This seems like a good day to bring this up:
Last month, Rosemary and I were interviewed by "The Next Big Thing" on Public Radio International. Rosemary's a Republican now. I'm not, although I'm generally supportive of the current President Bush. We're both former diehard Democrats, me longer-back than Rosemary, since I cast my first vote for President for Walter Mondale in 1984, whereas her first hero was Michael Dukakis in 1988.
Anyway, the folks at PRI picked us out of a half-dozen or so people to interview on the subject of people who change political party affiliations. Out of a half hour interview I think they used maybe a minute of Rose and about 30 seconds of me. Still, if you want to hear what we sound like on the radio, here's your chance. The show is called "The Next Big Thing," and the episode is called "Pledges of Allegiance." The show starts out with a comparison of a speech by President Johnson on Vietnam and President Bush on Iraq. It being public radio and all, do ya think they could have compared a wartime speech by Truman or Roosevelt instead? (Heh. God, I crack me up!)
Anyway, if you have a broadband connection you can just go here to listen to the show over the internet. Remember, it's the October 3rd "Pledges of Allegiance" show. You'll also need a copy of the
It's no big shakes, but it was fun. Our voices were mixed in with those of a lot of other people, but I'll bet you can pick out Rose's brash and wonderful voice. You might especially notice when you hear Rose talk about how her parents accused me, her supposedly "Republican" husband, of brainwashing her. Overall, though, it's a pretty fair and balanced show.
For the record, Rose had to talk me into, reluctantly, voting for Bob Dole in 1996. I voted McCain in the primaries in 2000, she for Bush, but both of us inhesitantly pulled for Bush in the general elections. In looking at the Democratic field right now, that we'll both pull the lever for Bush next year looks very likely. I keep hoping, vainly it appears, that a sensible centrist like Lieberman or Gephardt will win the Democratic nomination next year, so at least I have to think about my choice in the next election. Alas, it seems increasingly likely that the Democrats are about to nominate their own version of Pat Buchanan, the lunatic Howard Dean. In which case, both our votes for Bush next year are pretty much preordianed.
(We just both pray that Bush avoids the insanity of endorsing that idiotic "protection of marriage amendment," or whatever the hell they're calling it. For a variety of reasons, we both utterly agree that it would be a horrible mistake, both for the Republican Party and for the country as a whole.)
Anyway, here's the show again, for those of you who missed it last month.
By the way: both of us read this Peggy Noonan column that Joe Katzman recently pointed out, and found ourselves nodding all the way through it. And wishing to hell that Democrats would come back to sanity. Is that a vain hope? We both begin to think so. We realize that our governmental structure makes two parties an inevitability; we just wish both parties contained enough sanity and common sense to attract people like us.
"For the record, Rose had to talk me into, reluctantly, voting for Bob Dole in 1996."
Jeez, Dean, maybe shep is right: maybe you are a neocon! Heh.
I voted for Perot, myself...
If "neocon" means an introvert who's had second thoughts, well, fine. Whatever. For people who need labels, and for whom labels mean more than ideas, anyway.
Hey Dean, glad you and your spouse made it on the radio. From your comments, it sounds like they didn't change your meanings. So you came out ahead in your media dealings.
Regarding the 2004 election; don't underestimate Howard Dean. In my opinion, he will wrap up the Democratic nomination and move to the center (like Bill Clinton did in 1992). However, Bush will win in 2004, the advantages of incumbency are too great for a popular president. Yesterday I created a chart showing why Bush will win. It may interest you.
Dean,
I'd never seen that Peggy Noonan column until now. What a wonderful read.
Not sure if I would ever be able to vote Republican (not that I can vote here anyway) while the far Right has so much influence (re: your Federal Marriage Amendment reference), but I think this mirrors the kind of transition I have made in my own politics - except that mine is happening much more quickly.
The "lunatic" Howard Dean? Howard Dean is more conservative than Gephardt. Still, Dean provides, in the words of Goldwater, "a choice, not an echo." If anyone is a lunatic, it is President Bush. Bush lied to get us into war, and he doesn't seem to know what to do now that we are in it.
But Republicans by and large don't suffer from blind loyalty or blind antagonism.
ROFL!
