I even like what the Republicans are saying. From a story identified as written by the Associated Press in the print edition of the Durham Herald Sun (curiously carried neither on their website nor that of the Associated Press but run on ABC News' website as its own): "It's going to be a cheerful opposition," said Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind. "We're going to carry those timeless principles of limited government, a strong defense, traditional values, to the American people." Pence, of Indiana, is expected to take over the No. 3 leadership post among House Republicans." After all the years of recrimination and uncivil backbiting on both sides of the aisle, Pence's offer of a cheerful opposition couldn't be more welcome news. Everett Dirksen and Lyndon Johnson were drinking buddies, as were John McCormack and Sam Rayburn. Tom Delay and Nancy Pelosi couldn't shake hands, and the politics of the day reflected that. Bitter partisanship made middle ground impossible to find. Single-party rule would be awful and corrupt, and a cheerful interaction between the parties would be a wonderful change.
And from another AP story in the same paper: "Even students who did not vote for Obama said they felt a responsibility to 'try to help him out' and how we live in a democracy that isn't about 'government governing the people, but about people taking responsibility,' says [DePaul University political science professor Molly] Andolina, who researches the habits of young voters. 'It is amazing to hear them talking in these terms.'"
Amazing indeed. An era of cooperation would also be wonderful, and the fact that it is our youngest voters who are voicing these views gives us much to hope for in the future. Enough with the vituperation on AM radio from the right and sarcastic superiority in the blogosphere from the left. Responsibility and cooperation--my God, what a concept.
Historians are likely to see the most recent election as the end of an era, and it's been an odd era: the post- Viet Nam, post-Watergate era, an era in which Baby Boomers were the most important voting group. My guess is that it will be referred to as the Reagan/Bush Era (sorry Bill). Its signal characteristics will be remembered as coalition politics in which no faction was ever happy and deregulation of all industries and markets. That era imploded in the Fall of 2008, a victim of its own successes. I'm hoping that the next era, one that began Tuesday night, will be remembered as a problem-solving era in which we as a nation focus on solutions, overall goals, cooperation, and tolerance.
Oh, wait. Tolerance. Right. The picture isn't all rosy. California passed Proposition 8. Damn.
Eyes on the prize. Stick to your goals. We've made so much progress. We'll get there. Keep the faith.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Sunday, November 9, 2008
The falcon cannot hear the falconer, but maybe it doen't matter this time around
Tuesday's election was not just historic, it was different. It might even have redefined the way we go about American politics. For the first time since the Kennedies, the a major party didn't vote as a coalition of factions, but as a unified party. I never thought I'd see it from either side, certainly not from the Left.
Here's the deal: since the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers in 1963 and 1968, American liberalism has been defined more by what it is against than what it is for. We've become a loosely affiliated group of often like-minded people who oppose racism, sexism, handguns, pollution, global warming, limitations on abortion, war, and pretty much everything the second Bush administration ever did. Opposition has been what we're all about, and it's been getting more complicated every election: Johnson ran against poverty and ran attack ads against Goldwater. It worked. McGovern ran against war and racial discrimination, and while I can't remember any attack ads, that may just been because he had no money. Anyway, it didn't work. Carter was against discrimination and pollution and right to work laws and sexism and Republican corruption, and it worked, but once he got into office, each of his constituent interest groups tried to jostle and elbow its way to the head of the line, which pushed his administration farther to the left than the electorate could tolerate, so he cratered after one term. Clinton put Carter's coalition back together and motivated minority voters, but he's not really a good example, because he never could have won if crackpot billionaire third party candidate Ross Perot hadn't siphoned off 19% of the center-right vote from Bush pere. Without Perot, Pere would have won in a walk. Really more of a stroll. Or an amble. Nevertheless, Clinton sneaked into power, and once in, he (personally, as opposed to those around him) seemed to understand that the party needed to stay towards the center to retain the White House. He hadn't really won, after all, and he was smart enough to know it. Here's where the perils of coalition politics took a bite out of his behind. There was never a chance that an outsider like him was going to have much impact on Congress, especially having won only 43% of the vote. Not that he really tried, at least not until it was too late. His people just didn't understand that they were more lucky than good and had no mandate to boss Congress around. Once again, each constituency group made loud demands, and with a Democratic Congress and a Democrat in the White House, they all expected action. Once again, it led to electoral failure, this time in the form of the 1994 mid-term elections.
