The Dean Calamity
It suddenly looks like serious people are finally recognizing what a calamity Howard Dean would be, the GOP's dream candidate. But it may be too late to do anything about it now. The Dean candidacy has been stimulating and energizing for a certain segment of Democrats; I can remember feeling that way about Eugene McCarthy's run against the Vietnam War and a sitting president. That's all good fun, but unfortunately once in a while one of these guys actually gets the nomination, as McGovern did. The result is an unmitigated disaster that takes years to undo.
The way the primaries are scheduled now makes for a built-in vulnerability to this kind of hijacking by the party's activist fringe. Politics for those folks is much more an expressive activity than it is an instrumental one; there is no other way to understand why anyone would be supporting Dennis Kucinich at this point (or any point). Idealism can make the difference and win an election, but only as an adjunct to a solid, pragmatic core. To think otherwise, that idealism can actually trump pragmatism, is to demonstrate that your grasp of how the world works is pretty tenuous. Voters will not put people who think that way in charge of foreign policy or national security.
For example, the goal of democratizing Iraq and reforming the Middle East is a highly idealistic one, but it is driven by U.S. national security interests, and it requires a significant military intervention. To agree with the goal, but pretend that it could be accomplished by turning things over to the U.N. is sheer fantasy, as any serious person recognizes. That's idealism surrounding a core of wishful thinking, and it loses. Howard Dean's position is even worse, because he would turn things over to the U.N. while also rejecting the goal as unimportant to U.S. national security. That's delusion surrounding fantasy wrapped in denial, and it will result in an electoral catastrophe for the Democrats.
It could be argued that it doesn't really matter, because nobody is going to beat Bush anyway. But that forgets about the effect of a landslide on Senate and House races, retirements as current Democrat office holders throw in the towel, moderate Democrats who give up and switch parties, etc.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9995-2003Dec17.html
Fred responds:
I guess I'd better be clear about one thing: I have no great love for the Republican Party, far from it. I was always a Democrat, and I'm motivated almost entirely by a deep disgust with the pathetic mess that the Democratic Party has become. Bad for them, bad for the country. As for the GOP, it incorporates competing strains, a libertarian one and a moralistic one. I like the former (I'm pro-choice on virtually everything), but I find little to like about the moralistic bunch. On the other hand, almost everything in the current Democrat playbook has become abhorrent to me. It's nothing but a special-interest panderthon, promoting bad economics, an apologetic foreign policy, and a weak national defense/intelligence posture. What an awful combination, and how far from JFK, Scoop Jackson, et al. The Bill of Rights is for me the key document, as it expressly limits (in theory) the powers of government. So, when it comes to civil liberties, I think we are on the same page.
I can't find that issue of USNWR, so I guess it hasn't arrived yet (this is Manana Land, remember). I'll read that article you refer to and see what they have to say. On the issue of justice for the corporate looters, I would think that the problem is the usual delays, etc. that occur in the criminal justice system that make it hard to bring anyone to justice quickly. But apropos of the above, that's a product of the legal safeguards built into our system, it's part of the price we pay for limiting the power of the State. These guys are not being represented by volunteer third-year law students, either; they've got the best lawyers money can buy. But at some point the maneuvers and appeals will run out. Some are already inside; my guess is many more to follow.
On the energy bill, if I remember right, Waxman and maybe some other Democrats were after the notes from private meetings Cheney had leading up to the formulation of the legislation. There is a separation of powers Constitutional issue there, and I think Cheney was right to resist that kind of Congressional intrusion into the Executive Branch. If notes from private meetings could be subpoenaed by Congress, you could forever after forget about getting the best people to talk frankly to you on any subject. Also, the Energy Bill is a good (read: "acceptable") bill or it isn't, and that is the case no matter how it originated; the thing deserves to be evaluated on its merits. To argue otherwise, it seems to me, is to make an essentially ad hominem argument, a smear. If it's a good bill, then it's in the national interest (a very uncomfortable concept for today's Democrats, BTW) and I don't care if Exxon wrote it from top to bottom; if it's a bad bill, I don't care if Greenpeace wrote it. If there was not enough time allotted to evaluate and debate the substance of the bill, then the Democrats needed to make that a substantive issue, rather than wasting time trying to score cheap political points about who had input.
Byron
The way the primaries are scheduled now makes for a built-in vulnerability to this kind of hijacking by the party's activist fringe. Politics for those folks is much more an expressive activity than it is an instrumental one; there is no other way to understand why anyone would be supporting Dennis Kucinich at this point (or any point). Idealism can make the difference and win an election, but only as an adjunct to a solid, pragmatic core. To think otherwise, that idealism can actually trump pragmatism, is to demonstrate that your grasp of how the world works is pretty tenuous. Voters will not put people who think that way in charge of foreign policy or national security.
