Michael, Much of our political vocabulary, I feel, is drawn from myth.Take the notion of the "tax and spend" Democrat, for example. I thought about that last night, when I was reading the 1989 "New Democrat" (i.e., Republocrat-Clintonite)manifesto, which excoriated "Liberal Fundamentalism" as viciously as any gathering of Republicans might do. And then I happened on an interesting critique of the manifesto (and subsequent ones). You might possibly be interested in the following passages:
"The notion that the Democratic Party is a captive of left-wing extremists is a familiar one to readers of the American
press. It has been a staple of conservative Republican doctrine since 1932. In itself, this does not make the point incorrect,
although it suggests that it is a bit musty. Reminiscent of the analysis that has been nurtured for decades in places such
as the National Review, New Democrats have a tendency to argue at a level of abstract generalization that permits them
to leap over some facts that would otherwise puncture their case.
The first set of facts is historical. With the exception of McGovern in 1972, in five of the last six presidential campaigns,
the Democratic candidates--Humphrey, Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis--ran as centrists. Humphrey was the establishment
candidate against Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy. Carter ran as a conservative southerner moderate on race. The
centerpiece of Mondale's campaign (for which Galston served as chief issues adviser) was deficit reduction. And Dukakis
ran as a technocrat who, until the last two weeks of his campaign, avoided attacking Ronald Reagan because he didn't
want to sound too partisan. Even McGovern didn't run as a "tax and spend" Democrat; a central part of his platform was a
proposal for a huge middle-class tax cut. Indeed, the Carter presidency--the failure of which still weighs heavily on the
Democratic psyche--was the exemplar of the New Democrat spirit. The New Republic reports that when Al From talked
with Carter about forming the DLC, the latter said: "Boy, could I have used a DLC to back me up."
Well, say New Democrats, it wasn't necessarily the candidate who was too liberal. It was the Democrats at the convention
who were too liberal--that is, Ted Kennedy challenging Carter, Jesse Jackson challenging Mondale and Dukakis. In this
version, the sin of the liberal fundamentalists is not that they have taken over the party but that they have taken over the
convention every four years and forced the candidate to accept a far-out platform that has been an albatross around the
candidate's neck.
For this theory to be credible, the New Democrats have to argue that the 1992 convention was different. Inasmuch as they
claim credit for Clinton's victory, they have to claim that 1992 was their convention. True to form, the press generally has
obliged by favorably contrasting the 1992 convention with the "liberal" conventions of 1988 and 1984. According to
accepted wisdom, these two previous conventions were dominated by demanding minorities, feminists, labor unions,
environmentalists, gays, and people with bizarre "styles" of political behavior. But as media critic Jim Naureckas has
pointed out, the press ran the same story of moderation during the previous conventions as well. According to Naureckas,
"every convention since 1984 has been hailed by journalists as the one where the 'special interests' lost their influence." He
quotes press report after press report praising Dukakis in 1988 for appealing to "the middle ground and the middle class"
(New York Times). For using words like "family, community, honesty, patriotism, accountability, responsibility, opportunity"
(Chicago Tribune). For abandoning "the expansive promises of Democratic Party platforms of earlier years --the crowded
bazaar of special interests and special pleading" (Washington Post).
In 1984 the New York Times headlined: "Democrats' Platform Shows a Shift from Liberal Positions of 1976 and 1980." The
press lauded Walter Mondale's acceptance speech for its break with the past. "Look at our platform," said Mondale. "There
are no defense cuts that weaken our security, no business taxes that weaken our economy. No laundry lists that raid our
Treasury." Mondale himself, according to columnist David Broder, "embodies all the traditional middle-class values of the
rural Midwest." Joining the journalistic consensus of the 1988 convention was Elaine Kamarck, then columnist for Newsday:
"Interest groups and their demands were barely visible."
Naureckas concludes that "when the 'pragmatists' lose badly with their centrist approach, they are repainted after the fact
as radicals, so the strategy of tilting to the right can be tried again and again."
No reasonable reading of history since 1972 supports the premise that an extremist coalition of minorities and white
liberals has dominated the Democratic Party.....
In his credo for the New Democrat, Al From denounces both the "borrow and spend" policies of the Republicans and the
"tax and spend" policies of the Old Democrats that have failed to solve the country's economic problems. The failure, he
says, "has produced two decades of anemic gains in personal income."
Again, the "plague on both your houses" stance is at odds with history. Jimmy Carter actually cut taxes in mid-term, a
precursor to Reaganomics. Even Lyndon Johnson was not a "tax and spend" Democrat. In fact, history blames Johnson for
not raising taxes to pay for the Vietnam War. Kennedy cut taxes, as did Truman before he raised them to pay for the
Korean War. Postwar presidents--Democratic and Republican until Reagan--did use an un-indexed income tax structure
that automatically generated accelerating revenues with economic growth, but one has to go back 50 years, to
Roosevelt's financing of World War II, to find a Democratic president's economic policy that could be described as
deliberately "tax and spend."
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