A Failure to Communicate
Aliens seize Kerry's brain as Dems try to unite in a common hatred.
BY DANIEL HENNINGER WSJ.com
Friday, July 18, 2003 12:01 a.m.
We're as fascinated as anyone by tales of the paranormal, and so it's hard to pass up the amazing events that occurred Monday at the annual NAACP convention in Miami.
For starters, three of the Democratic candidates stiffed the venerable civil-rights organization. Joe Lieberman checked his watch and noticed he had another event in New York. Dennis Kucinich said the future of Medicare depended on his vote back in Washington. Dick Gephardt mumbled something about a family obligation somewhere. It calls to mind the scene in "Christmas Vacation," when Clark Griswold's son Rusty, asked to put the last ton of Christmas lights on the house, says, "Oops, time for homework, gotta clean up my room, take out the trash, slop the pigs . . ."
Both John Edwards and John Kerry had planned to bag it, too, but showed up after NAACP head Kweisi Mfume went ballistic over the weekend (on Monday, Mr. Mfume went nuclear, calling the three no-shows "the equivalent of Confederate dollars"). Then it got really weird, as extraterrestrials were seen capturing John Kerry's brain.
Al Sharpton (the presidential candidate, not the extraterrestrial) brought the audience to its feet by bellowing that he was the only presidential candidate to have done jail time. Whereupon Sen. Kerry felt compelled to proclaim that he'd done an overnight in the slammer for protesting the Vietnam War back in the olden days. But that wasn't exactly a black thing, so Mr. Kerry also told of how he'd become friends with a black man while fighting in Vietnam. I was willing to write this off to brain cramp until reading that Mr. Kerry told the same story to a similar forum for Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.
Welcome to the Democratic Party in the 21st century. Actually, the Democratic Party, as understood by most people who think of themselves as Democrats, no longer exists. It has evolved into the political version of a shell corporation. Money flows in and out of something called "the Democratic Party," but most of the politicking is now done by literally dozens of largely independent political groups, of which the NAACP is but one. In fact, left-of-center politics has become one of the most crowded, Darwinian marketplaces in America, and within that market, the NAACP's share-price has fallen.
As recently as two presidential campaigns ago, the idea that any serious contender would bypass the NAACP forum was unthinkable. But as some news accounts of this fiasco noted, Messrs. Gephardt and Lieberman begged off because, according to the Associated Press, "the joint appearances are a common format for dozens of presidential forums being organized by labor unions, environmentalists, civil rights activists, abortion rights supporters and other interest groups active in Democratic politics. The NAACP was one such group."
The Democratic Party now resembles a vast hospital nursery, with each colicky baby lying in a separate crib screaming for attention--right now, for me. And if a Joe Lieberman or Dick Gephardt doesn't run right over and pour political formula down their throats, they'll keep right on screaming. And so yesterday, Messrs. Lieberman, Gephardt and Kucinich all scampered to Miami, stood before the NAACP convention and apologized. Mr. Lieberman: "I was wrong, I regret it, and I apologize." Then Sen. LIeberman suggested that Kweise Mfume belonged on the Supreme Court.
Two days before, on Tuesday, the Democratic candidates had been back up in Washington at a fealty forum for the Human Rights Campaign, representing "the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community." In late June, they were before the League of Conservation Voters in Los Angeles. They've already done turns in front of NARAL Pro-Choice America, the Building Trades Conference, the Children's Defense Fund, AFSCME's (the public workers union) "Fighting for Working Families," EMILY's List, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, and the point of it all, the Iowa Caucuses vote, is next Jan. 19.
A question one hears all the time is, How come Republicans aren't as good at political street-fighting as Democrats? It's a fair question, if the issue on the table is something like the current Medicare reform. But the Democrats are paying a heavy price for becoming a party whose reason for being is no longer anything more than the game of politics. Conservative theorists have warned for centuries about the danger of hyperpoliticization, and the Founding Fathers worked hard to avoid the whirlpool of factions. The Democrats are now a sea full of little whirlpools--all spinning furiously around on themselves.
Republicans may perform poorly as alley cats, but they're better now at wound-healing. George Bush no longer has to pay the sort of obeisance to Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell that any Democrat must obviously still tender to Kweisi Mfume. The GOP, like any large party, has factions, but it also found a Grover Norquist with the skills to make the factions recognize common goals. Across the aisle, no one seems much interested in bridge-building. EMILY's list, a sophisticated fund-raising machine, has been around for 18 years. Its ancient motto: "A political network for pro-choice Democratic women." The phenomenon of the Web, if anything, only makes it worse. Take a look at their sites--shrines to the political self.
Still, there is indeed a common bond among most Democratic factions: contempt for the person of George W. Bush. Liberals like to think that conservatives similarly despised Bill Clinton, but that's wrong; the larger source of the opposition was fundamentally political, and had to do with legal and institutional abuse. The more apt example of a political party lost in the fog of personal animosity would be rank-and-file Republican antipathy toward Franklin Roosevelt. It felt good, and it accomplished nothing at the polls.
Democrats are going to need something more than the pleasures of odium to win in 2004. They're going to need to find a better way to communicate--with each other.
Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.
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