The Democratic Party will now stick with its guy forever, no matter how harmful he is.
Yea, as contrasted to the current Right wing. Still ROFL.
Geez, not this crap again. Mr. Thomas, I wish you would understand that the electorate is fed up with this "Bush lied" lie. Keep repeating it, please. It just makes Bush's re-election more likely. Likewise with the "Bush has no plan" meme.
Let me make an analogy that should be plain to you. Bush's weakness is not the lack of a plan. Every NFL team plans to win the Super Bowl. Only one does, because it executes better than all the others. Likewise, the US has a plan in Iraq. (For national security reasons, Joe Public at Large is not privy to all the details of it. Nonetheless, the fact that we don't have all the details of the plan doesn't mean it doesn't exist.) Bush's weaknesses are a) the adequacy or lack thereof of the plan, and b) execution of the plan.
Try hammering those points home instead of your current broken record.
Sorry, to disappoint you, Samuel, but there actually have been growing doubts among the general public about Bush's leadership on Iraq.
Nixon had a plan for Vietnam. Johnson saw the light at the end of the tunnel. The "Joe Public" thing is the real crap.
Here's what really seals it for me:
Rather than the introspection that is required to say, "wow, why do these people who used to see it my way see it differently now?" these folks choose to mock, deride, and attack instead.
That says a lot, don't you think?
Dean,
Your descrbing Howard Dean as a lunatic is itself "mocking, deriding, and attacking."
No, not really, since I'm not laughing at him or dismissing him. He frightens and disturbs me--much as Buchanan frightened and disturbed people in 1992.
I'm not making fun of him. I'm afraid of him.
If McCain was President right now, we'd have a an ethical, reasoned Administration, and most of the BS wouldn't be around. He would have had overwhelming crossover support, in spite of the fact that he's a social conservative. Florida would never have happened.
This country would be VASTLY better off if we had him. The hatchet-and-smear job run against him by Bush and Corporation was disgusting. The _potential_ I felt at a McCain rally was amazing: Liberals and conservatives, all together, because they all knew he was an ethical man. And he still is.
Which points at the strange truth: Nobody minds the country being run by a guy from the other party IF WE PERCEIVE that person to be honest, and ethical. It just hasn't happened in a while.
Ross, we have an "ethical, reasoned administration" right now, regardless of your personal feelings on the matter.
As for your "nobody minds" statement, its about as false as you can get. George H.W. Bush faced similar, if lesser, difficulties as his son. Reagan was honest and ethical, and villified by the left. Carter was honest and ethical, and mocked (correctly)as ineffectual.
But in any case, it currently looks like President Bush will get four more years to work with.
As someone who voted for McCain in the primaries, I must say I'm not honestly at all sure where we'd be if he were President.
I consider the current administration very honest, very ethical, and attacked by narrow-minded partisans who frequently attack it from no rational basis whatsoever. I very much support is stance on the war--which would have only, if anything, been more hawkish and aggressive if McCain were President--and am fine with its stances on numerous domestic issues.
I really have to ask: if John McCain were President right now, does anyone doubt that we would have invaded Iraq? Possibly sooner than the current administration did? I for one do not.
People such as David Horowitz that leave the left for the right are sometimes more antangonistic toward those they left behind than those who were always on the right.
I wouldn't disagree with that, Joel. There's a sort of "in your face/Road to Damascus" attitude that infects such folks.
Mind you, I find Horowitz' "Radical Son" to be a powerful and instructive tome.
I also must observe: Horowtitz might be less incendiary if the Left hadn't been so hostile and nasty toward him when he first started having his second thoughts. Indeed, he and others who had second thoughts had incredibly nasty and mean-spirited experiences that, to a man, contributed to their apostacy. Figures like Ron Radosh and Peter Collier, or Malcolm Muggeridge or Whittaker Chambers before them, were treated incredibly viciously and vilely when they started having their second thoughts--and try as they might have to stay civil and rational about it, they were demonized anyway.