When the Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994, a mere two years after Clinton's election (if we'd all remembered that he didn't really win we wouldn't have been so surprised) it wasn't as much his fault as everyone said. Dems had been too vocally partisan about fringe issues in Clinton's first two years. After twelve years of Reagan and Bush pere, by God, House Democrats were ready for a turn, and they demanded quick action on dozens of pet projects and harebrained schemes. Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, got Republicans nationwide to buy into the (mostly never implemented or even seriously attempted) Contract With America so that all of them were running the same campaign. It resonated everywhere in several senses of the word. Democrats dissolved into their various bickering splinter groups and failed everywhere. Newt may have been forming a coalition, or co-opting the Reagan one under his own banner, but it didn't look like it at the time.
During the post-Kennedy years, the Republicans had started their own coalitions, theirs just didn't have as many moving parts. At least not to start. Republicans up through Nixon had run as fiscal conservatives who saw foreign relations as a route to trade, peace and prosperity. In the post-Nixon period, Reagan figured out that there were a lot of "values" voters who didn't think their voices were being heard throughout the south and Midwest. He welcomed them into his tent. He managed to say things that traditional conservatives wanted to hear about balanced budgets, strong defense, and smaller government, and also managed to convince conservative Christians that he shared their views on abortion, gun rights, gay rights, prayer in school and that kind of thing--issues that had never been aired on the national stage before. It's odd that he convinced them, since he never went to church, but such was his appeal (George Will loved him) that nobody ever questioned him on any of this. His voters thought of themselves not so much as a coalition as two groups with a common purpose who were working together.
In reality, though, his voters were a coalition of a complicated suite of Christian conservatives on the one hand and a simple group of fiscal/foreign policy conservatives on the other, two sets that had noting in common but who were sustained in harmony by the charisma of Reagan himself. In the absence of Reagan, the Christian Right was unenthusiastic about Bush pere (unfortunate for history, since he knew how to start a war, which fils did not). It abandoned Pere to defeat at the hands of Clinton/Perot and only found its footing in the nineties when it was united not by previously-acknowledged common purpose but by its newly-discovered hatred of Bill Clinton. When the same coalition was reassembled in 2000 by Bush and Rove, the bickering and infighting amongst different Republican factions reached a volume not heard since the Democrats of the Carter administration.
Whether Reagan believed all of what he said is open to debate, but what he promised bore no resemblance to what happened, except for the tax cuts and increases in military spending. On his watch the government grew, the deficit ballooned, our international standing sagged (Jessie Helms made a mockery of the U.N., and Reagan did nothing), and discretionary spending soared. On the values issues his judges (O'Connor, Kennedy) upheld Roe v. Wade, and he allowed limitations on gun ownership (the Brady Bill). Rove and maybe Bush appear to have learned from Reagan that promising conservatives what they want is important, but actually giving them what they want is less so. Who else are they going to vote for?
So the overarching themes of the last forty years of presidential politics are that (1) governors usually win and Senators usually lose (just think back) and (2) that you can't get elected president except at the head of a coalition, but once elected, that coalition will make it more difficult for you both to govern and to retain power. Your constituents will want to pull your party towards its extremes, and disappointed factions will splinter and complain and develop a sense of frustrated entitlement.
All of this factionalization leads to lots of anger, too. Single issue voters on both sides are so sure of their positions that they have no ability to find middle ground. Anti-abortion Republicans feel justified in protests and demonstrations that seem utterly unreasonable to any outside observer. Pro-environment liberals set fire to Colorado condominium developments and Hummer dealerships. They call themselves "pro-life" and "pro-environment," but they're not. They're not "pro" anything. They're against abortion and against gas-guzzling SUVs. The fact that abortion and gas-guzzling are wrong is what's important, otherwise they'd be working in orphanages and giving flowers to Prius drivers. Being for something doesn't make you angry, certainly not angry enough to commit murder or arson.
