It has been with a greater-than-usual level of frustration that I've noted the sorry state of criticism of the Bush administration over the last six months. But it's been truly deplorable to me. No matter how much information is presented, the meanness and the irrationality of the Bush critics on the war effort only grows to match it.
I suppose that sounds harsh, but that's exactly how I see it. There's nothing rational anymore coming out of most of the administration's war critics. Not that I'm seeing, anyway. Every tiny detail, every slip or inconsistency, is held up as proof of incompetence, stupidity, mendacity, or impending failure. In the meantime, thoughtful suggestions for alternative paths are rarely offered.
That is always, to me, the greatest sign of a political position's weakness: if you're spending all your time criticizing the other bloke's actions, but cannot articulate a clear alternative path that you think would work better, and defend that alternative plan, then you're just a kvetcher at best--or, at worst, someone who is intentionally seeking to sow disunity in a time of war. As such, it all comes across as a clawing, grasping-at-straws desperation that's revolting.
I've been watching politics for about 20 years, and switched party affiliations a few times. I've never seen this much fury and this much irrationality toward a sitting President. Yes, I did vote for this President, and am utterly unashamed of having done so. Then again, I chose him for four or five specific policy reasons where I agreed with him wholeheartedly, and in which I disagreed with his Democratic opponent strenuously. It was not out of any party loyalty at all. This President has also made me unhappy with some of his policy positions, although I knew some of those were coming even when I voted for him. In any case, I'd happily support a Democrat who was in tune with enough of the things I believe in. But when people say things that don't even make sense, which are clearly contrary to documented fact about this administration and its actions, or when things that a reasonable person could put down to simple disagreement or entirely understandable errors are characterized in darkly negative lights, I'm not going to fail to notice it. Nor will I write it off to my own supposedly blind adoration.
Methuselah's Daughter, in response to my rather impatient and intemperate recent articles on this subject, has posted some thoughts of her own on the matter. They are, as usual, very insightful. They're pretty high level and (not to sound rude) most people won't get them. That's because they're based on a very long-term historical view American politics that most people lack. I found them thoughtful and penetrating. You should read that article before going further, because much of the rest of what I have to say is in response to her.
I agree with the fact that the Democratic Party today is a sad wreck. I sound a note of caution, however, in that I think an historical reality she does not reckon with is the fact that the Democrats have always--always, always, always--been a more fractious party than the Republican Party. This goes back about 200 years, all the way back to Andrew Jackson, known as "King Mob" to his detractors and the first President officially elected as a Democrat. Historically, the Democratic Party has always had its main power base in patronage politics, and adapted its ideological positions by grabbing as many small interest groups as possible under its patronage umbrella. The Republican Party, since the 1850s, has defined itself on much broader principles, usually in reaction to whatever Democrats were standing for at the moment. Thus Republicans have always had a smaller number of elements within their coalition, with a broader and more easily defined ideological framework. ("What they are doing is philosophically wrong, and here's why!") Whether it's moral issues like slavery or abortion, economic issues like taxation and regulation, or whatever, the Republicans have always taken an ideologically, philosophically opposing view of whatever the more fractious Democratic coalition has pieced together. Up until about 1980, anyway.
Partisans will tend to sneer at that, pointing to strong ideology and reactionary politics by Democrats and patronage and interest-group politics by Republicans. They are quite correct. Both parties are vast, and politics are politics, so some blend of patronage, ideology, and pragmatism will always be the rule. What I speak of is a matter of degree and emphasis; there's a reason why the Democrats have something like double the number of delegates at their conventions, and a much larger number of small interest groups associated with them: that's how they've always done business. There's a reason why the Republicans have an easier time melding the disparate interests within their party together: they've always had fewer of them. This all also explains why your average Republican Presidential candidate makes about half as many campaign promises as your average Democratic Presidential candidate: it's the only real fundamental difference between the parties.
Thus it's easy for us to point to fractiousness within the Democratic Party as signs that they're imploding. Now, I do happen to think they are imploding, and that if they don't do something about it soon, they're going to be spanked severely in the next election. They will likely spend the next few decades in the wilderness that Republicans inhabited for most of the 20th century: an occasional Presidential victory, with said Presidents constantly facing a group of state Governors, major city Mayors, state legislators, and Congresses mostly made up of opposition party members.
The real problem, as I see it, is that patronage politics are on their way out, and have been slowly ebbing away for the last few decades. America is increasingly more suburban than it is rural or urban, and in any case, Americans are far more affluent and mobile than they used to be--thus less tied to generations-old family businesses, churches, ethnic identities, and traditions that were the perfect breeding ground for the patronage politics of old. The Democrats have also lost rural America's heart, which used to be one of their pillars of support. Pitting racial group against racial group, which has helped Democrats keep some strength, is also increasingly less effective, as more and more Americans lose interest in the resentments of the past, racial intermarriage becomes more frequent, and most immigrant groups wind up finding out that they can succeed as well or better than previous immigrant groups.