Which has led a lot of us to wonder, in dismay: is it in the nature of the Left to so vilely charicature and demean those within the fold who come to question it? Is Horowitz the only one with the balls to really confront left-wing hate for what it is? And if not, then how do you explain the others: the Muggeridges, the Chambers', the Radoshes, who've been similarly reviled and ignored? To say nothing of more recent figures like Camille Paglia, Christina Hoff Sommers, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Linda Chavez, Ward Connerly, or Tammy Bruce?
Oh, but wait, let's forestall one thing:
By bringing up these names, do I forever doom myself to being pigeonholed and demeaned with a two-dimensional, cliche'd word like "neocon?" Merely by asking the question, or by saying something non-derogatory about these other apostates?
My real question: is there something inherently closed-minded, bigoted, and illiberal about so-called leftists that leads them to treat apostates with such cruelty, derision, and arrogant dismissal? Most of them would say so.
If they are wrong--and they may be--how exactly are they wrong? Or is it all their fault, each and every one of them, for the cruel treatment they've so often received?
Dean,
There is some truth in what you say, but it also infects the right. When Republican Henry Bellmon of Oklahoma was in his second (non-consecutive) term as governor and took some progressive stands, the right in Oklahoma went bananas. When Bellmon voted for the Panama Canal treaty as a U.S. Senator, the right-wing Daily Oklahoman bitterly denounced him in a prominent editorial as a "traitor" and a "Benedict Arnold." When Bellmon announced that he supported integration in the public schools and would not opposed busing to achieve it, conservatives called him some of the vilest names, and several hung him in effigy. Never mind that he still had a very conservative voting record. And Bellmon hadn't even left the party.
Is the phenomena really surprising, though? Look at how spouses go at each other in divorce court. Americans are very tribal. When someone leaves the tribe, many will always regard that person as an outsider to be shunned, demonized or both.
Dean:
Which has led a lot of us to wonder, in dismay: is it in the nature of the Left to so vilely charicature and demean those within the fold who come to question it?
Well, that's certainly an interesting way to put it.
Partisans of all stripes fear apostates the most. Christian-on-Christian persecution was worst against those who change sects; read the latter portion of Fox's Book of Martyrs if you need examples. Even today, Muslim sharia tolerates lifelong Christians and Jews but calls for the death of converts from Islam.
I don't think this is limited to religious apostasy. I remember some rather heated dialogue when Senator Jeffords went Independent and delivered the Senate into the hands of the Democrats.
One widely respected leftist does give me pause, however: Karl Marx. I find myself consistently amazed at Marxism's tenacity, given the thorough discrediting it's received.
One thing I've noticed is that Marxism seems to promote this "all or nothing" meme in the minds of its advocates: that all causes and injustices devolve down to some fundamental wrong, and that all means to right that wrong - even means that hurt the causes and injustices most people really care about - are, ultimately, the only way to "really" solve the problems everyone's happening. This seems to lead to some really self-destructive behavior on the parts of some.
Marx's bogeyman, of course, was capitalism, and pure Marxism is still fundamentally economic. But Marxist-Hegelian-type thinking can take up any cause.
An example: consider the reluctance the National Organization for Women showed in supporting the purported victims of some of Clinton's sexual assaults, such as Paula Jones. I remember a quote from that time where someone really said something like: "If we support these women, they will damage Clinton's reputation, which will hurt his ability to pass more pro-woman reforms and give our enemies the ammunition they need to wrest power from him." That's heavily paraphrased, but it gets the general idea across: that, in order to support "the cause", we must sacrifice a few women on the altar.
That's the mentality that drives some of the Bush-hate crowd, I think. People with causes start thinking of them in Marxist terms, and thus see any means of removing obstacles to those causes as justified. I don't think it's much of a mistake that ANSWER acts as a vanguard for a lot of these protests.
Of course, none of this should be construed to imply that everyone who opposed the war is a closet Communist. But there's something about this dialectic political construct that seems to suck leftists in. This fascinates me, and I'd be interested in hearing analysis on the subject from people who have studied it more closely.
Speaking in a broad brush manner, IMHO, liberals view politics as a form of "religion" and therefore view converts as a challenge to their "faith". Conservatives, generally speaking, regard politics as a vocation, something you do for a while then move on. Therfore, they are not as hard on those who have decided to "change careers".
