Editorials & Opinion: Tuesday, February 25, 2003
E.J. Dionne / Syndicated columnist
Dems finally ditching their ‘nice-guy' image
WASHINGTON — Democrats lost the 2002 elections because they didn't know how to confront President Bush, because they didn't have a coherent approach to national security and because they lacked a domestic program with the power to inspire voters.
Over the last few days, the party got an interim report on how post-election repairs are going. The report was in the form of speeches before a meeting of the Democratic National Committee by most of the party's presidential candidates — Sen. John Kerry, recovering from prostate surgery, took a pass.
On one matter, there was absolute clarity: President Bush's post-9/11 free pass expired on the night of last year's midterm election. Democrats have relearned a basic lesson of politics: If the opposition party is reluctant to oppose — and criticize and even excoriate — a large portion of the electorate will decide that the incumbent must not be so bad.
True, voters say they don't like partisanship. But partisan voters account for a large share of the electorate, as Bush understood in 2002 when he did so much to get Republicans to the polls. And if swing voters don't like political attacks, they are influenced by the overall political climate. In 2002, Democrats conditioned them in Bush's favor by failing to take him on.
No More Mister Nice Guy was the theme of last week's DNC meeting. This very-partisan crowd was hungry for assaults on Bush, and every Democrat complied. Even Sen. Joe Lieberman, who is always in danger of nice-guying himself out of contention and who pointedly supported Bush on Iraq, attacked Bush for breaking promises and the "administration's one-sided, go-it-alone foreign policy."
Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, anticipating that Republicans will attack him as a "millionaire trial lawyer," contrasted his willingness to stand up for kids and other poor clients against Bush's standing up for big companies.
You can tell how angry Democrats are at Bush by how often they were willing to bring up the name Bill Clinton, as in the Clinton economy and Clinton surpluses, contrasted with the Bush economy and Bush deficits.
Another measure of Democratic anger: the applause the Rev. Al Sharpton won for his nice set of one-liners. "I hate to say it, but he gave a good speech," said one Democrat who absolutely can't stand Sharpton.
But what about a domestic policy? Here, the award for specificity goes to Rep. Dick Gephardt, who has had some success in recent weeks in transforming the words "worn and tired" into "seasoned and experienced."
Gephardt's ideas included universal health care through business tax credits, portable pensions, a new Teacher Corps — the government would pay off the student loans of graduates who agree to teach for five years — and flexible but clear global wage standards. Even non-Democrats can look forward to the debates between Gephardt and Howard Dean, Vermont's former governor and surprisingly strong dark horse, on how to get health coverage to everyone.
As for national security, Democrats are making the White House nervous with their pointed criticisms of the administration's failure to spend enough on homeland defense measures. Bush's proposal to eliminate taxes on dividends — his great political gift to the Democratic Party — looks especially irresponsible in the light of the costs of war and safety at home.
But you don't have to agree with Lieberman, Edwards or Gephardt in supporting Bush on the war to see that Democrats who want to win will need more coherence on foreign policy than they have now.
Through his forceful opposition to Bush's policy, Dean has established himself as someone far more important than a second-tier candidate — as long as currently second-tier candidates Dennis Kucinich, Carol Moseley Braun and Sharpton don't nibble away at the edges of his anti-war constituency. Yet for the moment, it's Kerry — with his standing as a Vietnam veteran and by combining support and criticism of Bush on Iraq — who comes closest to the foreign-policy balance a Democrat needs to strike to satisfy both his party and those outside it.
Democrats aren't so dumb that they can't learn from defeat. And they're better off now than they were three months ago. They've got the anti-Bush part down. The inspiration isn't there yet.
E.J. Dionne's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is postchat@aol.com.
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