REVIEW & OUTLOOK
The Mystery Democrats
Dean, Clark: Who are these guys?
Wednesday, January 14, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
URL::http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110004555
As the Iowa caucuses loom, the big story is the rise of the Democratic outsiders, first Howard Dean and suddenly Wesley Clark. What does it say about this proud political party that its most fervent voters are rejecting their biggest names for candidates who neither they nor the rest of the country know much about?
It's not as if Democrats don't have men with well-known records and platforms to rally behind. Dick Gephardt entered and won his first Iowa caucus in 1988 and led Democrats in the House. John Kerry is a war hero and Senate fixture. Joe Lieberman was Al Gore's running mate, and John Edwards was supposed to be the second coming of Bill Clinton (without the girlfriends). All of these men have notable experience and lengthy agendas.
Yet if the polls are right, the Democrats who vote in primaries are ready instead to take a leap of faith. They've fallen first for Mr. Dean, the former governor of a tiny state whose best-known company makes ice cream. Recently they've also begun to swarm to Mr. Clark, a political rookie of no discernible ideology who is running entirely on his military résumé.
The one thing both men have in common is how little anyone really knows about what they believe. Mr. Dean became the front-runner by appearing to be a firebrand liberal, especially on Iraq and taxes, but he also assures us he is a "centrist" and "fiscal conservative." He once supported Nafta and free trade but now doubts both. He trumpets his support for gay civil unions but signed a bill legalizing them in Vermont when no one would notice. And though once proudly and overtly secular, he has recently chosen to defend his positions (as on civil unions) as a matter of his personal faith, whatever it is.
There is also his--let's be kind--mercurial temperament. Mr. Dean often shoots from the lip, a habit his supporters find refreshing but that will make him vulnerable during the crucible of a campaign. To take just one example: In the wake of Saddam Hussein's capture, Mr. Dean declared we were no safer because of it. This was bad enough as a gaffe, but he has stuck by the point, like Mike Dukakis on furloughs for felons, suggesting an obstinate disregard for the judgment of most Americans. This will not wear well from here to November.
To stop Mr. Dean, other Democrats are turning to the blank slate that is Mr. Clark, who has never held office before and until recently was a Republican. On the first day of his campaign, he couldn't even say whether or not he'd have voted for the Iraq war, though he has since made opposition to the war a core theme.
Mr. Clark recently told the Manchester Union Leader that he opposed any restriction on abortion right up to the last day of a pregnancy. This puts him well to the left of Mr. Clinton, but above all it reveals a candidate who simply hasn't thought about very much. And as impressive as the former general's military résumé is, one question is why so many of his Army peers mistrusted him. Don't Democrats want to know what they're buying?
Perhaps the real answer is no. Maybe Democrats are falling for the mystery candidates precisely because they've lost confidence that their traditional standard-bearers are up to the job. Part of this may be attitude: After the defeats of 2000 and 2002, they want to indulge their inner furies.
And there is no doubt that Messrs. Dean and Clark are the angriest Democrats in the race, the ones who will say the nastiest things about President Bush and Republicans. Mr. Dean has floated the "theory" that Mr. Bush knew about September 11 in advance, while Mr. Clark insists the President could and should have stopped the attack. So maybe rank-and-file Democrats are in a Goldwater mood: Extremism in the defeat of George Bush is no vice.
But we wonder if this mystery predilection doesn't also reflect a loss of confidence in traditional Democratic ideas. Apart from the Clinton interregnum, the record of the past 25 years is the decline of Democratic hegemony and liberal thought. Even Mr. Clinton's success came in part from his willingness to co-opt and sign conservative reforms in welfare, tax cuts and trade. Perhaps Democrats in their heart of hearts believe that an unknown or a cipher has a better chance to win because he doesn't carry all that deadweight political baggage of the past 20 years.
The primaries are just beginning, and it's possible that Democrats will pull back from leaping off the Dean-Clark cliff. Because even this far from November, we doubt the rest of the country will leap with them. |
