OUTSIDE THE BOX
URL:http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pdupont/?id=110002614
Left-Handed Compliment
Nancy Pelosi is true to her ideals. What a disaster for the Dems.
BY PETE DU PONT
Wednesday, November 13, 2002 12:01 a.m. EST
The House Democratic Caucus is about to choose a new leader, following Dick Gephardt's decision to leave that vale of tears for the Elysian fields of a 2004 presidential campaign.
You can blame Mr. Gephardt for failing to win back control of the House after the Republican sweep of 1994; he tried and failed four times. But you can't blame him for wanting to leave that liberal Democratic snake pit where on a daily basis he tried to bring reason as well as electoral success to a couple of hundred people each of whom deeply believes that he should have Mr. Gephardt's job. Presidential campaigns are not easy, but they are a lot more fun than trying to reason with the the Black Caucus or the Blue Dogs, to say nothing of the Baghdad Boys.
So whom are the Democrats going to choose to replace Mr. Gephardt? Someone from the far left of course, for they blame their Election Day disaster not on failing to convince blue-collar, middle America that there is in fact a sound Democratic program for the nation, but on insufficiently motivating its core left constituencies.
Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe's primary goal was revenge: the defeat of Gov. Jeb Bush to punish his brother for "stealing" the Florida election in 2000. That was more important than a Democratic economic program or winning the House and Senate. So there was no message and there were few victories. Democrats failed to honor the George McGovern constituency by opposing the war in Iraq. They failed to honor the Fritz Mondale constituency by demanding tax hikes. And that, liberal Democrats will tell you, is why they lost.
So the first step to recovery is the election of a far-left leader, Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco. Her congressional district gave Al Gore a 61-point margin over President Bush in 2000, and the president outpolled Ralph Nader by a mere six points. Ms. Pelosi is articulate and telegenic, and she represents the beliefs of her district as elected officials are supposed to do. But the Eighth District of California doesn't even come close to representing America, so to place someone of her philosophy in charge of the Democratic caucus is risky. The far left will be delirious, but if the Pelosi program becomes the Democratic program, President Bush's opponent in 2004 may lose as badly as Messrs. McGovern and Mondale did when then ran for president.
What is the Pelosi program? It is opposition to American military intervention (she voted against the 1991 Gulf War and authorizing the use of force against Iraq this year), support for higher taxes (she voted for the Clinton tax increases and against the Bush tax cut); opposition to free trade (she voted against giving the president "fast track" negotiating authority). She is against the death penalty, against school choice of any kind (even for poor children in unsafe schools) and against expanded personal health insurance (medical savings accounts). She also voted against the welfare-reform bill that President Clinton signed into law, which freed more than seven million people from dependence.
She voted for partial-birth abortion, in which a living baby is killed as it emerges from the birth canal. The ACLU gave her a 93% rating last year, People for the American Way, 94%. Her Americans for Democratic Action rating was 100% and her lifetime American Conservative Union voting record is 2%. Now that is far left.
Mr. Gephardt and Tom Daschle were against the Bush tax cut, but when asked if they would repeal it, they always hedged. Ms. Pelosi would say Yes! Yes! That is what the Democratic Party is for--higher taxes!
The Democratic Party is not without good ideas, but repealing the Bush tax cuts and adopting the French foreign policy--talk nicely and never threaten a terrorist--are not among them. The Democrats might want to abandon the legacy of Messrs. McGovern and Mondale and instead go back to being the party of JFK, who put through a substantial tax cut to "get America moving again," pushed a free-trade bill through Congress, dealt with the Cuban missile crisis much as Mr. Bush is dealing with the Iraqi threat, and famously declared "Ich bin ein Berliner."
There are a lot of ideas swirling about in the Democratic Party. Ted Halstead, author of "The Radical Center," a book about liberal policy alternatives, offered three in the Nov. 8 Washington Post, starting with "enabling all Americans to divert part of their payroll taxes into personal retirement accounts, with matching sums provided by the federal government on a progressive basis to top off the accounts of low income workers." Then came "embracing school choice on the condition that it is paired with national equalization of school funding on a per pupil basis," and "mandatory private health insurance, just as we have mandatory car insurance," with the government helping low-income families pay the premium. These are big ideas, and there are lots of questions about them, but do you suppose the far left and Nancy Pelosi would ever allow the consideration of any of them?
Sen. Zell Miller, a Georgia Democrat, sees what is happening: "We've got the left turn signal on, and we're headed down another rabbit hole to political oblivion." If that is the course the Democrats desire, Nancy Pelosi is exactly the right person to lead them down the path.
Mr. du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, is policy chairman of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis. His column appears Wednesdays. |