There's a lot of anger and impatience associated with the things liberals have been against over the last forty years, and a lot of it is understandable. African-Americans were angry at discrimination and the awful way they've been treated throughout our history. Women were angry at being paid less than men. Environmentalists were impatient with a government that relied on crackpots to turn a blind eye to global warming. Civil libertarians watched with horror and anger as phones were tapped and non-combatents were detained in military prisons. All of that liberal impatience and anger is hard enough to suppress when a Regan or a Bush is in the White House, but it comes bubbling to the surface scalding hot once Clinton or Carter gets elected. "Our guy is in the Oval Office. He promised us he'd do something about this. He couldn't have gotten elected without us. This issue is extremely important to me. Why isn't he doing anything?"
Over time the coalitions on both sides have become increasingly unstable and uneasy, because every member wants to be first. The same coalition that adhered like rubber cement to the charismatic Reagan abandoned the less charismatic Bush pere and blew up like a hand grenade under the awkward Bush fils.
Until now. Everything just changed.
Last Tuesday the board got swept clean. It's all the sudden different. A young man with a soaring message of hope and coalition did not, as all of his predecessors had for forty years, appeal to our fears and feeling that we've been victimized. He did not collect a bunch of pre-existing factions and make promises to them. He didn't even specifically appeal to organized labor or civil rights groups. He appealed to all of us. He identified the major challenges facing our nation: the war in Iraq, the economy, global warning, health care, and energy independence, and told us his plans for dealing with them. He then built a political organization like only a Chicago pol knows how: from the ground up. Volunteers showed up from everywhere, and he used them--he didn't need Clinton's donor list or the Teamsters' volunteer list. He utilized the Internet to raise untold amounts of money--more than they could spend--from millions of small donors rather than a few big ones. When Bill Clinton was in the White House, if Hollywood came calling with requests to extend copyrights beyond the dreams of avarice (and certainly beyond the authorization of the Constitution) Bill had to listen. Not Barrack. When a coalition of big box church preachers wanted to talk to Bush fils or pere about the Biblical implications of tax policy, Bush (either) had to listen. Obama won't. He doesn't owe anybody anything. Several actors in the most recent presidential drama stepped on to the presidential stage tried to reinvent themselves to appeal more to their party's base. Not Obama. He knew who he was and he stuck to it. Finally, a real deal. And finally, no coalition. No special interest except a national interest.
His overarching message is one of cooperation, transformation, collaboration, and hope. It is an inspiring message. The Democratic Party, and I hope the American liberal movement, has suddenly, in the course of just two years, defined itself in terms of what it is for, rather than what it is against. The energy and patriotic pride we're feeling can transform politics into a more productive, more civil, happier future. Without coalition politics and all the jostling and trying to elbow our ways to the front of the line it entails, we can develop priorities as a nation. Without the angry baggage that comes with issue politics, we can address our most pressing needs, rather than the ones with the most vocal protesters.
I think our homework is to get along, to remember that the country is governed from the center, not the left, and to concentrate on what we're for, not what we're against. And that would be wonderful.
I know the election was historic, and wonderfully so. But it was unusual, too, and its unusualness may turn out to be more important than its historicity.
Sorry for going on.
