CATCHING UP WITH THOSE DNC CHAIRMAN CANDIDATES - HOWARD DEAN [12/26 11:17 PM]
Meanwhile, the most high-profile candidate for the job, former Vermont governor Howard Dean, is not featured in that issue of the New Republic. Dean is featured in Rolling Stone this month, as one of their “People of the Year” in between Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps and Seymour Hersh.
Dean is credited with “articulating a message - anti-war, tolerant and fiscally conservative - that added a dose of common sense to the tired liberalism of the Democratic Party.” There is also this gem:
Interviewer: Given the size of the Republican victory, should Democrats try and cooperate with them?
Dean: Since when is fifty-one percent of the votes a mandate by anyone’s definition? It’s ridiculous.”
Oh, where to begin? That no candidate has gotten that high a percentage since 1988?
That one who never came close to his party‘s nomination ought not to scoff? That the good doctor has yet to win a race, even a Democratic primary, outside Vermont?
That if 51 percent isn’t a mandate, then no Democrat since Lyndon Johnson has had a mandate?
(Bill Clinton won 49.23 percent in 1996. Jimmy Carter’s highest total was 50.08 percent, after Watergate, running against Gerald Ford. The last time a Democrat received more than Bush’s 51 percent was LBJ’s 61 percent in 1964.)
That Bush's 59.1 million votes was the highest total for a presidential candidate in American history? That Bush was the first president since Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 to win re-election while adding to his party's majorities in the House and Senate?
I believe Dr. Dean has misdiagnosed what constitutes a mandate.
By the way, I know Rolling Stone became the rock music wing of the Democratic National Committee a couple of years ago, but perusing their “People of the Year” list, one would have no idea that this was a tough year for the Democratic Party. Rolling Stone salutes Michael Moore, Bruce Springsteen, Richard Clarke, Barack Obama, Dean, Hersh, Jon Stewart, Tom Brokaw (His pull-quote is, “ ‘Genius’ is not the word that I would use for Bush”), and Billie Joe Armstrong, who is credited with “scoring a number one album at Bush’s expense.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger is also named, and gets an interview where he is repeatedly asked to renounce GOP criticism, pressure from “religious conservatives”, etc.
Now, a lot of those guys had good years, but did red-state culture score no wins this year?
My brother (my source on all things musical and the purchaser of the mag), reassured me that Rolling Stone was no longer seen as the Bible of Rock and Roll but was seen as just another celebrity magazine - US Weekly, or People without all that substance.
But one has to wonder… of all anti-Bush cultural figures to salute… Why Seymour Hersh and Richard Clarke? What, Joe Wilson didn’t ‘keep it real’ enough this year?
CATCHING UP WITH THOSE DNC CHAIRMAN CANDIDATES - WELLINGTON WEBB [12/26 10:55 PM]
Wellington Webb, former mayor of Denver, Colorado, offers the New Republic column least likely to raise the ire of his party’s left or right.
He makes the lone reference to the glory days of the Clinton administration. “On domestic policy, it’s safe to say that most Americans prefer, for example, the steady hand of Robert Rubin and the track record of sound fiscal policy, social equity, expanded economic opportunity for all working Americans, and sustained prosperity that are part of the Democratic legacy to the reckless and destructive accumulation of debt and net loss of jobs of the Bush administration.”
I’ll bet that line was a hit at the opening of the Clinton Library in Little Rock, but it is not as if John Kerry ignored economic issues in his campaign. He endlessly painted a dire picture of the economy, and brought out the former President as much as his healing heart would allow him in the final weeks. It seems unlikely that invoking the Clinton years will really be a winning and resonant message for the Democrats in a post-9/11 world.
Webb calls for Rumsfeld’s firing. Of course, the factor that is most likely to keep Rumsfeld in office is Democrats calling for him to be fired. Once the opposition party calms down and stop sounding like angry football fans calling for the coach’s head at the end of a disappointing season, Bush will be more inclined to stop seeing his decision on his secretary as a test of loyalty and instead be willing to look at a new mind and fresh ideas at the Pentagon.
Webb closes by pointing out he comes from one of the few red states that has been kind to Democrats recently, where his party won control of the state House, state Senate, and U.S. Senate and House seats previously held by Republicans in November.
CATCHING UP WITH THOSE DNC CHAIRMAN CANDIDATES - SIMON ROSENBERG [12/26 10:41 PM]
In a brief contribution to the New Republic, Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, interprets Beinart’s original article as a call to surrender to the Bush administration’s position on terrorism issues, a step he’s not willing to make. He also believes that the Bush Doctrine is not merely flawed, but that it does not meet his standard for "credibility."
This administration is waging a campaign against terrorism but it has failed to offer a credible vision of how the United States can move the world toward a peace and prosperity rooted in our best ideals.
The Bush administration’s execution of the war on terror hasn’t been perfect (it is a human endeavor, of course) but we have seen a fairly successful election in Afghanistan, and we await elections within a month with the Palestinian territories and Iraq. If the Bush Doctrine isn’t “credible,” what vision are the Democrats offering? Bring France into Iraq and trust Kofi Annan and the United Nations to deal swiftly with threats?
Beinart’s original piece included a broadside against the organization MoveOn.org and Michael Moore, and Rosenberg reaches out to those organizations. “We are also morally obligated to acknowledge that President Bush’s record is deeply worthy of skepticism, and we can no more ignore those in our party who have rightfully voiced dissent than we can forget how we won the war against communism.”