Thus, the Dems are increasingly a party with very little ideological coherence--which has always troubled them anyway--and are slowly losing the patronage-based system that used to help them compensate.
When we look at the Democratic Party today, they have no clear economic agenda except "Bush sucks." They have no coherent foreign policy agenda except "Bush lied." While some of this is due to the fact that they have yet to rally around a single candidate, there's something rotton at the core of it: even as the primary elections loom nearer, there is still little in the way of policy debate occurring among Democrats. All we see are variations on who can say Bush stinks most vehemently, and who is most sincere in his expression of how badly Bush stinks.
I don't know what the solution is for the sorry state the party finds itself in. The world's oldest and, arguably, its greatest political party is in the worst funk it's ever been in, with many signs that it's going to be in a worse funk soon. I tend to blame most of it on historical factors that it's been difficult to compensate for. But I also think it's the fault of the current DNC chairman, who has persued the siren song of fundraising. He's sold his party on the notion that money, not ideas, wins elections. This near-religious belief has driven the party into borderline lunacy.
In the end, this is why I agree with Methuselah's Daughter more than I disagree: the Democrats have turned to money, and "voter stupidity," as the excuse for the beatings they've taken over the last several election cycles. With a few bright spots here and there, things have slowly trended against them. Rather than their own out-of-date politics, and their lack of ideas or coherence, it must be those great wads of cash for advertising that brainwashed the stupid voters! Why, if it weren't for that, and perhaps the baleful influence of religion (icky pooh!) the unwashed masses would surely see that voting for Republicans is not in their best interest, and that the Repugs are ruining the country!
Thus they squander time on campaign finance "reforms" that change nothing, and alienating traditional religious believers rather than trying to persuade them. That, and they worship blow-dried fops like Terry McAuliffe simply because he's a champion fundraiser. What they never notice is that the main thing they lack is bold or innovative ideas for reform, and that they often offend people they ought to be trying to persuade.
I do think that isolating and excising the fringe elements of the Democratic Party would be healthy, both for the party and the country. But they need leadership at the top that recognizes the fundamental problem, and that is willing to alienate some of the base in order to fix it. Can it be done? I'd say so, although I'm pessimistic that it will happen in time for the next election cycle. Otherwise, only a series of very lucky breaks will save them. Even if they should win back the Presidency, their core problems as a party will make it hard for them to actually do anything of significance.
I will say I'm not all that certain that the Republic is in any danger simply because one of its two great parties is such an incoherent mess right now. Republicans will eventually become arrogant and overreach; Democrats will eventually figure out that ideas win elections, not money.
I suppose I have more faith in the American system than MD does, in that sense anyway. The Republic has survived far worse than it's going through now, and undoubtedly will survive worse in the future.
Nicely summed up, Dean:
I will say I'm not all that certain that the Republic is in any danger simply because one of its two great parties is such an ungodly a mess right now. Republicans will eventually become arrogant and overreach; Democrats will eventually figure out that ideas win elections, not money.
However, I contend such symptoms are manifested earlier with more of an effect(for both parties) because of the web.Much like when the USSR couldn't stop alternate sources of info coming in to their populace, or, for that matter, the faxes during Tienanman square.
And even if the Democrats never recover, either the Republicans will split, or one of the existing minor parties will emerge as the second party.
The way our political system works, the "two-party" system (actually, in my opinion, the "one-and-a-half party" system) is inevitable.
My own view is that the Democrats' problems are in large part due to something quite a bit deeper than either you or MD cite, Dean: their wholesale abandonment of any committment to truth or common sense.
Poor intelligence gathering and analysis on the state of Iraq's WMD programs has become "Bush Lied So He Could Have A War!!!"; a brief, mild recession has become "The Worst Economy Since Herbert Hoover!!!"; the Adminstration's budget is no longer something subject to rational negotiation based on differing priorities and different philosophies regarding the appropriate functions of government, but is now "Bush's Economic Plan is EEEEEVIL!!!"; his judicial nominees are not principled constitutionalists, but are "Hateful Racists!!!"; and so on.
After 31 years as a Democrat, I finally got fed up with this endless stream of hysterical, hyperbolic, nonsensical bullshit, and decided to join the Republicans- who at least act like they think I possess enough intelligence to think for myself.
Another factor that I think you and MD have missed, is the Democrats' sheer negativity. Gawd, what a depressive, miserable, hateful bunch! They don't just disagree with Republicans over policy matters; they don't just oppose them; they HATE Republicans' guts with a passion I've never seen in my 54 years. The depth of that hatred is disturbing, and I'm not the only person I know who's very uncomfortable with what the Democratic Party has become.
Helpful suggestion:
Stop making every criticism of the President into a "hateful attack." Not all of the criticisms are that. Furthermore, some of us don't like it when you do that.
The other thing? Those of us who supported the war before, during, and after the fact are getting mighty tired of being more Catholic than the Pope. You know what I'm saying? Think about it.