Here's the deal: since the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers in 1963 and 1968, American liberalism has been defined more by what it is against than what it is for. We've become a loosely affiliated group of often like-minded people who oppose racism, sexism, handguns, pollution, global warming, limitations on abortion, war, and pretty much everything the second Bush administration ever did. Opposition has been what we're all about, and it's been getting more complicated every election: Johnson ran against poverty and ran attack ads against Goldwater. It worked. McGovern ran against war and racial discrimination, and while I can't remember any attack ads, that may just been because he had no money. Anyway, it didn't work. Carter was against discrimination and pollution and right to work laws and sexism and Republican corruption, and it worked, but once he got into office, each of his constituent interest groups tried to jostle and elbow its way to the head of the line, which pushed his administration farther to the left than the electorate could tolerate, so he cratered after one term. Clinton put Carter's coalition back together and motivated minority voters, but he's not really a good example, because he never could have won if crackpot billionaire third party candidate Ross Perot hadn't siphoned off 19% of the center-right vote from Bush pere. Without Perot, Pere would have won in a walk. Really more of a stroll. Or an amble. Nevertheless, Clinton sneaked into power, and once in, he (personally, as opposed to those around him) seemed to understand that the party needed to stay towards the center to retain the White House. He hadn't really won, after all, and he was smart enough to know it. Here's where the perils of coalition politics took a bite out of his behind. There was never a chance that an outsider like him was going to have much impact on Congress, especially having won only 43% of the vote. Not that he really tried, at least not until it was too late. His people just didn't understand that they were more lucky than good and had no mandate to boss Congress around. Once again, each constituency group made loud demands, and with a Democratic Congress and a Democrat in the White House, they all expected action. Once again, it led to electoral failure, this time in the form of the 1994 mid-term elections.
When the Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994, a mere two years after Clinton's election (if we'd all remembered that he didn't really win we wouldn't have been so surprised) it wasn't as much his fault as everyone said. Dems had been too vocally partisan about fringe issues in Clinton's first two years. After twelve years of Reagan and Bush pere, by God, House Democrats were ready for a turn, and they demanded quick action on dozens of pet projects and harebrained schemes. Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, got Republicans nationwide to buy into the (mostly never implemented or even seriously attempted) Contract With America so that all of them were running the same campaign. It resonated everywhere in several senses of the word. Democrats dissolved into their various bickering splinter groups and failed everywhere. Newt may have been forming a coalition, or co-opting the Reagan one under his own banner, but it didn't look like it at the time.
During the post-Kennedy years, the Republicans had started their own coalitions, theirs just didn't have as many moving parts. At least not to start. Republicans up through Nixon had run as fiscal conservatives who saw foreign relations as a route to trade, peace and prosperity. In the post-Nixon period, Reagan figured out that there were a lot of "values" voters who didn't think their voices were being heard throughout the south and Midwest. He welcomed them into his tent. He managed to say things that traditional conservatives wanted to hear about balanced budgets, strong defense, and smaller government, and also managed to convince conservative Christians that he shared their views on abortion, gun rights, gay rights, prayer in school and that kind of thing--issues that had never been aired on the national stage before. It's odd that he convinced them, since he never went to church, but such was his appeal (George Will loved him) that nobody ever questioned him on any of this. His voters thought of themselves not so much as a coalition as two groups with a common purpose who were working together.
In reality, though, his voters were a coalition of a complicated suite of Christian conservatives on the one hand and a simple group of fiscal/foreign policy conservatives on the other, two sets that had noting in common but who were sustained in harmony by the charisma of Reagan himself. In the absence of Reagan, the Christian Right was unenthusiastic about Bush pere (unfortunate for history, since he knew how to start a war, which fils did not). It abandoned Pere to defeat at the hands of Clinton/Perot and only found its footing in the nineties when it was united not by previously-acknowledged common purpose but by its newly-discovered hatred of Bill Clinton. When the same coalition was reassembled in 2000 by Bush and Rove, the bickering and infighting amongst different Republican factions reached a volume not heard since the Democrats of the Carter administration.
Whether Reagan believed all of what he said is open to debate, but what he promised bore no resemblance to what happened, except for the tax cuts and increases in military spending. On his watch the government grew, the deficit ballooned, our international standing sagged (Jessie Helms made a mockery of the U.N., and Reagan did nothing), and discretionary spending soared. On the values issues his judges (O'Connor, Kennedy) upheld Roe v. Wade, and he allowed limitations on gun ownership (the Brady Bill). Rove and maybe Bush appear to have learned from Reagan that promising conservatives what they want is important, but actually giving them what they want is less so. Who else are they going to vote for?
