Do Democrats have an ideology?
Betsy's Page
Jonathan Chait is not impressed with the two new journals coming out to publish liberal ideas for addressing the nation's problems.
<<< AFTER THE 2004 presidential election, some of us liberals came away with the conclusion that it's awfully hard to defeat an incumbent president during wartime. And some of us came away with the conclusion that John Kerry is a really awful politician.
Other liberals, though, decided that what this country needs are some good policy journals. It is because of liberals like these that so many Americans think we're all a bunch of weenies. >>>
Chait spills the beans on the Democratic party and why they don't need no stinkin' policy journals.
<<< But nobody knows what Democrats stand for because you cannot, and should not, formulate sweeping dogmas when you're operating on a case-by-case basis. >>>
Chait asserts that conservatives have a big picture ideology that frames their policy prescriptions; admiration for the free market and a belief that small government is better than large government. Now, Republicans, of course, do not consistently enact policies in line with those beliefs when they get in power and that is why many conservatives are so disappointed with the GOP. But Chait doesn't want the Democrats to even espouse such a big picture, perhaps because he knows that saying they were opposed to the free market and liked big government would not be an attractive frame for their political positions. So, better to just make it up as they go along. Whatever seems to gain votes is what they want.
<<< Consider the Clinton administration. What did it stand for on, say, economic policy? Well, progressive taxation, reducing the deficit (but not at the expense of Medicare, Medicaid, education and the environment), expanding health coverage, investing in technology, and … you see? We're long past the point where it can be described by a single overarching theory, and I haven't even gotten to the scintillating proposals for sequestering the Social Security-related budget surplus.
Some liberals see this problem and conclude that Democrats got too wishy-washy under President Clinton. If we'd just held firm to strong liberal, pro-government principles, they say, the public would know where we're coming from.
Well, that's probably true. But it wouldn't win any elections. Why not? Because, as social psychologists Lloyd A. Free and Hadley Cantril concluded in 1964, Americans are ideological conservatives and operational liberals. Everybody's for less spending and regulation in the abstract. When you try to translate that into specifics — say, lower Medicare benefits or looser standards on pollution — voters run screaming in the other direction. >>>
So, the solution, according to Chait, is not to have a philosophy of what the role of government is, but just adopt whichever policy will gain more votes. So, I guess in Chait's view, the Democrats don't need any journals to propose policy ideas - just take a few polls and find out what will sell in each situation. He thinks that this will display competence, the type of competence typified by the Clinton administration. I guess that is because he's willing to give Clinton the entire credit for reducing deficits in the late 90s and forget how Clinton ignored problems beneath the surface such as the future crises in entitlement spending that we're facing, nuclear weapons in North Korea, terrorism around the world, or the internet bubble. I guess you can think of yourselves as competent if you get out of office before all these developing problems break into crises after you've gone. But hey, we can be comforted that, if they get back into power, they won't have any ideology framing how they would address any one crisis. Whatever sells will work.
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