Hint: I support the Bush Doctrine; too many on the other side are merely supporting Bush.
Ara,
No, not all criticisms of Bush are "hateful attacks"--but a large majority ARE, and pointing to the relatively few exceptions does not change the general trend.
Living in a liberal college town, I see what dave D. describes, i.e. the sheer negative and mean-spirited attitudes that a lot of people from the liberal-left of the political spectrum exhibit these days. It is one thing to say that one does not agree with the policies of the current administration, but, to couch it as an ad hominem, mean-spirited, personal attack on Pres Bush is just pointless and meaningless. I notice that in their Bush-hating, they are unable, usually, to engage in reasoned dialogue, their critique just degenerates to the level of 6 yr olds in the playground yelling "my dad can beat your dad" at each other!!!!!
Was at a Indian lunch buffet in my town for lunch friday, and sat next to a table of 4 left-leaning Univ faculty members. 2 women and 2 effeminate men. Now, one would expect reasoned debate from faculty members of a major research univ, right? No....... These 4 bitched and whined about prez Bush haveing belonged to a fraternity in his undergrad years( like that was/is a crime!!), that he has either a learning disability or speech impediment(which isnt a crime either), etc!!! They just bitched and whined, and kept making very nasty, condescending, disrespectful comments about those people who did not share their views.
History lesson time. This is off the top of my head; corrections welcome.
The Democratic Party, in one sense, fielded its first Presidential candidate in the election of 1792. However, the party we now know as the Democratic Party, as Dean said, dates from the Jackson era.
The two parties that arose then both defined themselves around ideology. For the Democrats, this meant strong Presidents, no central bank, and high tariffs. For the Whigs (the opposition party from Jackson to Fillmore), this meant weak Presidents, a central bank, and low tariffs. At the time, the slavery issue was radioactive, and neither party really dared address it, though both parties weren't averse to try to use the slavery issue to split the other party along North-South lines. It is true, though, that the Whigs generally defined themselves by opposition to the Democrats, a fact the latter party often capitalized on by stealing their issues.
The Whigs collapsed after the 1852 election, and the Republicans took their place. Both parties had established local political machines, but the Whig machines collapsed, leaving the Democrats with a power vacuum to fill on the local level. At the same time, Democratic credibility on the national level was pretty well shot in the aftermath of the Civil War, though it was enhanced in the bitter South. So, for a while, you have Republican domination of the national scene (except in the South), and Democratic domination of local politics, especially in the big cities. At this time, neither party had much of an ideology; party politics was basically an aftershock of the War.
In the first half of the 20th century, the Dems actually trumped the Republicans on ideology for the most part; witness Wilson and FDR. (It's funny, but the high points of ideology for both parties at this time involved a President named Roosevelt.) Today's ascendence of the Republicans in ideology, I think, can be traced to the contrast between Johnson and Nixon, to the effect Vietnam had on the Democrats, and to the overall success of the Dems on their issues (racial and gender equality). This was about the time that the Republicans started building their foreign policy reputation.
I guess the lesson in this is that the historic alignment of the two opposition parties hasn't been as cut-and-dried as Dean says. This should give Democrats some hope, even if they have to wait decades for the pattern to swing their way.
But I do agree with the general gist of things: the current Democratic Party is troubled, and a shakeup is clearly indicated in their future.
I was "raised" a Republican. My grandfather's favorite joke in the 60's was "How do you make a jackass out of three straight vertical lines... lll?" Answer: LBJ. It's a visual joke, done with paper and pencil. I was told how terrible Democrats were, how they were taking our country to ruin, that communists run the Dem Party, and that only Republicans trully represented American ideals. As a kid, this was okay with me as I knew that Lincoln was a Republican and I greatly admired Lincoln, especially because he freed the slaves. Oddly enough, I grew up in North Carolina, a Southern state, and a relative stronghold of the Dems during my childhood, though that's changed now. Further, my Grandpa said that Lincoln made the one mistake in the Republican party... he freed the slaves and never should have done that. Grandpa actually was happy when Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. were assaininated. So much for ideology.
Why am I relating this? Well, I guess to point out that all politics are highly tied to personal dynamics. Not platforms or promises or historical precedence. Practical politics exists on a personal level. My Grandfather was a businessman, self-owned for 30 years. The Republican party matched his fiscal goals. He hated taxes. I don't think he cared a lick about the moral constructs which may have been espoused by Republicans... past or present.
The Whigs imploded, and this country survived. If the Democrats, to whom I have belong now for almost 20 years, implode, this country will survive. If the Republicans by some chance collapse into disarray, we'll survive.
But the party that remains, ostensibly the Republicans, does so only by virtue of the public's whim. Times change, we learn and we choose. We move on.
Ara, the attacks on Bush are hateful...and some of us don't like it.
They are hateful attacks. If the other side had a solid plan, we'd all love to hear it! They don't, so they play name calling games.