So the overarching themes of the last forty years of presidential politics are that (1) governors usually win and Senators usually lose (just think back) and (2) that you can't get elected president except at the head of a coalition, but once elected, that coalition will make it more difficult for you both to govern and to retain power. Your constituents will want to pull your party towards its extremes, and disappointed factions will splinter and complain and develop a sense of frustrated entitlement.
All of this factionalization leads to lots of anger, too. Single issue voters on both sides are so sure of their positions that they have no ability to find middle ground. Anti-abortion Republicans feel justified in protests and demonstrations that seem utterly unreasonable to any outside observer. Pro-environment liberals set fire to Colorado condominium developments and Hummer dealerships. They call themselves "pro-life" and "pro-environment," but they're not. They're not "pro" anything. They're against abortion and against gas-guzzling SUVs. The fact that abortion and gas-guzzling are wrong is what's important, otherwise they'd be working in orphanages and giving flowers to Prius drivers. Being for something doesn't make you angry, certainly not angry enough to commit murder or arson.
There's a lot of anger and impatience associated with the things liberals have been against over the last forty years, and a lot of it is understandable. African-Americans were angry at discrimination and the awful way they've been treated throughout our history. Women were angry at being paid less than men. Environmentalists were impatient with a government that relied on crackpots to turn a blind eye to global warming. Civil libertarians watched with horror and anger as phones were tapped and non-combatents were detained in military prisons. All of that liberal impatience and anger is hard enough to suppress when a Regan or a Bush is in the White House, but it comes bubbling to the surface scalding hot once Clinton or Carter gets elected. "Our guy is in the Oval Office. He promised us he'd do something about this. He couldn't have gotten elected without us. This issue is extremely important to me. Why isn't he doing anything?"
Over time the coalitions on both sides have become increasingly unstable and uneasy, because every member wants to be first. The same coalition that adhered like rubber cement to the charismatic Reagan abandoned the less charismatic Bush pere and blew up like a hand grenade under the awkward Bush fils.
Until now. Everything just changed.
Last Tuesday the board got swept clean. It's all the sudden different. A young man with a soaring message of hope and coalition did not, as all of his predecessors had for forty years, appeal to our fears and feeling that we've been victimized. He did not collect a bunch of pre-existing factions and make promises to them. He didn't even specifically appeal to organized labor or civil rights groups. He appealed to all of us. He identified the major challenges facing our nation: the war in Iraq, the economy, global warning, health care, and energy independence, and told us his plans for dealing with them. He then built a political organization like only a Chicago pol knows how: from the ground up. Volunteers showed up from everywhere, and he used them--he didn't need Clinton's donor list or the Teamsters' volunteer list. He utilized the Internet to raise untold amounts of money--more than they could spend--from millions of small donors rather than a few big ones. When Bill Clinton was in the White House, if Hollywood came calling with requests to extend copyrights beyond the dreams of avarice (and certainly beyond the authorization of the Constitution) Bill had to listen. Not Barrack. When a coalition of big box church preachers wanted to talk to Bush fils or pere about the Biblical implications of tax policy, Bush (either) had to listen. Obama won't. He doesn't owe anybody anything. Several actors in the most recent presidential drama stepped on to the presidential stage tried to reinvent themselves to appeal more to their party's base. Not Obama. He knew who he was and he stuck to it. Finally, a real deal. And finally, no coalition. No special interest except a national interest.
His overarching message is one of cooperation, transformation, collaboration, and hope. It is an inspiring message. The Democratic Party, and I hope the American liberal movement, has suddenly, in the course of just two years, defined itself in terms of what it is for, rather than what it is against. The energy and patriotic pride we're feeling can transform politics into a more productive, more civil, happier future. Without coalition politics and all the jostling and trying to elbow our ways to the front of the line it entails, we can develop priorities as a nation. Without the angry baggage that comes with issue politics, we can address our most pressing needs, rather than the ones with the most vocal protesters.
I think our homework is to get along, to remember that the country is governed from the center, not the left, and to concentrate on what we're for, not what we're against. And that would be wonderful.
