether
a politician is a great character has little or no bearing
on whether they will make a great politician. Indeed
usually they don’t. Marion Barry was a total disaster