Since I don't call every criticism of the President a "hateful attack," Ara, your request strikes me as much like a request that I stop beating my wife.
To be blunt, you protesteth too much. Claims that you "support the Bush doctrine" are weak-sounding, given your inabilitiy to articulate, unequivocally and precisely, what policies you would like to see followed that the administration has not followed, and what precisely and exactly (other than avoiding photo-ops) you would see done differently. You cannot chant "Bush Doctrine" and expect that to be an answer, unless you literally mean you want full-blown declaration of war on several dozen regimes tomorrow.
Furthermore, your willingness to criticize the President at the drop of a hat, to publish and promote and give credence to just about every criticism of the war effort and our leadership with gleeful amusement, your eagerness to bat aside every defense of the administration's choices, and your sniffing dismissal of every success we've seen so far doesn't give you a lot of credibility either.
Hell man, on the night we liberated Baghdad you sullenly said, "we went after low-hanging fruit," and when I asked you what high-hanging fruit you wanted, you couldn't say.
Where was your outrage at the destructive and corrosive press coverage? Where is your outrage now at the asinine claims that Americans were "deceived?" Or your acknowledgement of the very possibility that the "Niger Uranium" mini-scandal might have been an honest mistake that even very competent and scrupulously honest people could have made?
You've only been a "supporter" in the weak-sister, "well yes I'm glad we're doing this but too bad everything's so being done so poorly by these incompetent stupid people whose critics are usually right" sense. It lends credibility to opponents of the war effort and sows disunity in areas where unity is needed most.
Here's what a principled argument looks like to me. You can just check me on this:
"I wish we weren't so nice to the Saudis but I have to admit I can't say what exactly I'd do different with them right now."
"I didn't think we should go to the UN but I can see why thoughtful people might disagree with me."
"I agree that bad press coverage can lose a war and I'm glad some of my fellow Democrats finally came out and acknowledged that was happening, and that it was irresponsible and unfair and we should stop claiming we're losing. I still have concerns though."
"I'm sorry I said we're trying to win the war on the cheap now that the generals running the show and the others over there have almost universally made it clear that they don't want more troops and that more troops would only cause us to take more casualties."
"I worry about how much we're spending to rebuild Iraq but I did support the conflict and I fully understand that until we were on the ground there that precise cost estimates were impossible, and I understand that spending this kind of money is necessary, so criticizing the President for it is wrong."
"I acknowledge that the claims that there were no plans for post-war Iraq were false and I wish people would stop making this false claim."
Should I go on?
Weak-kneed, half-hearted, "yeah I support it but too bad Bush sucks and isn't doing things very well even though I can't say what I'd do different" kvetching is, in some ways, worse than no support at all.
Or so I see it, anyway.
And no, it's not "hateful." Just depressing.
To expand a bit on a few things I've posted here and elsewhere....
The Democrats are engaged in a "who hates Bush the most" game of one-upsmanship because they cannot say what they are in favor of...save, perhaps, in some rather broad, hard to nail down terms ("tax increases on the rich", that sort of thing). The Democrats can't say what they are in favor of because, oh, about 70% of the American people are opposed to it. The stuff the Democrats are in favor of, but can't talk about, is all far-left, freako garbage which was supposedly interred with Lenin's statues in the ex-USSR more than 10 years ago.
The far left started to take over the Democratic Party in the aftermath of 1968 and gained full ascendency in the 1972 election. These people will not give up their power and they will always and ever insist that no one contest their core beliefs. In order to appeal to the broad mass of the American people you must:
1. Believe that United States is the greatest nation in the world.
2. Believe that the people of the United States are competant to run their own lives, and not just in matters of sexual activity.
Thats it. Not hard; pretty easy - into those two things you can cram all kinds of stuff...but you can't cram defferrance to France nor can you cram something like a "fat tax" on junk food. The problem for the Democrats is that the people who control who gets to the top in the Party believe:
1. That the United States, on balance, has been a baleful influence in the world.
2. That the American people can screw all they want, but otherwise can't be trusted with a burnt out match.
The Democratic Party is in irrecoverable decline unless it can get rid of the people who insist upon the second set of premises.
Just as an aside, and for the exercise...can anyone find for me a quote from a major Dem in the past 15 years wherein he (or she) describes the United States as the greatest nation in the world?
You know, comparisons to Lenin really are a bit much.
But anyway: I certainly recall Democrats saying we were the greatest nation in the world. I can't quote it but I'm sure Clinton said it, I know guys like Moynihan said it.
Dean,
Actually, we are even more in agreement than you might think. My closing comment regarding the requirement that the parties learn to trust the voters is in and of itself a pronouncement of the decline of patronage politics. This is the old dynamic that is tearing the Democratic Party to pieces with its death throes. It is the very nature of the Democratic Party that makes this change so much more wrenching for it than for the Republicans, at least publicly.