Dean,
When she reiterates Reagan's position concerning changing parties -"I didn't leave them, they left me" it makes me think of the lines that Noonan quotes from JFK's inaugural. "We shall pay any price, bear any burden, suffer any hardship . . . to secure the survival and success of liberty." Is there one of the nine who could say those words today with a straight face?
Have you considered what Democrats (or Republicans) would make of JFK (and his policies and positions) if he were to reappear tomorrow? Would he be considered a traitor to Democrat "ideals"?
JFK and RFK were tough politicians with mean streaks but I don't recall them referring to their opponents as "enemies" nor do I recall them resorting to vacuous slander and derision in order to advance their candidacies.
Ross,
In theory, I agree with you that “nobody minds the country being run by a guy from the other party” if we think he will do a good job. In theory, communism works very well. In practice, communism does not work for people and I doubt divided Americans could ever agree that the same person was doing a good job since we obviously disagree on the objectives of government.
Having read quite a bit about Jack Kennedy's life, I'd have to say that by today's standards, Kennedy would have to be considered an "ultra right winger/Rush Limbaugh dittohead" type. Pro-business, hawkish, a dedicated Cold Warrior, a tax-cutter, and the man who enacted the greatest nuclear arms buildup in world history and touched off the arms race.
He did botch Bay of Pigs, but that's got nothing to do with ideology.
He was a brutal campaigner, that's for sure. If you look at how he campaigned against Henry Cabot Lodge, for example: whoof! He made Nixon look like a weakling by comparison--and Nixon was one tough street fighter when it came to campaigning, let me tell you.
A fabulous book, by the way, is Chris Matthews' Nixon and Kennedy. It doesn't sound that interesting, but the two men had a very long and interesting relationship with each other, first as long-time friends then as bitter enemies.
Yes, but by today's standards Abraham Lincoln wouldn't be considered very progressive on race relations.
Maybe Kennedy was pro-business, but that isn't how Republicans portrayed him at the time.
Joel,
Your comment is why I'm an independent. The Republicans and Democrats swap positions all the time. Sometimes they legitimately change their minds. More often, IMO, they simply want to oppose the other side in the hopes of scoring political points and do not even consider principles. Many of JFK’s beliefs are now espoused by the Republicans and anathema to the Democrats. More recently, many of those supporting the liberation of Iraq opposed stopping the slaughter in Kosovo. Likewise, those who supported Clinton’s decision to intervene in Europe over the objections of the UN criticize Bush for removing Saddam over the objections of the UN. There are names for folks who put their party over principle. Hypocrites. For my part, I think Clinton and Bush both did the right thing in these cases and made the world a better place with their respective military interventions.
Admiral Quixote,
You have hit upon a dark, deep secret, that for both political parties, it is about power more than principle. Take a look at Majority Leader Frist. He was fairly liberal when he was a doctor, but once he decided to run as a Republican, he changed a huge number of his positions. Dick Gephardt used to be strongly against abortion, but switched to pro-choice when he decided to run for president in 1988.
Joel & Admiral,
When has the political process been other than about power? To my (admittedly limited) knowledge, the purpose of politics is to exercise power.
If one proceeds by the logical process that 50% of any population is below average and that in a representational democracy, wielding power involves obtaining the votes of 50% + 1 of the voters (or a consonant plurality), how can there ever be any surprise at the strategies employed to obtain that 50% + 1?
We are fortunate that voting is an option. If you believe that our current politicians are weathervanes, try and imagine a society in which voting is a legal obligation.
All bread and circuses - all the time.
RDB,
Yes, politics has always been about power, but you miss the important question. (Don't feel bad, so do most politicians). The important question is what is the purpose of power?
Many politicians are in office for the sake of power. They make power a goal in itself. These are the moral wimps who shift with the wind to stay in power. The few politicians I respect want power to fulfill or protect things that are important to them. These statesmen see power as a means to achieving principled goals, not an end in itself.
The easy way to tell the difference between a politician and a statesmen. A politician will almost always vote with the majority of his power base while a statesman may disagree with his power base and try to lead them to his way of thinking.
RDB,
Once more comment. You said if we had mandatory voting and wimpy politicians we would have bread and circuses all the time?
What do you think welfare plus free TV are? We've had bread and circuses ever since the welfare state started...