I know the election was historic, and wonderfully so. But it was unusual, too, and its unusualness may turn out to be more important than its historicity.
Sorry for going on.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Lessons learned
1. Incumbents can't run as the party of change. Not just McCain and Palin, but deeply entrenched Republicans across the country tried to co-opt the call for change in Washington by, without any explanation at all, claiming to be agents of change. Voters weren't fooled for a minute, so you've seen the last of that tactic for at least a generation.
2. Negative campaigning may have run its course. Negative and often untrue campaigning, like Bush pere (well, really Roger Ailes and Lee Atwater) used against Dukakis, and Clinton (well, really James Carville) in turn used against Bush pere, and most especially like Bush fils (most certainly really Karl Rove) used against McCain, Gore, and Kerry has been increasingly effective for the last twenty years. Until now. The wave seems to have crested with Liddy Dole's "godless" ad (scroll down) and perhaps it will now recede, not because the candidates are feeling slimy or because the voters have complained so consistently about it, but because uniformly across the country the more negative campaigners lost this year.
3. Liberals are patriotic, too. Since the Nixon administration, Republican have shown a pronounced tendency to describe liberal values as un-American and unpatriotic, as though sticking to their party line was the only way one could be a patriotic American. This was never true and we now have proof. The displays across the country on election night were the happiest and deepest kind of patriotic pride. The candidates that we (Democrats) have run for the last 35 years (think back--McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, Gore, Kerry) have all been compromises of one sort of another, and the only winners, Clinton and Carter, got the job because they ran effective campaigns, not because they had an inspiring message. It's been a long time since we had something to be so proud about. It's so nice to be genuinely happy.
4. Crisis sharpens our collective mind. Things are worse in our country in many ways than they have been in my lifetime. As a nation, we evaluated the candidates and made a choice that demonstrates much about our values. As I heard someone famous say earlier today, "when the night is darkest, the stars shine more brightly." In the Great Depression, we elected Roosevelt, and in World War II, we did it again. This time we elected a man with a message of cooperation, collaboration, change, and transformation.
5. Charisma matters. So do intelligence and oratory. A lot. Charisma and intelligence can get you elected and lead to prosperity (think Clinton) but charisma and oratory make you a political icon who changes global politics (think Reagan). A president who has little charisma, is an ineffective orator and shows few signs of an active intelligence (I'm sure you can think of a recent example) oversees disasters. But we're talking about elections here, and despite the conclusive evidence that an unintelligent, uncharismatic, unintelligent man can reach the oval office, Obama's moving oratory and charismatic stage presence showed from the start. Remember that speech he gave at the Kerry convention? You knew immediately that he belonged on the national stage.
6. Change can come fast. As recently as the Iowa caucuses, major political figures were reluctant to endorse Obama because they thought he had no chance of winning. In early 1992, Bush had just finished Gulf War I and no big-name Democrats dared to declare as candidates because pere's popularity numbers were considered unassailable. The little-known governor of Arkansas decided to give it a shot on little more than his own keynote address at the convention that selected a doomed presidential democrat and a lot of ambition. Then the economy took a nose dive and billionaire crackpot Ross Perot entered the race on his own dime. Brilliant politician he may be, but Clinton got a whole lot of help from current events.
7. Race isn't the factor we thought it was. Even among African-Americans, conventional wisdom has been that they can get elected as mayors and to congress pretty much anywhere, but statewide elections are beyond their grasp everywhere. No one will ever say this again. This will transform electoral politics at all levels, but particularly future races for the U.S. Senate and governor, all across the country.
8. Once you have a political identity, you're stuck with it. This time around two of the Republicans tried to re-invent themselves as people who adhered much more closely to the values of the evangelical right than their records supported. In this they failed, but the effort prolonged the candidacy of Mike Huckabee, a funny and talented crank, beyond all reason. It just doesn't work for Republicans to do this, but I predict they'll keep at it. Ever since Reagan invited big-church evangelicals into the tent, they've been feeling like they should be driving, and they never believed in McCain or Romney. If McCain hadn't selected Palin, they would have all stayed home, so she did him far more good than harm, no matter how strange she looked trying to mouth rehearsed lines. Allowed to answer questions spontaneously from her own script she won't look stupid and can go fourteen rounds with Anderson Cooper. Palin/Huckabee 2012.