As for the collapse of the Republic- no, not today. What remains to be seen is not only how the parties adjust, but how the voters adjust as well. Both must come to the understanding that the old dynamic is dead. Should the Parties do so and the voters fail to follow suit the results would likely be unpleasant- the idea that any party machine might restructure the power base of the nation without the note or care of the voters should give any person pause. The next twenty to forty years should set the stage for either the greater ascendance and/or evolution of the Democratic Republican form of government, or its eventual decline and collapse.
Finally, history is always invaluable as a comparative tool, but my experience of late has been that the swiftly changing social dynamic abetted by the explosion in information access and the shrinking nature of the global community means that history can lead one to conclusions that do not necessarily apply. This has always been the case, but more so now than at any time before. One must pay attention to history, but it is important to understand that history rarely repeats itself in a form that is recognizable to the contemporaneous actors. Modern western civilization is a work in progress and breathtakingly young by any measure you care to apply, hence my cautionary tone.
I'd like to take a moment to point out something that no one has really touched on, although Dean hinted at it when he mentioned (at the end of his original post) the possibility of the Republicans becoming arrogant, etc....
Any party that reigns unchallenged for a long period of time tends to become corrupt. Acton once said "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." Analog editor John Campbell once said that he would change that to "unchallenged power corrupts absolutely." I think that this is largely true.
Recall that for at least a generation after the Civil War, the GOP reigned supreme over the United States, damn near literally. A single act sufficed, generally, to quell a possible Democrat upstart: waving the bloody shirt. (an aside: that literally happened. For 5 Dean Bonus Points, who's shirt was it, and when was it first displayed?)
Point being that Republicans could taint any Democrat with the slur of "traitor" until the Spanish-American War, wherein the old hostilities finally ended.
This granted the Republican Party nearly unchallenged power for a good generation. This tends to explain the degree of corruption found in Republican politics of the time.
The Democrats, stymied by the perennial charge of treason, and lacking a great leader, found little to lead with until the emergence of the Populist movement just before the turn of the century.
That movement gave them the first impetus to an appeal to populism that has lasted through the 20th century.
Wilson managed to touch many Americans with his idealism, but he ultimately failed as a political leader. It fell to Franklin Delano Roosevelt to bring the populist message into the mainstream of Democratic thought, and his skills allowed the Democrats to regain their supremacy for the first time in over 70 years.
FDR melded together a “party of underdogs,” as it were; all those who weren’t part of the dominant party were attracted to the opposition. By 1932, this included the great majority of Americans, especially after the Crash of ’29…
(an aside: This explains the hoary old myth that the GOP is the party of rich people. The GOP didn’t kowtow to rich men; rather men became rich because they joined the Republican Party. This –again- illustrates the principle that any group or organization will become corrupt in the absence of any major external challenge.)
Let us return to FDR. His first two terms were marked by a return of optimism and hope to American political life (one of my favorite quotes of the time comes from Will Rogers: “Even if he burnt down the White House, we can say ‘At least he got a fire started!’” Heh). The Republicans of the time, in the face of a resurgent Democratic Party, could only ape the ossified memes of their predecessors. They could offer no new vision to challenge Roosevelt’s work.
(another aside: FDR has to have been one of the most vilified men to ever hold the Presidency, bar one. I would say that, in order, the five worst would be
1. Lincoln
2. FDR
3. Washington
4. Bush Jr.
5. Clinton
One may wish to swap FDR & Washington.)
What really infuriated Republicans was that FDR broke the unofficial, but hitherto sacred precedent of Washington’s “Two term limit.” Worse yet, he did so to the tune of humiliating majorities in both houses for two elections.
When you add to this his brilliant leadership in World War Two, the GOP looked, well, like a bunch of selfish contrarians. They were up against a smart politician with a healthy vision who played it smart in a major war. I imagine they were tempted to cry in frustration more than once…
The Truman administrations can be considered as an extension of the Roosevelt organization, with the additional issues of “who lost what to the Communists,” and the ancient problem of unchallenged corruption. By this time (1952) the Democratic Party had reigned unchallenged for twenty years. Eisenhower was elected for 2 major reasons: he led the Allies to victory in Europe, and he symbolized a return to less corrupt polis.
I believe it is significant that Eisenhower was the only real challenge to Democratic Party primacy until the 1968 election, and even Nixon’s election was a reaction to the Democrat’s poor handling of the Vietnam War.
It wasn’t until the 1972 election (AKA the “Great Ass-Whupp of ’72”) that the GOP scored a major victory over the Democratic Party, as I count the election of 1968 as a negative reaction to the party in power, as opposed to a positive reaction to the party in opposition.
So, really, the Democrats enjoyed nearly unchallenged power from 1932 until 1972; 40 years. This beats the Republican Party domination of c. 1865-1895 (30 years).
I shall pass on the next few years (Ford was unelected, and Carter quickly dis-elected), and later administrations, except to note that Reagan marked the renaissance of the Republican Party.
But –the reader asks- what does this have to do with Dean’s post? Very simple, I reply.
