Even in Queen Elizabeth's time, I expect that line drew loud applause every time.
The longer I consider the political paralysis of modern American politics, the more inclined I am to paraphrase the Bard: "The first thing we do, let's kill the Democratic Party."
No kidding.
On Tuesday, I dropped by the Enon Volunteer Fire Department to cast a vote in one of Virginia's open primaries. I requested a Republican ballot and cast my vote for John McCain.
Now please understand: I was born into a Democratic family. Virginia Democrats, to be sure, and pretty conservative. But parents loyal to FDR, and to Harry Truman - grateful for the New Deal, Democratic leadership during World War II, and, especially, for the G. I. Bill, which set my Dad off on a course which led to eighteen years in the General Assembly and a stint as Attorney General of Virginia.
I joined the Chesterfield County Democratic Committee as soon as I was old enough to vote, and attended the first two state conventions for which I was eligible.
But by the time I was 25 - in 1976 - I had grown disenchanted with a party which didn't seem to stand for anything beyond winning the next election. I quit - hung out in the limbo of independence for a few years - and tried my luck at being a progressive Republican.
That lasted two years - long enough to work for John Warner in his first Senate campaign and escort Elizabeth Taylor (then Mrs. Warner) to a couple of events. Then Ronald Reagan took over the GOP, and progressive Republicans became the spotted owls of American politics.
I tried coming home. I took a key role in Gary Hart's 1984 campaign in Virginia. When the Supreme Court elected George W. Bush, I even rejoined the Democratic Party - served on my Congressional District Committee, and trudged the streets of Manchester, NH, for Howard Dean.
But it didn't take. The Democratic Party still hadn't become a party of vision or principle - just a mechanism for winning the occasional election - when Republican arrogance handed them an election they couldn't lose.
And so they remain today.
I realize millions of Americans are excited about the prospect of a President Obama - or even a President Hillary Clinton. But I see nothing but the prospect of continued disappointment. Obama's prescriptions are too vague - and the man himself is too lacking in experience. I can just imagine what Congress and the lobbyists will do to his agenda.
And as for Senator Clinton - even if she won, she'd start with two strikes against her and a biased ump behind the plate.
The problem is that the Democratic Party - the party that rolled over for the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, the Protect America Act, No Child Left Behind, the Roberts and Alito nominations, etc., etc. - the party which couldn't even bring a resolution of impeachment against Alberto Gonzalez - is still what it is.
Vapid. Timorous. More interested in holding onto a few seats than enunciating an agenda for actual American progress.
Which is why, after much soul-searching, it has come to this. I don't believe the Democratic Party - today's Democratic Party - is capable of governing. Not under Hillary. Not under Obama. Not under John Edwards, or Howard Dean, or Al Gore - or any candidate I have supported in the past.
LBJ might have twisted enough arms to give them the illusion of a spine. FDR might have charmed them into taking a stand.
But I'm not even sure about that.
Which is why - at a season when most progressive, liberal, and just decent Americans are filled with optimism - I find myself adopting the role of curmudgeon.
There's a great cause out there to be fought for. But it requires something American politics hasn't seen since at least the Progressive Era - if not the 1840's and 1850's.
It requires a disciplined, courageous party of the center-left - not a radical party, just a determined one - which doesn't define winning in terms of getting the most votes in the next election.
Which defines winning in terms of winning the national debate - of moving the national agenda.
Of doing, in short, what the Christian Right has spent the past several decades doing to the Republican Party - standing so firmly for principle that it would prefer to lose an election rather than be taken for granted by a major party which doesn't really care than much about its agenda.
I intend to write at length about how such a party would operate, but the principle is simple. Just as the Liberty and Free Soil parties laid the necessary groundwork for the triumph of Lincoln and the Republicans, so now, this Nation needs a party which will lose elections - but force at least one major party to address serious issues about the future of America.
The Democratic Party is what it is - and what its institutional DNA makes it - a coalition of special interests with no overriding agenda beyond winning elections. A Jacksonian contraption at the service of the personal ambitions of whatever candidate gains its nomination on the way to the White House.
An obsolete machine whose very survival precludes the rise of a party of genuine progressives - not matter how bold its rhetoric or charismatic its current leader.
0 comments:
Post a Comment