9. Long-term legislators can't win the White House. A person who has been in the Senate a long time, or even a medium time, has made a lot of compromises and a lot of votes. This provides his or her opponents in the primaries and the general election with lots of ammunition. McGovern, Mondale, Gore, Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and McCain all had lengthy legislative records that were used against them in highly imaginative, frustrating, and occasionally entertaining ways. All lost. The winners were mostly governors and former governors (Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush fils) and one notable short-term senator. You have a competitive advantage if there are fewer ways to shoot you down.
10. Joe Lieberman is snake-bit. Just look at what's happened to him. Twice in his life he thought he might be vice-president. Who aspires twice to the vice-presidency? He makes McCain's decision-making history look charmed. Poor schmuck. His committee chairmanship days are suddenly behind him, his moon has waned. What's next for Joe the senator? Besides a certain amount of embarassment, I mean.
11, Republicans are going to firm up. I was listening to Rush Limbaugh today. Rush and his listeners are all mad. Their take on the election is that they haven't been represented on the ticket since 1994, when Newt Gingrich's Contract With America convinced Republicans that the country was theirs as it had had been for most of the Reagan administration. The difference with Gingrich, and eventually Delay, was a harsh partisanship that demonized the other side. Bush fils was somebody that the evangelical right embraced as one of their own because they thought he'd appoint judges who might overturn Roe v. Wade, and he has. Ideological conservatives, the ones who favor small government and low deficits, are going to have to figure out how to share a party with people who care more about gay marriage and abortion. Not an easy fit.
12. Democrats have to move to the center. I'm left of center pretty far. But Obama's presidency will be about governing the nation, not about accomplishing everything I wished we Democrats could have done for the last forty years in the first hundred days of his presidency. There's lots to be done, and I'm extremely enthusiastic about the man we've chosen as president, but let's remember he's ruling the country, not just the blue states. This isn't about us, it's about the country. Let's behave.
But boy, am I proud.
2. Negative campaigning may have run its course. Negative and often untrue campaigning, like Bush pere (well, really Roger Ailes and Lee Atwater) used against Dukakis, and Clinton (well, really James Carville) in turn used against Bush pere, and most especially like Bush fils (most certainly really Karl Rove) used against McCain, Gore, and Kerry has been increasingly effective for the last twenty years. Until now. The wave seems to have crested with Liddy Dole's "godless" ad (scroll down) and perhaps it will now recede, not because the candidates are feeling slimy or because the voters have complained so consistently about it, but because uniformly across the country the more negative campaigners lost this year.
3. Liberals are patriotic, too. Since the Nixon administration, Republican have shown a pronounced tendency to describe liberal values as un-American and unpatriotic, as though sticking to their party line was the only way one could be a patriotic American. This was never true and we now have proof. The displays across the country on election night were the happiest and deepest kind of patriotic pride. The candidates that we (Democrats) have run for the last 35 years (think back--McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, Gore, Kerry) have all been compromises of one sort of another, and the only winners, Clinton and Carter, got the job because they ran effective campaigns, not because they had an inspiring message. It's been a long time since we had something to be so proud about. It's so nice to be genuinely happy.
4. Crisis sharpens our collective mind. Things are worse in our country in many ways than they have been in my lifetime. As a nation, we evaluated the candidates and made a choice that demonstrates much about our values. As I heard someone famous say earlier today, "when the night is darkest, the stars shine more brightly." In the Great Depression, we elected Roosevelt, and in World War II, we did it again. This time we elected a man with a message of cooperation, collaboration, change, and transformation.
