"I don't think that any Democratic candidate can beat Bush, from Lieberman to Dean and back, unless they have a positive foreign policy, one that states what they would do to defeat terrorism, not just what Bush did that was wrong,"
Time for the weekend "Think" pieces from the "New York Times."
September 21, 2003
HEARTS OR MINDS
The Fight for the Democratic Party
By ROBIN TONER
WASHINGTON — Consider, for a moment, Gen. Wesley K. Clark, newly declared candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, as a useful Rorschach test for a conflicted party. What did many Democrats see when they looked at General Clark — and how did that make them feel?
They saw a retired military commander who was a critic of the war with Iraq. A decorated hero from the South who could not be dismissed as some outside-the-mainstream, 60's throwback, yet was willing to confront President Bush on foreign policy. A man who was not only right, but maybe, just maybe, electable. And it made them feel . . . happy.
General Clark, of course, is a latecomer, largely untested in politics, whose real importance as a candidate will not be clear for several weeks. But this moment captured something important about a party torn between its heart and its head, between its desire to speak, clearly and without apology, about its beliefs, and its desire to defeat President Bush, put together an electoral majority in a polarized nation and return to power.
It is an old struggle in the Democratic Party, resurfacing with each new generation of activists and strategists since the old New Deal coalition came unstuck in the 1960's. Does the party need to move to the center, muting its liberal edge on cultural issues, economics and foreign policy in order to win? Promise to roll back just part of the tax cut, for example, not the whole thing?
Or does that lead to a watery "me-tooism," too careful, too calibrated, too uncertain of what it believes to rouse voters or to make a difference if its proponents actually win office?
Let Democrats be Democrats, is the thrust of one argument. Speak to the great American middle, not to each other, is the counter. Hearts and heads at war.
Bill Clinton moved the party to a centrist "third way" in 1992, but that happened only after 12 years out of the White House, when Democrats were really hungry to win. And much of that redefinition did not endure once Mr. Clinton and his formidable political skills left the White House.
Stanley B. Greenberg, a veteran Democratic pollster who worked for Mr. Clinton, says that Democratic primary voters in the decade since 1992 have become "more partisan, more ideological, more secular and more anti-Republican," just as their Republican counterparts have become more religious, conservative and partisan. In other words, the struggle over the right message, and messenger, has to be waged anew for the post-Clinton Democratic Party.
So far, it is largely framed by the powerful anger at the Democratic grassroots — over the 2000 election and a president elected without a popular vote majority; over three years of staunchly conservative policies and a war unpopular with Democratic voters from the start.
But there was also anger at Congressional Democrats, consigned to minority status, who to some Democrats seemed too reluctant to challenge the Bush administration. Ever since Vietnam, many Democrats have been deeply suspicious of the use of force, even as party leaders struggled to deflect the charge that Democrats are reflexively antiwar.
All this coalesced around the war with Iraq, which was supported by four of the six Congressional Democrats now running for president.
Many party activists, in short, were ripe for an appeal from an impassioned, outside insurgent, speaking out against the war and the establishment Democrats who at least initially supported it — speaking to the activists' hearts. Suddenly, former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont, who famously declared that he represented "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," was atop the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire. His speeches were bracing affirmations of old-time Democratic values and beliefs; his audiences were moved.
But then, of course, the worried questions began inside the Democratic Party. Is an antiwar governor from a tiny state — Vermont ranks 49th in population — really the strongest candidate to defeat Mr. Bush? If not, then who?
Will rank-and-file Democratic voters give enough thought to the unyielding dictates of the electoral map — which candidate has the best chance to carry major battleground states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan — when they cast their ballots? Will they, in other words, use their heads?
Bill Carrick, a Democratic consultant now advising Representative Richard A. Gephardt, describes it as "the age-old question — some elections, Democrats in the primary cycle vote their passions; some elections, they vote their heads."
Senator John B. Breaux, the Louisiana Democrat and a leader in the Democratic Leadership Council, formed to push the party to the center, worried recently, "The people who go to the caucuses and the conventions tend to be people who are focused first on who's most closely aligned with what they believe in, and only secondarily on who can win in November."
And Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York was one of several Democrats who argued that any successful nominee must pass a credibility test on national security. "I don't think that any Democratic candidate can beat Bush, from Lieberman to Dean and back, unless they have a positive foreign policy, one that states what they would do to defeat terrorism, not just what Bush did that was wrong," Mr. Schumer said.
Senator Evan Bayh, the Indiana Democrat who is currently chairman of the leadership council, recently contended, "We're not going to win on national security," but the party could lose on it unless the nominee is a credible commander in chief.
Such was the backdrop for the Wesley Clark phenomenon, and all the efforts by the other leading candidates to attract a second look from primary voters — as both impassioned and electable. Many Democrats were touting General Clark as a man who could, by virtue of his résumé alone, neutralize the national security issue; realpolitik was in the air last week.
Gordon Fischer, the Iowa Democratic chairman, asserted that beating Mr. Bush was "the No. 1 goal" of party activists. "Even Governor Dean's campaign talks about his skills and advantages as a candidate on the basis of electability," he added.
Predicting electability, of course, is tricky; sometimes when Democrats thought they were voting their heads, they were still badly beaten in the general election. Former Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts captured the 1988 Democratic nomination as a moderate, nonideological technocrat — not a man who stirred his party's passions, but one who seemed, to many Democrats, decent, competent, electable. He lost 40 states that fall. Other traits matter in a candidate, beside his profile and message; sheer passion and political talent can go a long way.
Moreover, there is a fundamental divide in politics now over how best to win the presidency — by galvanizing the base, or by reaching out to swing voters, which generally means a more centrist message.
In the end, many liberals cling to an old dream, of finding a candidate who appeals to both the base and the majority, and rebuilding the old coalition that seemed to shatter 35 years ago, argued Michael Kazin, a political historian at Georgetown University.
"They think that Americans, in their heart of hearts, really agree with them on education, on the environment, on some kind of national health insurance," Professor Kazin said. "And they feel they're completely right about the war in Iraq."
So, they want to fall in love with a candidate. And they want to win.http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/21/weekinreview/21TONE.html?pagewanted=print&position= |
