The Informationist

The Powerful vs. the People

David Ignatius’s column in yesterday’s Washington Post, The Party of Performance, could prove to be something of a watershed. He asserts that our national political debate may finally be getting beyond the ill-conceived mud-slinging about values and moving into a focus on performance. Here’s to hoping that he’s right.

I have believed for quite some time that America’s political leadership is much more divided than its people. As a result, our political leaders have taken it upon themselves to drive wedges throughout the American body politic. This ploy makes political sense. After all, a voter petrified of the Republican “other” will vote Democratic without scrutinizing either candidates or positions. Voters terrified by the Democratic “other” are equally safe Republican votes. Political leaders capable of scaring enough voters gain maximum flexibility to exploit both their locked-in base and those that they have locked out. In this context, Howard Dean’s calumny that Republicans have never worked a day in their lives and Karl Rove’s obscenity asserting that liberals believe that bin Laden merely needs a good shrink both demonstrate political savvy.

Had the Democrats really wanted to win the 2004 election, we would have focused on the Bush Administration’s incompetence. We would have nominated a candidate with a “can do” reputation, and pointed to how much better things worked during the Clinton Administration than during the Bush Administration. But competence, I was assured, was a hard sell. So instead we ran around creating ideological differences at every turn, whether they really exist or not. We fought education over testing rather than funding, abandoned our historical opposition to tyrants and support for human rights, pushed to increase taxes on the wealthy rather than calling for tax simplification, and insisted that social security needs no reform. Why? Beacuse Bush talks a good game about testing, human rights, tax simplification, and social security reform. We seemed to think that the American public is too dumb to notice that Bush’s rhetoric is rarely matched by competence. In short, Democrats have adopted the divisive Republican strategy of decades past. At the convention, Bill Clinton explained that they need to divide the country, but we don’t. While that may be true, we’re certainly not acting as if it is.

Our political leaders have conspired to convince our citizens that they dwell in either the United States of Blue America or the United States of Red America--two increasingly antagonistic countries with divergent and diverging world views. As Egyptian protesters might shout: Kifaya! Enough! There are ideals and ideologies that unite these United States. It’s time for our leaders to recognize that both parties want to improve education, spread opportunity, promote growth, oppose tyranny, strengthen human rights, and generate an international system commited to liberal values and the role of law. They differ in priorities and in approach--not in ideology. The time has come to reunite the Red and Blue states into a debate over competence and performance.

Ignatius points to Newt Gingrich as someone who seems to have learned from his past successes and defeats, and moved on to a different playing field. Perhaps. Others might have pointed to Hillary Clinton and drawn the same conclusion. John McCain and Joe Lieberman invariably pop up in all lists of influential politicians capable of transcending the partisan divide. It’s time that we--as voters, citizens, and activists--make it clear that these are the people we want as our leaders rather than the sorry bunch we’ve got at the moment.

Posted by Bruce Abramson from on 09/10 at 08:26 AM in American Government, Politics, and Domestic Policies