For example, the goal of democratizing Iraq and reforming the Middle East is a highly idealistic one, but it is driven by U.S. national security interests, and it requires a significant military intervention. To agree with the goal, but pretend that it could be accomplished by turning things over to the U.N. is sheer fantasy, as any serious person recognizes. That's idealism surrounding a core of wishful thinking, and it loses. Howard Dean's position is even worse, because he would turn things over to the U.N. while also rejecting the goal as unimportant to U.S. national security. That's delusion surrounding fantasy wrapped in denial, and it will result in an electoral catastrophe for the Democrats.
It could be argued that it doesn't really matter, because nobody is going to beat Bush anyway. But that forgets about the effect of a landslide on Senate and House races, retirements as current Democrat office holders throw in the towel, moderate Democrats who give up and switch parties, etc.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9995-2003Dec17.html
Fred responds:
While I'm hooked on core Repub issues, the current U.S. News and World Report has a feature article on the Bush administration's love of secrecy. I don't think this is trivial. Also, between Bush and the supreme court, the Fourth Amendment has taken a massive beating. The Bush administration is having a hell of a time bringing corporate looters and gangsters of that ilk to justice. Moreover, they seem to have a problem with "the appearance of propriety." When the discussions on the national energy policy get declared off limits, something is wrong.
I believe you agree that democracy requires an informed public. There's some stuff here that needs sorted out. On one hand, I think we both agree that this should be the role of both the press and the opposition party. On the other hand, failing to attend to these core issues taints Bush badly.
Watching Dean and the eight midgets and comparing them on two or three issues allows us to focus on what might easily be the sideshow. We're sort of like people attending a dog fight, watching someone get a standup job off on the side while two guys are stealing the pot.
The First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, public access to records seem to me to be core to democracy. We can absorb lots of punishment in the international arena as long as the Bill of Rights is attended to. We'd better watch out for the illusionary relevance of the "are you better off this year" approach to electoral politics.
I guess I'd better be clear about one thing: I have no great love for the Republican Party, far from it. I was always a Democrat, and I'm motivated almost entirely by a deep disgust with the pathetic mess that the Democratic Party has become. Bad for them, bad for the country. As for the GOP, it incorporates competing strains, a libertarian one and a moralistic one. I like the former (I'm pro-choice on virtually everything), but I find little to like about the moralistic bunch. On the other hand, almost everything in the current Democrat playbook has become abhorrent to me. It's nothing but a special-interest panderthon, promoting bad economics, an apologetic foreign policy, and a weak national defense/intelligence posture. What an awful combination, and how far from JFK, Scoop Jackson, et al. The Bill of Rights is for me the key document, as it expressly limits (in theory) the powers of government. So, when it comes to civil liberties, I think we are on the same page.
I can't find that issue of USNWR, so I guess it hasn't arrived yet (this is Manana Land, remember). I'll read that article you refer to and see what they have to say. On the issue of justice for the corporate looters, I would think that the problem is the usual delays, etc. that occur in the criminal justice system that make it hard to bring anyone to justice quickly. But apropos of the above, that's a product of the legal safeguards built into our system, it's part of the price we pay for limiting the power of the State. These guys are not being represented by volunteer third-year law students, either; they've got the best lawyers money can buy. But at some point the maneuvers and appeals will run out. Some are already inside; my guess is many more to follow.
On the energy bill, if I remember right, Waxman and maybe some other Democrats were after the notes from private meetings Cheney had leading up to the formulation of the legislation. There is a separation of powers Constitutional issue there, and I think Cheney was right to resist that kind of Congressional intrusion into the Executive Branch. If notes from private meetings could be subpoenaed by Congress, you could forever after forget about getting the best people to talk frankly to you on any subject. Also, the Energy Bill is a good (read: "acceptable") bill or it isn't, and that is the case no matter how it originated; the thing deserves to be evaluated on its merits. To argue otherwise, it seems to me, is to make an essentially ad hominem argument, a smear. If it's a good bill, then it's in the national interest (a very uncomfortable concept for today's Democrats, BTW) and I don't care if Exxon wrote it from top to bottom; if it's a bad bill, I don't care if Greenpeace wrote it. If there was not enough time allotted to evaluate and debate the substance of the bill, then the Democrats needed to make that a substantive issue, rather than wasting time trying to score cheap political points about who had input.
Byron
posted by Byron | Thursday, December 18, 2003
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