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Party of the State
The Democrats barely acknowledged the contribution of private businesses to America's prosperity.
Friday, August 18, 2000 12:01 a.m. EDT
opinionjournal.com
The conventions are done, and now George W. Bush and Al Gore will board planes and head to the heartland to compete for the votes of Americans who, presumably, haven't made up their minds. For all the money, sweat, ink and angst that will be spilled on the campaign, it's hard to imagine an election in which the choice before the voters could be more clear-cut.
The one shared premise of Campaign 2000 is that we are living in an era of remarkable, even awe-inspiring, prosperity. What "prosperity" means is that every weekday morning, an unprecedented number of men and women show up to work at a place of business--a store, a start-up, a factory, a family business, a Fortune 1000 corporation. By all reports, these millions of workers doing the nation's business are unprecedentedly productive, outputting never-before-seen levels of wealth, which redounds to them and their families as a rising standard of living.
At the Democratic convention in Los Angeles, we had to wait four days, until the nominee's speech, to hear any speaker refer in any significant way of the private sector. "We changed things," Mr. Gore said of the Clinton administration, "to help unleash your potential, and innovation and investment in the private sector, the engine that dries the economy." Fine. But later he cited people he'd met who got shafted by "big drug companies" with "record profits."
The Democratic Party of the 21st Century has virtually no serious ideological or emotional relationship with the actual engines of the American economy. The Democrats are the party of the State; they are the party of government. The convention, a party's advertisement for itself, confirmed that reality. And while it was ever thus, the fact is that as led by Al Gore the Democrats, no matter how many centrist gestures they affect on policy or values, are more the party of the state than at any time in their history.
In the era of Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy, the Democratic party drew its lifeblood, as now, from unions. But the unions then represented workers who had jobs in the private sector and produced cars, coal, steel and energy. Union chiefs like George Meany or Walter Reuther fought with the bosses, but they never doubted that their fortunes were tied to those of the businesses that employed their members.
Today the auto workers and coal workers have been replaced in the Democratic pantheon by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), who had 270 delegates in L.A., not to mention the public teachers unions, which had 457 delegates. For virtually all other new workers in the U.S. today, the economy creates and provides their jobs. For the people representing the Democratic party today, the state provides their employment through contracts negotiated with politicians.
Given this reality, the party's claim to moderate centrism, originating with Bill Clinton in 1992, looks to be mainly a necessary expedient. Yes, adjusting to the realities of public sentiment is indeed how our politics changes. But beyond their burbles of social or economic centrism, the Democrats offer scant hard evidence that they truly believe in any of it.
If you look at the policies that Al Gore intends to offer the general electorate, it's clear they are weighted heavily on the side of state authority, or protecting public-sector jobs, or expanding them.
The famous prescription-drug benefit will be administered by Medicare, a sprawling public bureaucracy. The surplus will be deployed to "save" Medicare. When the bipartisan Breaux commission on Medicare suggested injecting a small degree of private competition in health insurance, Mr. Clinton rejected it. George W. Bush should ask Mr. Gore about that.
In education no quarter can be given schools run by churches, synagogues or even secular private operators. Mr. Gore will spend tax money to build more public schools and reduce class sizes (ergo, hire more unionized teachers). The environment, in Mr. Gore's worldview, is merely a ward of the state, inspiring apparently unending varieties of public administration or legislative fiat. Privatizing Social Security for 23-year-olds can't happen. Tax policy consists of the leader bestowing favors on one or another group through targeted credits.
On those occasions when Democratic candidates, led by Mr. Gore, do invoke the private sector in this campaign, they will do so to provoke voter hostility toward companies whose thousands of middle-class employees produce drugs, oil, insurance and health care.
Politics ain't beanbag, but where in Democratic politics is the mitigating balance? Other than claiming that it actually "grew" prosperity, the party seems incapable of explicitly recognizing, much less celebrating, the legitimacy of private enterprise. It seems an abstraction to them.
Al Gore and Joe Lieberman have been public-sector denizens all their adult lives, but there is no indication that the Democrats emerging from the the dot-com age are any different. The convention was a parade of chirpy young Kennedys, Gores, Cuomos, Jacksons and Fords--each already a career pol or flacking for some pet corner of the public sector. Dick Cheney's daughter worked for Coors. George W. Bush owned a baseball team, and gets mocked for it. The Democrats could have featured, say, an immigrant entrepreneur from California or New York. They could have presented to the nation a 35-year-old Silicon Valley success story of any gender, race, ethnicity or sexual orientation explaining, Why I'm a Democrat. But it would never occur to them to do so. Instead they let Ted Kennedy bellow about his career.
With the first presidential election of the 21st Century upon us, it is indeed an event of real moment. It is clear, however that at this moment, America's two political parties could hardly be more different. |