First: any party in a position of unchallenged power tends to ossify and become corrupt. This happens in other areas as well: American auto manufacturers in the 1970s, for example
Second: when challenged, the dominant party has trouble developing a new meme to suit new circumstances, including a crumbling power base and loss of dominance.
Third: the now-eclipsed party clings to outmoded memes because they have no new ideas: they look back to past greatness and “good times.”
Finally: any renaissance of the now-eclipsed party must come from an outsider (vis: FDR and/or Reagan) as the insiders still cling to past glory.
It should be quite apparent that I consider the Democratic Party to be the current “now-eclipsed” party.
Most of the Democratic Party leaders look back to the halcyon times of the 1960s, when the counter-culture and rebellion were not only stylish, but sexy as well. Rock songs feted their actions, while news organizations hung upon every word.
This was the time of Watergate, and the Washington Post; when the Fourth Estate could bring down Presidents.
Modern leaders, alas, confuse popularity and accolades with leadership and vision. They fail to see that rebellion, per se, is not a virtue, and must be viewed in context.
The modern Democratic Party harks back to old days of glory, when Buffalo Springfield could sing “must be a thousand people / in the streets,” and everyone knew that the government was after, well, everyone. Considering Nixon’s paranoia, this was not too far off the mark.
The problem is that Nixon’s dead, and Vietnam’s over. African-Americans have made great strides economic as well as political leadership, and even the gay-lesbian community has advanced their agenda to the point where gay/lesbian marriage is now considered a mainstream political issue, instead of something that only freaks and perverts worry about.
The problem is that the Democratic Party –as a party- has run out of traditional issues.
I do not claim that America no longer has any social issues, any more than I would claim that (as some have said) that history ended with the fall of Communism and the Soviet Union.
I will also say that, in this context, it becomes understandable why Democratic Party stalwarts fall back on hyperbole and ad hominem attacks on the Bush administration: they have no relevant arguments to put forward as an alternative.
I conclude that the Democratic Party, and all American citizens, need new memes, and new social paradigms to discuss modern challenges in an relevant way.
Otherwise we face the possibility that the GOP will be able to reign unchallenged for yet another generation, to the detriment of our country.
Who will be the next William Jennings Bryant, and (more important) who will be the next FDR, or Reagan?
Ah! Well, then, MD, we don't disagree much at all.
I'm rather optimistic myself. Although the struggle against darkness is eternal.
Dean: I can't quote it but I'm sure Clinton said it
He did. A lot. I can't recall ever really thinking he felt what he was saying, but he did say it. A lot.
Casey: Recall that for at least a generation after the Civil War, the GOP reigned supreme over the United States, damn near literally. A single act sufficed, generally, to quell a possible Democrat upstart: waving the bloody shirt. (an aside: that literally happened. For 5 Dean Bonus Points, who's shirt was it, and when was it first displayed?)
I know it was done in Scotland back in 1603. Highland clan warfare, one clan got whooped by another, so they took a bunch of their women to Edinburgh to put on a show. Claiming to be widows of the clan raid, each of the women held aloft a shirt soaked in calf's blood as they rode past King James VI (soon to be James I of England). Jamie couldn't stand the sight of blood.
He gave the wavers of the "bluidy sark" a commission to retaliate against the clan that had beaten them. That other clan, enraged by the deception, whooped them again, and the King outlawed them for defying his authority.
And I'm sure that wasn't the first instance.
Ara,
Perhaps not all criticisms of Bush by Democrats are hate-filled attacks; but when Michael Moore, Molly Ivins, Maureen O'Dowd, The New York Times, all the Democrat presidential candidates, and even Bill Clinton make these sort of baseless carpings without offering evidence or alternative, no one in the Democrat leadership contradicts them. This indicates a tacit agreement of such idiocy by all other Democrats who might be making more principled critiques, and ensures that the more principled critiques are drowned out in the whining, anyway.
Dean:
The difference between you and me is that I support the war on terror and you support President Bush.
I await a clear and unequivocal description of what should be done differently from what is now being done.
Criticizing and complaining is easy. Tell me what the better choice of paths is.
Absent that, following the current leader in his effort to find the best path he can strikes me as the most prudent course.
Dean,
Funny, I don't recall him ever saying it...but, then again, I could be wrong...
The comparison to Lenin is apt - not to you and other Democratic-type people, but to the people who rule the roost in the Democratic Party. This is no kidding; you take a look at the stuff being put forward as the good things by the leadership of the Democratic Party (though not too loudly, for fear of offending the voters) and the stuff being put forward in the early years of the Russian revolution, and its a good match (I suggest A People's Tragedy for more on this - its an excellent look at the Russian Revolution and the early years of the USSR).
Ah, where to begin?
"In order to appeal to the broad mass of the American people you must:
1. Believe that United States is the greatest nation in the world."
I would love my country even if it weren't (and I'm a naturalized citizen - as in immigrant). It sounds too much like Jackson saying, "repeat after me, I am important!" Are we a nation of school-children?
