Here’s a good document on where the Democrats go from here by Will Marshall (of the PPI).
He suggests that the Democrats can once again become competitive in the ‘heartland’ by doing a few sensible things:
Let’s face facts: America is at war, and the public isn’t yet convinced that Democrats have the stomach for the fight. Democrats themselves seem unsure of their true identity: Are they the anti-war party or the party of tough-minded liberals, the party of Gov. Howard Dean or the party of Sen. Joe Biden? Resolving this ambivalence is essential to making headway in the heartland states.
Like the liberal hawks who fashioned America’s winning Cold War strategy, today’s Democrats must demonstrate that they are tough enough to wage an aggressive war on Muslim extremism, and smart enough to enlist influential allies and international institutions in that fight.
and
Instead, Democrats should do a better job of linking their economic interests and moral outlook. In his 1992 campaign, Clinton wove personal responsibility and middle-class opportunity into a single narrative that promised to reward families that “work hard and play by the rules” and to oppose policies that entrench unearned privilege. He spoke of honoring work and family by ending welfare as a way of life and supplementing the wages of low-income workers. He called for national service as a way to balance the rights and duties of citizenship, and to replace the politics of entitlement with a new ethic of reciprocal responsibility. Four years later, Clinton’s proposals for school uniforms and television V-chips struck a resonant chord with middle class families trying to shield their kids from pop culture.
Since then, Democrats have had little success in challenging the GOP’s claim to be the party of “family values” and its hold on married families with children. A heartland strategy should include a new progressive family policy that addresses both the economic and cultural strains on American parents.
and
Just as religious advocates of the “Social Gospel” infused early 20th century progressivism with moral fervor, Democrats should couch their social initiatives in the language of faith and morality. The sad truth is that since Clinton’s departure, Democrats have had little to say about growing poverty and inequality in America. Surely, they are moral issues no less than abortion and gay marriage, and they give Democrats an opportunity to speak unambiguously of right and wrong.
Makes sense to me, on every front.
Go read the whole thing.
I have one quibble (of course).
The article starts with an electoral calculation, and then makes the policy arguments that the author believes are needed to make that electoral math happen.
When I read his conservative equivalents, the impression I get is that they start with a strong sense of belief, from which flows policy, which is then vetted and tailored to be electorally palatable.
I think the Democratic Party does need to be a party of believers – they need to believe in some core values and the policies that flow naturally from them. It’s a very different animal than donning a ghillie suit of beliefs to try and concoct a winning electoral strategy.
Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer in sniper’s getup? Ewwww… Laughable credibility aside, can we pick another image?
Your quibble is old hat; I’ve quoted this long-ago post Blaster many times before:
Democrats need to demonstrate to all americans that they are the source of the world’s problems. Americans need to put their interests behind the interests of other cultures, other countries. Even security interests. Failure to do that is evidence of american hubris, american simplisme.
Democrats are people of complaint, of negativity. Victim me this, victim me that. America bad this, america evil that, western culture very very bad. Shame on you american, you westerner you! The root of all evil.
“In his 1992 campaign, Clinton wove personal responsibility and middle-class opportunity into a single narrative that promised to reward families that “work hard and play by the rules” and to oppose policies that entrench unearned privilege.”
Sounds like Clinton wove a fine Persian tapestry when Marshall puts it like that. Look at the shoddy goods you got instead: Clinton tried to govern on a no-compromise, partisan majority basis. That went off the rails fast when the Republicans took away the House for the first time in decades. Incredibly, Clinton has never gotten the blame he deserves for this, so it must have been an act of God or something. But for two years after that, Newt Gingrich might as well have been President of the United States.
Clinton launched his health care debacle because he wanted to nail his name in the history books, not because the country wanted or needed it. Likewise the now universally despised Oslo Discords, in which the primary objective of US Middle East policy became scoring a Peace Prize for Clinton. Likewise the useless Americorps. Clinton could have improved Vista or the Peace Corps, but to hell with that – Kennedy already had his name on that stuff, and Clinton was only interested in monuments to Himself.
Clinton was no liberal. He wasn’t a moderate or a conservative, either; Clinton was just a Clintonite. His bows to centrism were entirely in his own interest, because he was so self-absorbed he made Nixon look like Francis of Assisi. Clinton was good for Clinton. He was never any good to anybody else. He still isn’t.
