The crisis of leadership in the Democratic Party comes into sharp focus when you look at whom they've chosen as their front-runners. Rejecting a passel of experienced mainstreamers, they've picked two guys who wouldn't even register in a healthy party -- a small-time governor and a retired, Republican general. Both of them have shed whatever personal beliefs they once had, emptying themselves to become purified vessels of Liberalism.
Dean reminds me of some kind of cyberpunk pleasure droid in a William Gibson novel. As he campaigns, I can almost hear him humming a variation of Animation's Strange Behavior -- "You're an obsession, you're my obsession. . . Who do you want me to be to make you vote for me?"
His programming causes him to change to suit the whims of his current patron -- Southerners like God? Well, he'll tell you all about It. Dem primary voters hate guns? His pro-gun record goes out the window. Liberals hate the Iraq war? Sayonara support for pre-emptive strikes. And so on.
Clark is an even better example. He's a Democratic candidate made in their image. He's like an interactive Rorschach blot that takes the shape of focus polling results. From a Republican supporter of Bush and pre-emptive strikes, he's morphed into an ultra-liberal dove in mufti who maintains the most radical position on abortion possible short of gunning down kindergarteners. There are people in Witness Protection programs who haven't had to change as much as Clark has.
If I were Gephardt, my campaign slogan would be, "A Choice, Not An Inkblot."
Posted by Discoshaman at janvier 15, 2004 01:00 AM | TrackBack
HI John
hope you are fine ,John i want to invite you to my Birthday in Our Club ,i will be happy to see you ,it`s going to be after 3:00 o`clock,
Hope to see you there
John,
Excellent points and I agree totally. I remember a line from an old Monty Python movie, maybe it was "The Meaning of Life," I'm not sure:
"There's nothing you can't do if you're not sure of what you believe in."
Its Agnostic politics!
Thanks. :-)
David Flanagan
Posted by: David Flanagan at janvier 15, 2004 06:21 AMDavid-
Awesome quote. A couple of days ago I coldn't help quoting Flying Circus quotes all day. It annoyed my wife, but I sure did amuse myself. :-)
Nice blog, btw! It's nice to see people nailing the unilateralist thing.
Posted by: Discoshaman at janvier 15, 2004 10:11 AMDS-
I can't disagree with you on the sorry shambles of the D party and their hopeless candidates. But I'm interested to know why you are so vocal about it and your support for Bush when our Republican presidency hasn't exactly ushered in a new age.
Working for the US fed. gov, I've been surprised to read and see from the inside as well as other media sources (even with strong filters up) how much this administration is bullying it's way around to get its objectives through (at any cost). I think I had a hope that Bush would operate differently, and I'm seeing the same power struggles and blind eye management that I witnessed working under the Clinton gov. I know you're not saying it's perfect with Bush, but what justification do you have to so ardently attack the Dems while the Republicans are they themselves a faltering party, or at best the party of "in-your-face/we're-in-control-so-get-used-to-it"?
Or am I just being to idealistic that we can have a government with moral conscience as well as good policy/administration?
Posted by: undertree at janvier 15, 2004 04:30 PMGround Control to Major Disco...why so silent on the Mars boondoggle?
Mega-dittos (hey, what's the Sabot equivalent, anyway? Beaucoup de plus grandes, um, dittos?) to Undertree.
And getting to the original point: Hmmmm, a small-state governor and a Republican general - sounds like what the Dems were talking about (I'm thinking of Colin Powell) back in 92, and that seemed to work ok.
Am I the only one who thinks all these Republican cries of "Please, oh please give me that nasty ol' liberal Howard Dean to run against!" are starting to sound like a sort of reverse Br'er Rabbit strategy?
Posted by: The Liberal Media at janvier 15, 2004 07:54 PMUndertree-
I haven't seen you in awhile, hi there! :)
" But I'm interested to know why you are so vocal about it and your support for Bush when our Republican presidency hasn't exactly ushered in a new age."
We don't have a Constitution or a system that allows for "New Ages" to be inaugurated, thankfully. Change almost always comes incrementally.
I've been critical about several aspects of his administration -- steel tariffs, spending, etc. I don't blanketly endorse him.
However, I STRONGLY support him because he's been clear-eyed about the need to combat terrorism. And he's doing something the States have rarely had the courage to do in the past, namely, to go after the regimes which sponsor terrorism. In the past we've tried to pluck the flowers and leave the roots. He's addressing the roots of the problems.
Natinal security is the paramount concern facing America, and I trust Bush about 1000% more than I do Dean on the issue. Commander-in-Chief Dean is something to make me wake up in a cold sweat.
"how much this administration is bullying it's way around to get its objectives through (at any cost)."