(As one, readers of this site on the conservative side of the spectrum are asking, “what’s this ‘we’ stuff?”)
CATCHING UP WITH THOSE DNC CHAIRMAN CANDIDATES - MARTIN FROST [12/26 10:27 PM]
Elsewhere in the New Republic, Martin Frost, a former congressman from Texas, writes in a martial mood. He, too, thinks that Americans just don’t know the truth about the Democratic party. He laments that too many Americans are unaware of the fact that “it was a Democrat, Sen. Joe Lieberman, who initially called for a Department of Homeland Security.”
He also writes, “It was the Republican leadership that stalled the passage of the monumental intelligence overhaul bill due to intra-party struggles over other, less time-sensitive legislation.” Wasn’t that fight about illegal immigration?
But what stands out about Frost’s sales pitch is his constant references to his family’s experience with the armed services, a pose of “more comfortable with the military than thou” to his rivals to the chairmanship. He mentions his father’s work as an aerospace engineer at General Dynamics, his enlistment in the Army Reserve and service in a JAG unit; his wife, Kathy, is the highest ranking woman in the U.S Army. “When I work to strengthen our nation’s defenses and protect our military, it’s personal.”
Actually, that too sounds like a passage from Kerry’s convention speech:
I know what kids go through when they are carrying an M-16 in a dangerous place and they can't tell friend from foe. I know what they go through when they're out on patrol at night and they don't know what's coming around the next bend. I know what it's like to write letters home telling your family that everything's all right when you're not sure that's true. As President, I will wage this war with the lessons I learned in war.
That message may not have resonated with the electorate at large, but it did win a Democratic primary. Maybe Frost is following the Kerry strategy in the race for the chairmanship.
CATCHING UP WITH THOSE DNC CHAIRMAN CANDIDATES - DONNIE FOWLER [12/26 10:24 PM]
The New Republic (Suggested slogan: “Hey, is anybody else remotely interested in moving the Democratic Party back to the center these days? Anyone? Hello?”) has done the party another service by having a couple of the leading candidates for Chairman of the Democratic National Committee offer op-eds responding to Peter Beinart’s “A Fighting Faith.”
What can we learn from these op-eds?
One gets the feeling Donnie Fowler, a veteran telecommunications and technology executive (and son of former DNC Chair Don Fowler) is still angry over this year’s election, and thought Kerry’s service record should have given his man the win.
In the first sentence, Fowler refers to “the bumbling of President Bush and his ‘war cabinet’ of draft dodgers and pseudo-intellectuals.” By sentence three, Fowler points out that “it is not their children who fight”, and by the end of the paragraph, Fowler has hit the key notes of the Michael Moore anthem - Halliburton, Rumsfeld, Chalabi, the fact that Rumsfeld didn’t go into Iraq in his recent trip to Kuwait where he took the question about humvee armor.
A paragraph later, he laments, “Particularly among married and college-educated women the electorate believed that the Republicans would better protect them and their families than multi-medal, thrice-wounded John Kerry.” (One suspects those Swift Boat ads still grate on him.)
Fowler is spoiling for a fight, but ends up picking some odd terrain to fight on. He asks, “Wasn’t it Clinton’s military that dispatched with the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda less than a year after Bush took the White House?” An odd area to brag about - “Even though our man didn’t do anything about the threat as it gathered, his cuts in defense spending weren’t nearly as bad as his foes said.” Even more, it insists that victory be credited to “Clinton’s military” but not to the “bumbling” commander in chief and the “war cabinet of draft dodgers and pseudo-intellectuals.”
But when it actually comes to mapping out the Democrats’ comeback, Fowler is a little less specific. He laments that “Democrats have conceded so much territory to the Republicans on security that we have left little room to make the case for ourselves.” (Which territory? What concessions?) “Our inactions suggest that even we have bought the line that you cannot be patriotic and a Democrat. Since when does patriotism belong to the Republicans? Since when does the flag belong to the right wing?”
This stuff is going to make Democrats feel good, but it’s just a variation of the complacent, self-praising “We Democrats don’t win because we’re too nice” argument — or, more specifically, excuse. This argument is nothing new, and voters weren’t all that moved by it last time they heard it. Recall Kerry’s convention speech:
And tonight, we have an important message for those who question the patriotism of Americans who offer a better direction for our country. Before wrapping themselves in the flag and shutting their eyes and ears to the truth, they should remember what America is really all about. They should remember the great idea of freedom for which so many have given their lives. Our purpose now is to reclaim democracy itself. We are here to affirm that when Americans stand up and speak their minds and say America can do better, that is not a challenge to patriotism; it is the heart and soul of patriotism.
You see that flag up there. We call her Old Glory. The stars and stripes forever. I fought under that flag, as did so many of you here and all across our country. That flag flew from the gun turret right behind my head. It was shot through and through and tattered, but it never ceased to wave in the wind. It draped the caskets of men I served with and friends I grew up with. For us, that flag is the most powerful symbol of who we are and what we believe in. Our strength. Our diversity. Our love of country. All that makes America both great and good.
That flag doesn't belong to any president. It doesn't belong to any ideology and it doesn't belong to any political party. It belongs to all the American people.
Democrats may relish a DNC Chair who pounds the lectern and insists his party loves the flag, too. But one wonders if votes will move from red to blue because of the tired, specious charge that Republicans “attack their opponents patriotism” or the Democrats repeated insistence that they love the flag, their country, and ordinary Americans. Perhaps the voters wonder if the party doth protest too much?
The Kerry Spot on National Review Online
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