Trying to imitate that pathological narcissicist is a dead end, except for one thing – being a moderate-sounding Southerner, Clinton had some novelty value as a Democratic candidate (Democrats and Republicans agree: Carter doesn’t count – never happened, really).
Everybody knows what most Reform Democrats want: a liberal who is hawkish on foreign policy. Republicans have a whole pile of those – we call them “neoconservatives”.
A really different “look” for the Democratic party would be a female or minority candidate who is a credible hawk – a sort of Jeanne Kirkpatrick, before she turned Republican. Unfortunately, the left wing really hates women and minorities who depart in any way from totally unelectable liberal positions, so you’re stuck with White Men Only.
An alternative departure would be the first Jewish Democratic candidate. You happen to have a good one handy: Joe Lieberman, and if you could get him nominated …
Well, you begin to see the problem.
So you’re endorsing Hillary in ’08, Glen?
Use of a ghillie suit for its real purpose is serious. As a policy evolves you have to start somewhere. Howard Dean was pro military in Bosnia, Serbia Afghanistan and Kuwait. He was governor of Vermont. As a result he had real world administrative experience. He built a grass roots fund raising technique that CREEP used to win. Now no one wants to see or hear from him because of his meltdown over losing to Kerry in a primary which now that we have seen Kerry’s campaign almost every Democrat wants to do the same thing. But without it I think you’d agree he be a very viable policy maker. So don’t joke about a Ghillie suit. Without the one the Republicans wear I know their internal contradictions would make them dissolve as a party.
Wishard has a nice take on Clinton. Your take on neoconservatives as liberal is inexplicable to me as I’ve yet to read a domestic agenda. Do you have a site you’d reccommend?
_he made Nixon look like Francis of Assisi_
LOL, Glen! You nailed it!!
But you forgot to mention North Korea, and how Clinton’s shameless self-interested pursuit of a Nobel Peace prize allowed Kim Jong Il to build two full up nuclear enrichment sites and genocide 3 million civilians.
The sum of Clinton was ambition and vanity. It still is.
Robert M: You might like this place, “Dean Nation”:http://dean2004.blogspot.com/, Aziz is very, very bright and has impeccable manners! 🙂
His comments policy is exemplary. I’d also like to say, Aziz’s blog is one of the extremely few left-leaning blogs that promotes Spirit of America.
praktike: “So you’re endorsing Hillary in ’08, Glen?”
Of course I wouldn’t endorse Hillary Clinton, even if she had her little purse pistol to my head. If Bill makes Nixon look altruistic, Hillary makes Nixon look sane. Still, Hillary for President isn’t an entirely crazy idea (unlike “Howard Dean for Anything”) depending on what kind of reputation she earns over the next four years.
“Your take on neoconservatives as liberal is inexplicable to me as I’ve yet to read a domestic agenda. Do you have a site you’d reccommend?”
Yes. But it isn’t very appealing to me.
The best way to describe “Glen Wishard’s portrait of Bill Clinton”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/006032.php#c4 in c4 is “partly true.”
While vanity was and is a strong trait in Bill, and Glen had some good points, one trait is never the totality of a politician’s character. Bill Clinton had devoted a lot of thought to his party and its prospects before he stepped into office, and governed from a belief system as well as personal ambition.
To miss that is to miss an important dimension of the man, and misunderstand what makes his wife’s prospects different. Expensive mistake in 2008, I think.
If you’re an opponent (as Glen is), it also leads one to fatally underestimate Bill Clinton himself. Which is, come to think of it, the usual consequence of reducing opposing politicians to a caricature.
You don’t become as popular as Clinton is, and remain popular for as long as he has, if all you have to offer is vanity. It’s a service to point out that element of him, but a disservice to stop there and not really think about why he succeeded (and arguably, still succeeds).
“The sad truth is that since Clinton’s departure, Democrats have had little to say about growing poverty and inequality in America”
And then they would have to explain the growing poverty and inequality of California,a blue state before blue was trendy(maybe they can blame it on Nixon and Reagan?)
How about this for a campaign slogan:
“America,vote for us and we’ll do for you what we’ve done for California”
“Bill Clinton had devoted a lot of thought to his party”
He trangulated himself away from his party
“and its prospects before he stepped into office”
And left it electorally uncompetitive.
“and governed from a belief system”
that what was good for Bill was good for the party.