About hating Bush: the guy has an MBA, right? - as in Masters of Business Administration. Our recession was caused by too much investment, which resulted in overproduction. In other words, all those internet companies were ordering routers from Cisco - and because so many internet companies were being launched at one time Cisco couldn't ship them out fast enough. In response, the internet cos ordered more than they needed to make sure they could get their routers. When the dot-coms burned through their cash and went belly-up all these routers, some of them still in their original, unopened boxes ended up on eBay at fire-sale prices. Of course, Cisco's sales collapsed. Something similar happened to dozens of companies (Corning is another example, turning out miles of fiber-optic cable that nobody was going to buy.). My point: an MBA, hell, even a college economics major can tell you that tax cuts work when there is not enough demand, and they are irrelevant, and extrememly inflationary, when demand has been sated and noone wants to buy what they already have too much of. So every time MBA Bush says that his tax cuts are necessary he is knowingly lying. It really is that simple.
I could go on but my lunch hour is way gone already.
Huh. Wish claude had mentioned that a couple of years ago.
Claude!
Who knew??
"It has been with a greater-than-usual level of frustration that I've noted the sorry state of criticism of the Bush administration over the last six months."
Six months? Bush critics have been more than a little over the edge since Day One.
Remember when Bush told us at the beginning of his term that the economy was running into trouble, and the Left was claiming that he was "talking down the economy" and thereby causing the economic trouble?
(Of course, recent pronouncement by Democratic candidates don't qualify as "talking down the economy" for some reason).
Remember the claim that Bush's support for "oil friendly" policies was causing investors to pull out of tech and into energy, endangering our technological prowess and causing our tech bust by causing investment shifts to "old tech" rather than "high tech"?
Claude,
Nonsense...no point in loving something that isn't the best; do you love with eternal devotion the girl who is just ok, or are you convinced, when in love, that you are with the best thing since sliced bread? This does not mean, of course, failure to recognize flaws, but it does mean that the object of devotion is the best thing around all around.
Dean,
This thread has been nagging at my mind all day today at work. Aside from causing some odd moments (ie, forgetting what I was doing with a customer on the line), its also brought about a bit of refreshed views on the whole matter.
Your blog's goal is to defend the liberal tradition. My mind was wrapping itself around that, thinking of your obviously liberal proclivities contrasted with your equally obvious impatience with those who are most commonly identified with liberalism in America today. You're sniffing at my backhanded comparison of modern American liberalism to Leninism also worked into the mix.
As usual, given that I'm a man, it all came back to being about me for a moment. It made me understand, this ruminating, better than ever why I am a conservative. The liberal view, I'd guess, would be that if people were allowed to make free and unfettered choices about things then the net effect of all this free choice would be the best decision possible. I'm a conservative because I know that we are never actually free to make our choices. We're hemmed in with law, tradition, guilt, greed, envy, fear and a host of other emotions and strictures which make a really free choice impossible. Knowing that a free choice is impossible, I tend to be conservative, which in the end is all about ensuring that people deal forthrightly with their bad choices (being utterly uninterested in their good choices, because they cause no problem).
Freedom, of course, is an absolute requirement for a functioning society. Without freedom, then all that is done has a great deal of artificiality about it and is liable to collapse utterly when some small part of the structure is kicked away. The trick for conservatism is for us to loosen the reigns as necessary to ensure societal dynamism, while holding our base motivations on a tight leash, lest they destroy all.
Liberalism is wrong, in my view, because it fails to recognise the very, very harsh realities of human nature. Of course, its not just conservatism which understands this fundamental flaw of liberalism - leftism (communism and/or socialism) recognises it as well. The democratic socialist seeks to compensate for the error of liberalism by strict regulation of what a person may decide to do, communism just kills everyone who doesn't follow the dictates of the party elite.
Liberalism says do what you believe is best. Conservatism, on the other hand, doesn't actually seek to go about telling you what you can't do as much as it goes about insisting what you must do as a matter of duty: marry the girl you get pregnant; spend your life in prison for crime; fight the war to total victory; sacrifice any thought of your own well-being and devote yourself to the children you have made; earn your own keep, etc, etc, etc.
What I was calling the Leninist part of your Democratic Party was, of course, not anything about liberals...though a large number of self-described liberals are very Leninist these days (and often prefer the label "progressive", as if even in a drug-induced nightmare Teddy Roosevelt would have had anything to do with them). Your party, once the standard bearer of liberalism (which is still wrong in my view, but not evil), has been co-opted by Leninists who at best want to strictly regulate national life and, at worst, actually do want to kill the people who step out of line (this isn't hyperbole - you've seen it, Dean).
