PERSPECTIVErn >rnThe Evil of Banalityrnby Thomas Flemingrn” I he banality of evil” is one of those vapid and mislead-rnX ing phrases that can churn up a tidal wave in a mudrnpuddle, hi a trivial sense, Nazi bureaucrats were banal enough,rnbut there was a heroic dimension to the evil of Hitler andrnGoering, a delirious striving toward the superhuman that commandsrnour attention, if not respect. Hitler and Stalin were bothrnbigger men than Roosevelt and therefore capable of more deliberaternevil. (God save us from big men.) It has been somerntime since democratic politics called forth heroism, and everyrnfour years the American electorate could hear, if they were listening,rnthe crank of the ratchet lowering the human level ofrnAmerican politicians by a notch or two.rnWhat could have been more banal than the RepublicanrnConvention? The possibility of going to San Diego had neverrnentered my mind, and watching it on television I experiencedrnDante’s horror on first entering hell, but in my case the miseryrnwas all in the eye of the beholder. The real star of the proceedingsrnwas television itself, reducing everyone on both sides of thernscreen to two dimensions of pointilliste abstraction. If any ofrnthese lost souls had ever had a life, it was impossible to tell, nowrnthat they had reduced themselves to visual cliches: the perkinessrnof little Susie Molinari; the forward-pass progressivism ofrnJack Kemp, allegedly one of the first professional quarterbacksrnto have all his plays called from the bench (one of those storiesrnwhich, even if false, was not invented by chance); the unctuousrncondescension of Colin Powell declaring his conviction thatrnwomen had a right to kill their children and asking Republicansrnto tolerate diversity on this point—”Can’t wc all just getrnalong?” Then there was the stirring patriotism of the nominee,rntelling us that newly arrived immigrants have the same right tornthe American dream as descendants of the Founders. If thisrnmeans anything (highly unlikely as it is). Senator Dole wouldrnseem to have come around to Thurgood Marshall’s opinionrnthat aliens have the same rights as citizens. Later, addressing arnmeeting of black journalists, Dole repudiated the plank in thernRepublican platform denying welfare privileges to aliens. Sornmuch for the conservative strategy of winning the platform.rn”Here we go again . . . I’ll be her fool again, one more time.”rnThe Republican Convention combined the spontaneity of arnmeeting chaired by Ross Perot with the excitement of a riggedrngame show on a summer rerun. Much of the credit goes tornMichael Deaver, the king of the influence peddlers and authorrnof the defining apothegm of the Reagan years: “What I didrnmay have been unethical, but it was not illegal.” It was illegal,rnas it turned out, but criminal lobbying is a badge of honor in arnparty that nominates the Senator from Archer Daniels Midland,rnthe benefactor of Gallo wineries, the defender of thernKoch family from documented charges that they were scammingrnoil from reservation Indians, the friend of any downtroddenrncapitalist with a tax problem, the Senator for Sale (in the titlernof a recent book) who has sold (perhaps we should sayrn”loaned”) his vote so often that he cannot keep his commitmentsrnstraight.rnThe high point of the convention was Liddy Dole goingrndown into the audience like Oral Roberts about to heal the afflictedrn—which would seem to include a majority of the previousrnspeakers. Lapsing into a Bogart pose (I watched the conventionrnonly between commercials), I thought, “You’re good.rnReally good.” It was nice, after the parade of freaks and feebes,rnto sec a real woman for a change and the nearest thing to a manrnin the Republican leadership. Her touching account of herrnhusband’s injuries could almost make us forget that it was thernfirst wife he dumped and not the trophy wife he picked up whorntook care of him after the war.rnIf center stage at the GOP convention was occupied by thernlame, the halt, and the blind, the Democrats were determinedrn8/CHRONICLESrnrnrn