The Clinton yrs are a legacy of wasted opportunity.Ironically,obessed with his legacy,he missed a chance to make a complete overhaul of both foreign policy(outdated cold war obligations)and domestic policy(the failing welfare state and a divisive,corrosive spoils system) his “legacy”.
Reagan won the Cold War,Bill could have won the peace,at home and abroad.
Joe has a point about underestimating Clintons. Especially the blond chick with the weird gleam in her eye. You can’t argue with success, after all.
I can’t give much credit to Clinton’s “belief system”, unless Klinton Uber Alles is a belief system. I’m willing admit that Clinton had good qualities – in fact, I think that deep down Clinton had nothing but good intentions. Enough of them to pave a four-lane cloverleaf highway to Hell. But Clinton’s success was at the expense of others, including a lot of people who gave him loyalty and got nothing in return. Oddly enough he did little or no damage to the country, which buzzed happily along under his feet. But Clinton massively damaged the Democratic party, to an extent that nobody wants to admit.
So weigh his good qualities against the carnage:
– Losing the Democratic majority in the House. This was Clinton’s fault, and not just because it happened on his watch. Clinton tried to run Washington like it was Daley’s Chicago, made a mess of it, and meanwhile the GOP was shut out with nothing to do but organize. A total nobody – a James Buchanan – could have kept the Dem House majority.
– The practice of talking crap and calling it policy (free college educations for everybody, airlines as safe as El Al, etc,) is now a party standard, and it’s pure Clinton. Clinton’s outstanding style allowed him to get away with this. People like John Kerry, obviously, cannot get away with this.
– The current nasty environment within the Democratic party is, I argue, a Clinton legacy. It’s a legacy of paranoia, conspiracy theory, and fratricide, among other things. It took a massive amount of invective to keep Clinton propped up politically. It was just barely enough as it was. Does anybody remember the vile things that were said about Joe Lieberman when he engaged in (very mildly worded) criticism of King William?
– Democrats around the country paid a heavy price for being loyal to Clinton. Tom Daschle (remember him?) was one of them. “Red State” Democrats, who hail from parts where people don’t appreciate the multiple meanings of “is”, took it right in the nuts because they stood by Clinton. In the long term, many of these people were more important to the party than Clinton was.
I think I’ll do a retrospective blog on Clinton, since (believe it or not) I actually have some good things to say about him, too. For now, I’ll admit that the idea of Clinton (as Marshall describes) has some positive aspects. You just need to remove all explicit references to Clinton.
Umm, Joe? The best way to describe Glen’s portrait of Clinton is _mostly_ true.
And, Glen, Clinton policies did *grevious damage* to national security and the intelligence community. We are still trying to recover.
When GWB took office, I was very struck by the difference in the quality of the respective cabinets– Clinton chose second-rate yesmen and _claquers_ so that no one would eclipse his much vaunted intellect. Has anyone heard of these people since, with the sad exception of that sorry oath-breaker Sandy Berger? The exception was poor Janet Reno, whose selection was based on her extreme unattractiveness.
By contrast, Bush’s cabinet is composed of men and women who could run for president themselves.
_By contrast, Bush’s cabinet is composed of men and women who could run for president themselves._
Shouldn’t you be using the past tense (Bush’s cabinet _was_ composed . . .)?
Geez, here y’all are about to turn me into a defender of Bill Clinton.
First of all, “Blaster’s quote”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/006032.php#c2 is still the best summary on this issue that I have ever heard, anywhere, by anyone. So let’s get that out of the way.
Now, “fghj describes Clinton’s missed legacy”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/006032.php#c11 – well, yes, there was an opportunity for more. Having said that:
* Military transformation did not begin under W., it had picked up a lot of its momentum under Clinton.
* Foreign policy featured some huge mistakes (I think the magnitude of the NK mistake is one whose full bill hasn’t yet come due, and then there’s Osama). As NK is underestimated on the cost side, the next few years may show Bosnia underestimated on the plus side, as the first step toward a sane liberal approach to force. On balance, I think the rating is still quite negative, but the full tally isn’t in.
* Domestically, Clinton’s major accomplishments were negatively-charged: ending the starry-eyed defense of Great Society programs as above criticism, changing the tenor and principles behind a message that had been actively alienating the middle class. Because it’s the absence of something, it doesn’t get the same headlines, but they were major accomplishments.
bq. In retrospect, Clinton needed a “fixer” who would grab party machinery at the lowest levels and entrench these views, rather than having them as a veneer over a party whose activists never really progressed.