It's amazing to me how short people's menory is. The fact that anyone credits the whining coming from the House Dems just tells me that they weren't paying attention during the 50 years of unbroken Democratic control of the House. They were just as cutthroat and just as arbitrary as they accuse the Republicans of being.
What Bush has done is helped the Republicans act like a majoritarian party for the first time. Ever since 1994 the Dems acted as if they should rule by divine mandate, and the Rs were simply illegitimate usurpers. More strangely, Republicans acted the same way, as if they had sneaked into the driver's seat for a moment and the real owner of the vehicle would soon return. And so they got rolled repeatedly by the Dems, who still often functioned parliamentarily like a majority. The R's have finally started to use the levers of power to achieve their goals.
Given the inertia built into the system, it's the only way to get anything done. We can dislike it, but the fact is that bipartisanship generally means trying to strip off enough of your opponents votes to get something passed (or buying enough votes from them through pork.) Neither side WANTS to help the majority party get credit for "getting things done." There is no incentive for bipartisanship. I may sound cynical for saying it, but it's no less true for that. Such is the nature of democratic (with a small "d") politics.
"while the Republicans are they themselves a faltering party"
Faltering in what sense? I pointed out the weakness of the Democratic farm team, in that they have to go to dark horses to find their candidates because their mainstream candidates lack popularity or oomph. The Republicans are hardly faltering -- when Clinton came in office they had control of 6 state legislatures, if memory serves. They had only 15 governorships. They hadn't controlled the House since 1952. There was a time post-Depression when there were literally twice as many registered Dems as Republicans in America.
Now they have around 21 governorships, including NY, TX and CA. They have almost reached parity in state legislative seats. Registered voters are now equally divided between the two parties. They control the House and Senate and are likely to for the next decade.
I may be misunderstanding you, though. In what sense did you mean, "faltering?" I ask thishonestly, because maybe you meant it in a more abstract than electoral sense, and I'm answering electorally. . .
"Or am I just being to idealistic that we can have a government with moral conscience as well as good policy/administration?"
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Bush's presidency has been remarkably scandal-free compared with most previous ones, and I think his policies on most issues are consciously moral. I don't think we'll ever have "ideal" government though. Not so long as people are running the government. We're invariably flawed. :-)
In answer to why I'm so vociferous about Dean and Co, part of it is because I see them as enormous threats to our nation's security. I don't, and wouldn't go after Gephardt or Lieberman in the same way. While they're more dovish than I am, they aren't wacky. They have rational positions that happen to differ with mine. Clark and Dean are both in the freakshow wing of their party.
Posted by: Discoshaman at janvier 15, 2004 11:46 PMLib!
Hi buddy...
"why so silent on the Mars boondoggle?"
I just don't pay much attention to the Sci/Tech section of the news, honestly. I went to SpaceCamp when I was a kid, but outside of that my interest in science has been nil (though I'm reading The Birth of a New Physics right now.) I'll look into it and maybe post something. :)
" Hmmmm, a small-state governor and a Republican general - sounds like what the Dems were talking about (I'm thinking of Colin Powell) back in 92, and that seemed to work ok."
Your memory fails you. The phrase was "the governor of a small Southern state." As the old children's song says, "One of these things is not like the other. . ."
That one word makes all the difference. The Dems haven't elected a Democrat from the North since JFK. Gephardt would be a threat because he comes from a Heartland state, but Dean couldn't pick a worse place to be from. If you want to pick a governor to compare him to, it's Dukakis, not Clinton (though lucky for him he lacks Dukakis's woosiness, so the comparison is imperfect.) A New England liberal is electoral poison in the swing states.
Secondly, there's no comparison because Clinton ran as a moderate. He triangulated the House Dems and the Republicans, and positioned himself in the middle. Dean has embraced the Left.
Clinton had his Sister Souljah moment. Dean shares a stage with Sharpton as if he's actually a normal human being. Clinton actually spoke the language of Evangelicals and won a large percentage of them, Dean talks about his faith leading him to gay unions. Clinton was beloved of blacks and brought them to the polls, Dean is Ultra-Whitey.
There isn't anything Bre'er Rabbit about it. Edwards would possibly be a threat because of the South. Lieberman is a relatively principled, dignified moderate who could challenge for the middle. Gephardt is a relatively moderate guy from the Heartland swing states. Kerry, well, I'd love to see Kerry win. He's actually less electable than Dean. Clark is the scariest in many ways, because he's so empty that they can fill him with moderation and make it stick in the general election, and he can pose believably on national defense.
So in the end, I think Dean does make for an attractive opponent. He does have some unique strengths, but his weaknesses more than compensate.