A house divided cannot stand - your Democratic Party is divided between a shrinking number of people who believe that freedom is all and a growing cadre of people who despise freedom and worship the false god of equality. The Democratic Party is finished because you cannot reconcile pro-choice and racial set-asides, to put it into mundane terms. Conservatism is thriving and will simply go from victory to victory (for at least a good while) because it spins no tales of utopia, nor does it work on the assumption that everyone is well-intentioned.
Mark, you cover too much ground in one post for me to respond to all so I will try to answer just a couple:
Your views of romance and love are rather fantastic. It is often impossible to tell whether one is madly in love or if it's only lust - only the passage of time will reveal the truth. No matter how much you may be in love, it won't last unless you also like the other person. It is also true, unfortunately, that you may become smitten by someone who doesn't feel the same way about you.
"Conservatism, on the other hand, doesn't actually seek to go about telling you what you can't do as much as it goes about insisting what you must do as a matter of duty..." I don't know where you get this because social conservatism is all about "thou shalt not..." The duty part comes when you have failed to heed the "thou shalt not" part.
"Conservatism is thriving ... because it spins no tales of utopia." Telling people that tax cuts are the silver bullet for all our economic problems is pretty utopian.
As one who grew up in Tito's Yugoslavia, I can safely say that you don't know much about Leninism. I know that that's being a poor sport, but there you have.
Oh well.
"Conservatism is thriving ... because it spins no tales of utopia." Telling people that tax cuts are the silver bullet for all our economic problems is pretty utopian.
Actually, I haven't heard any conservatives say that "tax cuts are the silver bullet for all our economic woes," nor do I think conservatives subscribe to the idea of an earthly utopia. We often believe in heaven, and we certainly believe in the internalizing of externalities and that the free market is the most efficient allocator of resources.
Mostly, we recognize that everyone wants more than he or she has, and generally doesn't want to work any harder than necessary to get it. Once you put in place an economic system which recognizes these truths, and which avoids subsidizing bad and stupid behavior, problems do begin to take care of themselves.
Claude,
Oh, I think I'm pretty familiar with Leninist modes of thinking; its all about "baby out with the bathwater" and "I know whats best". The so-called liberals who run the Democratic Party are rank with tossing out babies and are damned insistent that they know whats best for everyone. You don't have to go about killing two or three million people to be a Leninist, you just have to be an arrogant, ignorant ass.
Mark, Leninism is about getting arrested when you are taking out the garbage after dark and not returning home for months and none of the neighbors had the courage to report you as missing. It's about being taught in first grade that you must squeal on your own parents if they say anything critical of the Party. It's about gulags, mandatory voting even though there's only one candidate, ... Stuff like that.
Jonathan: "I haven't heard any conservatives say that "tax cuts are the silver bullet for all our economic woes,..." When Christine Whitman ran for governor of New Jersey she did claim that cutting taxes was the solution, ditto with Lew lehrman running for gov in NY, and also with Steve Forbes when he ran for President."
Hey Claude:
I think the consensus view of nearly all economists is that there is a Laffer Curve and at any given moment we are somewhere along it, but few agree as to where we are and which directions to move marginal tax rates in order to maximize income tax revenues. If the current marginal tax rate is very high, cutting taxes is probably part of the solution. If the marginal tax rate is relatively low, it may not help maximize revenues at all.
It's possible to advocate reduction of marginal tax rates on other-than-revenue-maximization bases. Fundamental fairness and economic intelligence demands that you not punish people for working hard and producing for society by raising their marginal income tax rates. If you vote for candidates who support progressive income taxation, you're the accomplice of thieves.
But that may not bother you--heck, Robin Hood was a thief and there's been at least three movies made about him that I'm aware of, one of which starred Kevin Costner. As a policy, theft has plenty of adherents.
Claude,
That is an effect of Leninism, but Leninism stands alone and is quite capable of existing even when people aren't being arrested. Leninist modes of thinking (as well as a goodly portion of Leninist ideology) is what underpins a large amount of the Democratic Party these days.
You can say that its absurd to compare an American Democratic Party activist to Lenin, but it would have been absurd to compare Lenin of 1909 to Lenin of 1919, even though they were the same person, the only difference being the amount of power each version of Lenin had.
How many hateful attacks are being funded by multi-millionaires from Pittsburg? Much of the "hateful" attacks towards Dubya are politics and are no more angry and vicious as those directed against Clinton. I tend to view republicans the way a college student views a high school student. I admit that I don't think they are as smart, creative, nor sincerely concerned about the good of the whole society. Until they prove me wrong, I gotta go with the dems. They don't have all the answers, but their answers are much better than the Bush administration. The GOP will never give this country an FDR, a JFK, or a MLK Jr...why? Because they lack compassion and real vision.
Just my opinion.
Tim the Soldier
I see from the comments that you remember the Clinton presidency. Why then do you forget the unprecendented hatred of Bill Clinton that began long before Lewinsky, that continues unabated and is so irrational that it beggars belief. Nothing from the left has come within 1/10th of the vitriol, venom and hatred coming out of the Clinton-hating right.
Stop whining. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.