Grand old man of the left tries to shame the shameless

John Carlin lunches with the acerbic champion of blue-collar Chicago and finds him at his biting best

Chicago - "The fundamental differences between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole can be poured into Tom Thumb's thimble - and you'll still have space left over for a small Martini."

Studs Terkel, musing over lunch on the state of the nation, remains at 84 the acerbic, wise-cracking voice of blue-collar Chicago, the impish conscience of the otherwise moribund American left. The Pulitzer prize- winning author, radio host and celebrated establishment scourge has not allowed a quintuple heart by-pass operation two months ago, followed by a four-hour operation to remove parts of his intestines, to restrain his rage in the face of what he perceives to be humbug and injustice.

Many of the delegates at the Democratic National Convention this week in Chicago are biting their tongues, refraining from voicing their true feelings about Mr Clinton in the interests of party unity and the imperative to defeat Mr Dole in November's presidential election.

But it is no secret that the ranks of the party faithful are filled with people seething at the President's blatantly electoral decision to sign a Republican welfare reform bill last week ending 60 years of guaranteed cash benefits to poor families.

"You know, there's one true thing Dole said in his address at the Republican convention in San Diego," said Mr Terkel, tucking with gusto into a Chinese meal. "These were Dole's words: 'My opponent's trying to be a Republican - I'm surprised he's not here tonight.' I liked that. Dole was right, for once. Clinton's the most right-wing Democrat I've seen this century. I hope he beats Dole, of course. But, boy, it's a hell of a way to enter the millennium!"

The Democrats' election campaign war-cry, "Four more years!", is one that Mr Terkel acknowledges to be rather more pertinent to himself than to Mr Clinton. "The doctor says I'll live 10 years more. But I don't think so. When I say 'four more years', I mean it. I'll take it. So here comes the big question: I want my last vote to count. I'd rather vote for something I want and don't get, than for something I don't want but get.

"So I'm thinking of writing down the name of Ralph Nader. He's a good guy. He's always challenged the corporate big boys. People say it's a wasted vote but it's not. I want to vote this time for me, for my own, personal self-respect. Though I may, with great reluctance, vote for Clinton if it's very close - like all those decent Democrats who are in despair but who Clinton has cowed."

In Chicago they regard Mr Terkel's take-no-prisoners eloquence with affection and pride. Two years ago the city authorities named a bridge after him. Walk with him down the streets and you'll see that at everystep he takes strangers assail him, shake him by the hand: "How ya doin' Studs?"; "You look after yourself, Studs, you hear?"

The truth is, he does not hear very well. And he has lost weight though this is the least of his concerns. What is a source of regret is that, on doctor's orders, he has been obliged to cut out cigars and reduce his once-celebrated dry Martini intake to one glass a day.

So at lunch he asked for red wine instead, which the head waiter at Chicago's Szechuan restaurant - a favourite Terkel haunt - provided on the house. The one-sided hour-and-a-half conversation - or rather, effervescent one-man drama - ranged from jazz and blues to Frank Capra to Olaf Palme to South Africa to Tony Blair: "Blair's just like John Major, isn't he? Everywhere you go in the world you see the left moving to the right."

But he reserved most of what remains of his bile for America's politicians. "I try to shame them, but they are shameless. They are vulgar people who don't understand the meaning of civil behaviour. With this welfare deform bill - that's what I call it, welfare DE-form - the President and Congress have committed a vulgar act. They hate to be called vulgar, these people. That's why I call them that. Vulgar people who condemn 'big government' while they - and here's the exquisite irony - they are the very ones whose daddies' asses were saved by big government after the Depression."

Then he told a story, one of many lunch-time stories, by way of contemporary parable. "I get on a bus to go to my cardiac rehab the other day and I suddenly realise that I've left my cane behind at the bus stop. So I go up to the driver, who's a large, handsome black lady. I tell her what I've done and I ask her if I can get off the bus. She says, 'you just sit where you are' And she stops the bus and walks off down the road to fetch the cane. Now there are six white ladies riding in the bus with me, so I apologise to them, explaining what's going on. They're very nice about it and when the driver steps back onto the bus with the cane, you know what they do? They give her a warm round of applause.

"Now, you see? That's what I call civil behaviour. The vulgarians are the people at the San Diego convention. The vulgarians are your Clintons signing that bill. We're a society of snotty kids. The battle is between civil behaviour and vulgarity. Vulgar doesn't mean belching at the dinner table. Vulgar means how you behave towards someone more vulnerable than yourself."