1 Boring Old Man

I had a strange thought last night. In the blogosphere, there are spurts of anger at the Democratic Party for not extracting us from Iraq fast enough, or not opposing Bush hard enough. Sometimes people hint at or even suggest that we need another Party, the Progressives, that will better represent our more Liberal ideas.

People my age, with my inclinations, in my part of the country have already been through that kind of thing once. When I was growing up, there weren’t really two Parties in the South. Even after the War when it seemed like everyone voted for "The General" [Eisenhower], that wasn’t about Parties, it was about him being a true hero who had saved the world from the forces of evil. All local and State politics were about Democrats – "Dixiecrats" as they were called back then. Then a bunch of things happened. John Kennedy, a Catholic and a Northern Liberal was elected, assasinated, and replaced with a Southerner, Jyndon Johnson. The Civil Rights Movement became a fight in the Democratic Party, and the Liberal side won out. Johnson said that he knew he was destroying the Democratic Party when he championed the Civil Rights legislation – and he was correct. In front of our eyes, the Democratic Party began to evaporate here. Where I now live in the Georgia mountains, there may be a Democratic Primary, but no one is on the ballot for local elections. In State elections, it’s Atlanta versus the rest of the State – a weak second place.

One part of it I never completely understood was how the Democratic Party got to be associated with the anti-War side of things. It was Lyndon Johnson who escalated the Viet Nam War. Nixon kept things going, true enough. But the 1968 Democratic Convention is where the anti-War venom was focused. It wasn’t until 1972 with McGovern and McCarthy that the anti-War forces began to win out. It was as if the Democratic Party was the only place the Civil Rights and the Viet Nam War debates could take place. But back to my point, the net result was that the "Solid South" changed Parties in my lifetime. Where I live now, all Democrats know each other. My wife wore a tee shirt that had the words "Democratic Party" on it to the grocery store the other day, and was called down by the Butcher. With great sarcasm, he said, "I guess you’re going to vote for Hillary," among other nasty things.

Where I’m headed here is that I don’t think we need a Progressive Party because the Democrats aren’t "Liberal" enough or "strong" enough. The great debates of my lifetime have happened inside the Democratic Party, and I’m proud of it. It’s what a Party should be – a mess. Starting a new Progressive or Liberal Party seems to me to be a reaction to what the Republican Party has done – solidly fixated on one line of thought that gets voted en masse. It worked this time for them and they elected a machine that’s been the most destructive force in our hisory.

If we need a new Party, it’s a replacement for the Republicans. They may look back on their glorious "Reagan Years" as their Camelot. It was only Camelot because they didn’t have control of the Congress and were held slightly in check. When Newt Gingrich and his mob took over Congress and then we elected a Republican Executive, the bottom fell out. There is no debate in the Republican Party anymore. Conservative people accept the whole gamut of the Party Line. Maybe they don’t have to, but they do it because they think that’s the only way to be in power. The Republican Party is no longer representing a sentiment with many variations. It represents a power base – one that has created havoc in every sphere of American life. Instead of maintaining a "balance of power," they tried to create a New Jerusalem. Karl Rove said it clearly:

Let me now say a few words about the state of liberalism. Perhaps the place to begin is with this stinging indictment: "Liberalism is at greater risk now than at any time in recent American history. The risk is of political marginality, even irrelevance.… [L]iberalism risks getting defined, as conservatism once was, entirely in negative terms." These are not the words of William F. Buckley, Jr. or Sean Hannity; they are the words of Paul Starr, co-editor of The American Prospect, a leading liberal publication. There is much merit in what Mr. Starr writes – though he and I fundamentally disagree as to why liberalism is edging toward irrelevance. I believe the reason can be seen when comparing conservatism with liberalism.

These facts underscore how much progress has been made in four decades. It has been a remarkable rise. But it is also a cautionary tale of what happens to a dominant party – in this case, the Democrat Party – when its thinking becomes ossified; when its energy begins to drain; when an entitlement mentality takes over; and when political power becomes an end in itself rather than a means to achieve the common good. We need to learn from our successes – and from the failures of the other side and ourselves. As the governing movement in America, conservatives cannot grow tired or timid. We have been given the opportunity to govern; now we have to show we deserve the trust of our fellow citizens.

His equating the Democratic Party with "Liberalism" is a trap – one he opportunized on with great skill. Just because Karl Rove says it doesn’t mean we need to do it. Look at what equating Conservativism, a particularly virulent form of Conservativism, with the Republican Party has done to them. Sure they won, but in the process, they became a Party that no longer represented a sentiment with complex variations. They became a homogenized power machine that has lead us down a very narrow road to absolutely nowhere. Right now, they’re beginning to suffer what happens to bacteria when placed in a test tube filled with fresh nutrient. The germs begin to divide like there’s no tomorrow – until they perish in their own wastes. We need a conservative sentiment in the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. The real dichotome isn’t Liberal versus Conservative, it’s a Democracy versus a Republic – vibrant forces that are part of our "checks and balances." I don’t think either side is supposed to win a final victory. We’re supposed to fight it out fairly for the duration of our union. So I’m opposed to redefining the Democratic Party in Karl Rove’s own image. I don’t think that Liberal is any more "right" than Conservative, or a Democracy is any more "right" than a Republic. Our strength is in the ebb and flow.

I’m not sure Karl Rove is right when he says, "… the Democrat Party – when its thinking becomes ossified; when its energy begins to drain; when an entitlement mentality takes over; and when political power becomes an end in itself rather than a means to achieve the common good." It fits better as an indictment of his own Party. I think the Republicans got control of the Congress based on a conservative wave in the country that had to do with lots of things – some of them valid. But I think the election of George W. Bush was more the result of a deceitful mobilization of naive forces orchestrated by by some not so savory pundits – Karl Rove being only one of many. The deceit was in hiding the Neoconservative Agenda and the Corporate takeover of the government behind a lot of empty scripted but ingenuous rhetoric. And I certainly don’t think political power became an end in itself in the Democratic Party. Like in his speech to the New York Conservatives quoted above, Rove et al succeeded by demonizing the Democratic Party. There’s no reason in the world for us to become the demons they created. And we don’t need to unseat them either. They’re doing a fine job all by themselves.