5. Charisma matters. So do intelligence and oratory. A lot. Charisma and intelligence can get you elected and lead to prosperity (think Clinton) but charisma and oratory make you a political icon who changes global politics (think Reagan). A president who has little charisma, is an ineffective orator and shows few signs of an active intelligence (I'm sure you can think of a recent example) oversees disasters. But we're talking about elections here, and despite the conclusive evidence that an unintelligent, uncharismatic, unintelligent man can reach the oval office, Obama's moving oratory and charismatic stage presence showed from the start. Remember that speech he gave at the Kerry convention? You knew immediately that he belonged on the national stage.
6. Change can come fast. As recently as the Iowa caucuses, major political figures were reluctant to endorse Obama because they thought he had no chance of winning. In early 1992, Bush had just finished Gulf War I and no big-name Democrats dared to declare as candidates because pere's popularity numbers were considered unassailable. The little-known governor of Arkansas decided to give it a shot on little more than his own keynote address at the convention that selected a doomed presidential democrat and a lot of ambition. Then the economy took a nose dive and billionaire crackpot Ross Perot entered the race on his own dime. Brilliant politician he may be, but Clinton got a whole lot of help from current events.
7. Race isn't the factor we thought it was. Even among African-Americans, conventional wisdom has been that they can get elected as mayors and to congress pretty much anywhere, but statewide elections are beyond their grasp everywhere. No one will ever say this again. This will transform electoral politics at all levels, but particularly future races for the U.S. Senate and governor, all across the country.
8. Once you have a political identity, you're stuck with it. This time around two of the Republicans tried to re-invent themselves as people who adhered much more closely to the values of the evangelical right than their records supported. In this they failed, but the effort prolonged the candidacy of Mike Huckabee, a funny and talented crank, beyond all reason. It just doesn't work for Republicans to do this, but I predict they'll keep at it. Ever since Reagan invited big-church evangelicals into the tent, they've been feeling like they should be driving, and they never believed in McCain or Romney. If McCain hadn't selected Palin, they would have all stayed home, so she did him far more good than harm, no matter how strange she looked trying to mouth rehearsed lines. Allowed to answer questions spontaneously from her own script she won't look stupid and can go fourteen rounds with Anderson Cooper. Palin/Huckabee 2012.
9. Long-term legislators can't win the White House. A person who has been in the Senate a long time, or even a medium time, has made a lot of compromises and a lot of votes. This provides his or her opponents in the primaries and the general election with lots of ammunition. McGovern, Mondale, Gore, Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and McCain all had lengthy legislative records that were used against them in highly imaginative, frustrating, and occasionally entertaining ways. All lost. The winners were mostly governors and former governors (Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush fils) and one notable short-term senator. You have a competitive advantage if there are fewer ways to shoot you down.
10. Joe Lieberman is snake-bit. Just look at what's happened to him. Twice in his life he thought he might be vice-president. Who aspires twice to the vice-presidency? He makes McCain's decision-making history look charmed. Poor schmuck. His committee chairmanship days are suddenly behind him, his moon has waned. What's next for Joe the senator? Besides a certain amount of embarassment, I mean.
11, Republicans are going to firm up. I was listening to Rush Limbaugh today. Rush and his listeners are all mad. Their take on the election is that they haven't been represented on the ticket since 1994, when Newt Gingrich's Contract With America convinced Republicans that the country was theirs as it had had been for most of the Reagan administration. The difference with Gingrich, and eventually Delay, was a harsh partisanship that demonized the other side. Bush fils was somebody that the evangelical right embraced as one of their own because they thought he'd appoint judges who might overturn Roe v. Wade, and he has. Ideological conservatives, the ones who favor small government and low deficits, are going to have to figure out how to share a party with people who care more about gay marriage and abortion. Not an easy fit.
12. Democrats have to move to the center. I'm left of center pretty far. But Obama's presidency will be about governing the nation, not about accomplishing everything I wished we Democrats could have done for the last forty years in the first hundred days of his presidency. There's lots to be done, and I'm extremely enthusiastic about the man we've chosen as president, but let's remember he's ruling the country, not just the blue states. This isn't about us, it's about the country. Let's behave.
But boy, am I proud.
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