ME AND MY SHADOWS:

Convention Notes From A Recovering Republican

It's true, I haven't been a reliable Republican. For quite some time now,
my newspaper columns have been peppered with shots at George W. and other
GOP big-wigs. I've even taken to calling myself a "recovering Republican."
But while I knew that some of my Grand Old Party pals were downright irked
with me, I never thought I'd end up being persona non grata at next week's
Republican National Convention.

Let me explain.

It was all Betty Currie's fault.

I'm kidding, of course.

Actually, I was at a friend's birthday party in Los Angeles back in May
when I started chatting with Brad Freeman--a good buddya of Dubya and also
his campaign's powerful California state finance chairman.

After bemoaning the fact that the RNC had already locked up all the
available real estate in Philadelphia for convention week, I asked Brad if
he could do me a small favor and help me land a decent hotel reservation.
"No problem, Arianna," he answered graciously. "Anything you want."

Well, as it turns out, not quite anything.

A month later, I was still roomless--and hadn't heard one word from Brad.
When I gave him a call to check on things, he began to tap dance faster
than Savion Glover. "Let me see what I can do," was the gist of his
time-step. After another few weeks of silence, Brad and I happened to find
ourselves co-hosting a book party for a friend.

Cornered as he was--in his own house, no less--he finally came clean.
"Austin," he told me, "knows about your plans.

I should have put your room under my name." My first thought was, why would
a perpetually horny fictional spy care about my room search?

Then I realized that he meant Austin, Texas, not Austin Powers, and that my
"plans" referred to the Shadow Conventions that will parallel the party
fetes in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. "There's just nothing they'll any
longer let me do for you," he told me.

Apparently, the Republican nomenklatura is no longer amused by me. Well,
you know what, guys? The feeling is mutual.

As a GOP outcast (now I know how those people on Survivor feel when they
get voted off the island), I guess I won't be attending the convention's
opening-night gala on the newly renovated waterfront in Camden--just across
the Delaware River from Philadelphia. Celebrating conventioneers will be
treated to fireworks, a laser show and a parade of lighted boats.

But they probably won't be seeing much of the rest of Camden--the
fifth-poorest city in America. While in Philadelphia a couple of weeks ago,
I was given a tour of these decidedly not-newly-renovated parts of Camden
by its former mayor, Randy Primas. Much of it seemed like a Third World
country--filled with crumbling neighborhoods and dilapidated buildings.

Pick any criterion for a troubled community--plummeting graduation rates,
skyrocketing teen pregnancies, rampant drug use--and Camden fits the bill.

Yet that is where the RNC has decided to hold its welcoming ceremony.

And it will no doubt do so without even a nod to the ugly reality behind
the opulent front.

That unthinking gesture is both a symbol of why I'm in Republican rehab and
the raison d'90tre for the Shadow Conventions. In fact, one of the things
we'll be doing at the GOP shadow is making a van available to the media for
a guided tour of the "other Camden."

In his first speech as Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich said there was
greater "moral urgency" in "coming to grips with what's happening to the
poorest Americans" than in balancing the budget.

But it didn't take long to recognize that this was only empty rhetoric.

Becoming disillusioned with the Republicans didn't mean falling into the
arms of the Democrats--not with their $26.5 million fundraising barbecues
and their "everything must go, even our most sacred priorities" fire sale
of public policy.

Sadly, both parties are in deep--but well-funded--denial about the state of
modern America. Their addiction to ever greater doses of campaign cash
clouds their ability to discern the true crises of the society they claim
to lead. And while both Republicans and Democrats pay focus-group-tested
lip service to campaign finance reform, they collude and conspire not only
to defend the corrupt status quo but to break new records in gobbling up
hard money, soft money, PAC payoffs and the spirit of our democracy.

Even as less than 1 percent of the population, the very wealthiest among
us, now provide nearly all campaign contributions, our mainstream
politicians continue to deny that a leveraged buyout of our political
system is under way. The truth is that our representative Republic is being
supplanted by a permanent and unaccountable government of powerful special
interests.

We all know this is true. Our politicians know it too. But mention it to
them, and it is as if you've committed some horrible breach of
etiquette--sort of like not clapping politely for the band as the Titanic
goes down.

The indisputable fact that America has become two nations is brought home
every day that politicians celebrate our unprecedented prosperity while one
in four children live below the poverty line and people with full-time jobs
sleep on buses because of the lack of affordable housing.

And it is no less obvious every day the same politicians fail to do, or
even say, anything about our disastrous Drug War. Though it remains hugely
popular with helicopter manufacturers and prison contractors, the war on
drugs has turned into a War on Blacks--with mandatory-minimum sentences,
powder and crack cocaine differentials, and 46 percent more black than
white young people incarcerated on drug charges.

Yet both parties deny that the drug war has not only failed to stem the
tide of drug use but it is also driving America into an ever-tightening
state of lockdown--with 2 million behind bars. And both nominees remain
shamefully complicit in this onslaught that targets those who are most
vulnerable and have the fewest resources to fight it.

Against this dispiriting backdrop, I share with a growing number of
Americans a growing frustration with politics as usual.

The new politics will not be more left or more right, but more real. More
about what works and less about who paid for it. More about where the
crises are and less about where the pressure comes from. More populist than
corporatist. More about the future than the past.

The symptoms of political restlessness are inchoate but bubbling all around
us. They glimmered in the protests in Seattle. The flashed in the
excitement that drove John McCain's primary crusade.

They surfaced when the immigrant janitors of Los Angeles touched the soul
of the city in their fight for a living wage. And every day they simmer on
scores of college campuses where United Students Against Sweatshops fight
against child labor and inhuman sweatshops and demand that fair rules be
written for the emerging global economy.

Indeed, more and more, the new economy is putting into stark relief the
need for a new politics.

So, in the end, I don't really need that special hotel room in
Philadelphia. I've made other arrangements--together with my fellow Shadow
Convention conveners.

For the four days and four nights of each party's convention, as our
cash-addicted politicians preen and posture and pander, we--and thousands
like us--will join with our best thinkers, our best advocates and our best
activists to put the spotlight on three critical issues frozen out of the
officially sanctioned debate: the corrupting influence of money in
politics, poverty and the growing inequalities, and the failed drug war.

These Shadow Conventions won't feature any lighted boat parades, but I
guarantee there will be plenty of fireworks.

See you in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. And in Camden.