* Their major positive domestic effort is one that didn’t get as many headlines as their health-care failure. They also added focus and strong impetus to a flurry of activity around “Reinventing Government” ( “books”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0787943320/qid=1103239075/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/102-7092923-6768969?v=glance&s=books | “site”:http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/ ). While this isn’t as high-profile as a program with one’s name on it, the cumulative positives of this effort made a real on-the-ground difference in many places. It’s a very worthwhile theme for New Liberals to study and run with again.
* Inventing the Internet. Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Programs like military transformation, reinventing government, and creating a liberalism acceptable to the middle class were all big priorities – and a real rethink of domestic policy probably needed to have these logjams broken in order to really get underway. The thing is, even a 2-term Presidency won’t see their end-points.
If these things are really important, therefore, your Presidency is going to be a ditch-digger Presidency, and not the guy who puts up the house. So what had to be done and who Clinton was, was a mismatch. But the fact that he went forward with them so strongly is itself a strong counter-argument to the “mostly vanity” assessment – else why pursue these things?
Vanity is surely a significant part of Bill Clinton – but I think many of the assessments here are unbalanced and miss important things.
For me, Bill Clinton is not defined by one trait. He is defined by his archetypes (Daniel Webster + Mischief-lovin’ southern good ol’ boy), and especially by his contradictions.
My bottom line: Bill Clinton was a charismatic but contradictory personality whose themes and initiatives were about long-term foundations, even though he himself was not. He flubbed badly on foreign policy but still has a tab outstanding, made largely-unheralded domestic policy progress, and benefitted from a bubble economy whose warm and halcyon days are what his Presidency is largely remembered for. He achieved his goal of transforming the Democratic Party, but failed to leave behind a strong cadre in the party that could preserve and continue the work he began. Hence the unhinged New Left flavour of the Democrats these days.
His wife would be a very different person, with very different strengths and weaknesses. Her husband’s network would be her major source of support, however, which is why a proper assessment of Bill is still politically current.
Ironically, if she won, Bill would probably find his ideal place and use in government. I’d sure hate to be her vice-president, though.
Nope! Condi?Rummy in ’08! ;P
Joe – I won’t argue with your assessment of Clinton’s achievements. In fact, you left out NAFTA and SDI. And I’m not as critical of his foreign policies (at least, his pre-Lewinsky foreign policies) as some are. But I can’t wrap my pointy head around this: “He achieved his goal of transforming the Democratic Party, but failed to leave behind a strong cadre in the party that could preserve and continue the work he began.”
Transformed it into what? So far as I can tell, into a kind of twisted amusement park for his cadre, who are running around like they own the place. These are the guys who helped Al Gore and John Kerry crash and burn. These are the guys who are teaching young people that democracy is nothing but a rigged game of Blackjack.
Clinton left the Democratic party sucked dry – such a moral and intellectual vacuum that even those marginal Berkeley creeps from Moveon.org felt free to move in.
I know he didn’t mean to do it. I know he didn’t set out to do bad things. But once he was in trouble, he put on the most incredible display of sulking, paranoia, and vindictiveness in American history, and if it doesn’t shock us enough it’s only because he made it so routine. Politics under Clinton was the perfect Hobbesian nightmare, with everybody out to get everybody.
I know it wasn’t all his fault. The Democratic party volunteered to sacrifice itself to Clinton’s ego – some of them because they thought they had to be loyal to him, some because they were afraid of him, and some of them because they would just as soon see the country fall through a crack in the earth than yield an inch to Republicans.
That was the work he began, and it continues apace.
Sorry, my comment above was for PD.
And I’m going to argue with Joe. I will not give Clinton one particle of credit for military transformation. Post cold war, something had to happen. Clinton had no plan. All transformational processes initiated were reactive to a changed environment.
And, his lack of vision caused him to cannabalize essential intel programs for his peace dividends.
I’d be interested to see the world population genocide and ethnic cleansing totals for Clinton’s tenure as president.
jinndrella and praktike remind me of the story of the the thre blind men in a cave trying to describe an elephant.
Mr Wishard the question is still open.
Clinton is guilty of not pressing the military to do much of anything one way or the other. He got dragged into some humanitarian wars against his will, and so did the Army. Meanwhile, it was busy preparing for war with imaginary enemies. So there’s plenty of blame to go all around. At the end of the day, though, no big disasters.