Striving for a More Perfect Union - 22 January 1999

A poll taken by a serious New York City magazine. I don't know how statistically pure this poll was but the result was so much more astonishing than anything the editors had guessed at that they felt bound to publish it.

It was taken in and around New York City. The question: How often do you watch the news or any of the proceedings connected with the impeachment of the president? The answer: 94% said they'd had it up to here and made a point of seeing and hearing no more.

It's my hunch merely that this is probably true of most listeners and viewers around the world. So I shall hold to my shaky vow to stay off the topic until it's about to be resolved. I must, however, mention a turn in the plot that makes us seem to be living through a motion picture by the director who did such wickedly funny things in The Lady Eve and The Great McGinty and Christmas in July remember - Preston Sturges.

Consider first the sheer grotesquerie of the Congress being called for a formal joint session to listen to a political sermon by a leader who is, at the moment, on trial for high crimes and misdemeanours. I mean the almost hilarious ceremony last Tuesday evening of the annual State of the Union address - the most ceremonial evening of any presidency.

With first the members of the House flocking in, then the Senate, then the Cabinet, then solemnly trooping one behind each other the Supreme Court, then up in the Strangers' Gallery ambassadors and various distinguished guests and finally, to a standing ovation, the defendant. Now a fine Sturges twist - a week or more before this great occasion the Republican leaders in the Senate suggested to the president that, in view of the unusual circumstances, he being an indicted criminal and all, perhaps he'd rather postpone his annual address to Congress or, why not, put it off altogether? Had they forgotten whom they were appealing to?

Well Mr Clinton's response to the Republicans: "You've got to be kidding."

And he went ahead with the thing he does best with a brilliant all-embracing review of the problems of the USA, the world, the universe - a performance given a wonderful air of spontaneous intelligence and erudition by the invisible device of what's called the three way wrap teleprompter - what's called in Britain, I believe, an autocue.

Anyway you know that politicians and television actors have had for 50 years or more a professional lifeline in the prompter - the text of their speech printed out on a running belt of paper. It used to be just below the lens of the camera they were looking into, just one text running from left to right but you could spot the speaker's eyes following it like suspicious little mice scurrying from one shoulder to the other.

By now though the new device is an absolute godsend to people who are not hot at spontaneous extemporary speaking. Ronald Reagan was a prime example. They have three teleprompters or rather three scripts running continuously from the far left - 9 o'clock say - to the far right - 3 o'clock - in an ever moving semicircle so the speaker can turn, pause, drop his head, wherever and whenever he looks up there's his speech in three versions. The beauty part is the whole device is invisible to the audience.

And during Tuesday evening's performance even sceptical or scowling Republicans sitting on their hands there must have mumbled with the watching millions: "And still the wonder grew that one small head could carry all he knew."

Result, next day one of the most dependable of public opinion polls showed Mr Clinton's popularity rating had gone up from 67% to 76%.

One of his most powerful opponents, the Reverend Pat Robertson - the conservative television evangelist who's been baying for Mr Clinton's resignation throughout the past year - announced: "The president has hit a home run." He thought if the trial went on the Republicans would pay a terrible price in retribution at the election next year.

"They might," he said, "as well dismiss the impeachment hearing and get on with something else because it's over as far as I'm concerned."

This is the most astounding turnaround of any of the president's political enemies. It sent bitter shudders through the Republican leadership in both Houses.

Meanwhile the television reporters and commentators gamely told us that we were witnessing the most historic trial of the 20th Century even as millions were turning it off the moment it came on.

However, there was something happened last Monday which along the whole stretch of American history may turn out to be more historic, a more conspicuous landmark in the American journey, than any trial. Last Monday we celebrated the only national holiday named after a human being.

There is no Thomas Jefferson day or Franklin Roosevelt day or Thomas Edison day, no more George Washington's birthday or Lincoln's birthday as separate sacred holidays. Their birth dates have been combined on a day in between and called Presidents' Day. An unfortunate blur for hero worshippers.

But we have the very odd day in the calendar, once a subject of controversy and now taken for granted after only 12 years. Last Monday all the federal government offices were closed, the stock market suspended trading, many offices and banks and most schools closed. It was Rev Martin Luther King Day.

It is sort of startling to realise, after a lifetime's pauses and parades in honour of Washington, Lincoln, of Columbus and in the South, of Robert E Lee, that at the very end of the 20th Century the one human honoured exclusively with his birthday set aside as a national holiday should be a young black minister from Atlanta, Georgia who soared into public fame at the age of 26 when he'd just started his ministry.

His life had been the straightforward, humdrum routine of a religious family, father and grandfather both Baptist ministers. He followed the pious well-worn path - public school, college, theological seminary, Boston University, co-pastor of a church - when, on 1 December 1955 the blacks of Montgomery, Alabama - the capital city of the old Confederacy - staged a boycott of the city bus service. It had been arranged by the famous black organisation the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People.

A middle-aged, young middle-aged, black woman was chosen to refuse to give up her seat in the white section of a bus. The bus driver asked her to move, in accordance with the city law of separate seats - which if defied could put the company out of business. The lady still refused and the driver had to call in the police and arrest her.

Suddenly the doorsteps of coloured homes throughout several sections of the city were littered with thousands of printed handbills mysteriously dropped within the hour. The boycott began.

The stories up north were all of a piece: a spontaneous revolt of blacks against the ancient, now insufferable, separation of the races in public places which the Supreme Court, only 18 months before, had outlawed everywhere.

I went down to Montgomery in the middle of the boycott and in the evening went, as the only white, into a black rally at the Mount Zion African Episcopal Methodist Church where 35 black pastors hummed and chanted and awaited the coming of their saviour. I couldn't guess who he might be but when a side door of the vestry opened and a compact, young, solemn, ebony black man glided in I wrote, at the time: "It was like the relief of Mafeking."

His name was Martin Luther King. He rose to a silence as immense as the ovation and he read out to them what he called "A constitution for our cause".

Now, in view of the aftermath, you'd think it would have been as memorable as the Gettysburg Address. Weirdly it was written in federal or company jargon, about "the internal and external attachment in terms of organisational structure" and implementing all sorts of things "with respect to transportation".

It never crossed my mind then that this man could possibly become the inspired and inspiring leader of the whole integration movement. But he soon changed his tune. He learned to proclaim with ringing simplicity. He led marches, he was despised and abused and stoned and wounded and went to jail.

To the disgust of militant blacks and the vast relief of whites everywhere he led massive and massively peaceable marches on Washington against discrimination and against the war in Vietnam. And I think it's fair to say that no other leader could have led so many millions of protestors with so little bloodshed. And then in his 40th year he was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee.

Fifteen years later there was a move in Congress, spurred by blacks of course, to make Rev King's birthday a national holiday. There was widespread opposition but the legislation eventually went through Congress. President Reagan at first resisted but eventually signed it and proclaimed the third Monday in January as a national holiday.

A question nobody has noticeably asked to this day is: "Why?" Considering the long parade of national heroes of all degrees of stature - statesmen, soldiers, humanitarians, inventors - why? It is a delicate question to put because it instantly suggests to some nervous people that you're suggesting it shouldn't have happened.

It's still worth thinking about. And I honestly don't know the answer. Being murdered has something to do with the hallowing of a good man, of presidents especially - a halo drops on them.

For Dr King I think collective white guilt could mean something. The relief after the cities blew up that Rev King, alone, had been responsible for the following and widespread uneasy peace. I think his naming was an act of gratitude.

So the third Monday in every January is a reminder that the great promise of the Constitution in its first sentence to form "a more perfect union" has still to be worked on.

Come to think of it, "perfect" would do.

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