Core's Observation

Or, the Grand Unified Theory of Democratic Presidential Politics.

William Voegeli writes at OpinionJournal, yesterday:

.... The narrative of Democrats trying to find a narrative might be more promising, or at least more interesting, if it were fresher. The problem is the Democrats have lost five of the last seven presidential elections, not to mention control of Congress in 1994, and have talked about the urgent need to redefine and re-explain themselves after every one of those defeats. It has been 24 years since that dim, unelectable extremist Ronald Reagan won a landslide against Jimmy Carter. A generation later, can there really be any promising ideas that haven't already been taken down from the shelf?

Here is what the Democrats have to show for 2 1/2 decades of introspection, besides a worsening win-loss record: After Walter Mondale lost 49 states in 1984, the Democratic Leadership Council was brought forth, conceived in panic and dedicated to the proposition that a politically viable party must become less liberal. In reaction, various groups and candidates have asserted that the prescription for Democratic victories is to become more liberal, to present the voters a choice, not an echo. It's hard to say who will win this tug-of-war, and twice as hard to see how either approach will reverse the Democrats' losing streak....

The "no message" interpretation of the 2004 election claims that this gap has now closed, finally and completely: Liberalism cannot become politically strong again until it stops being so theoretically weak. But Democrats need to recognize how far back, and how far down, liberalism's confusion goes. The notion that liberalism is fundamentally indecipherable was voiced frequently during the 1930s, when liberals absolutely dominated American politics. Raymond Moley, an erstwhile advisor to FDR, wrote of the New Deal in his memoirs, "To look upon these programs as the result of a unified plan, was to believe that the accumulation of stuffed snakes, baseball pictures, school flags, old tennis shoes, carpenter's tools, geometry books, and chemistry sets in a boy's bedroom could have been put there by an interior decorator." In 1940 another New Dealer, the economist Alvin Hansen, admitted, "I really do not know what the basic principle of the New Deal is. I know from my experience in the government that there are as many conflicting opinions among the people in Washington as we have in the country at large."

But the complaint that it's impossible to figure liberalism out has, until recently, typically been voiced by exasperated conservatives. For decades they have watched liberals rushing around with wheelbarrows and ladders, busy, busy, busy at building the welfare state. New programs are created, old ones expanded, urgent needs discovered and rediscovered. Conservatives marvel at this vast construction site and ask prosaic questions: What is this thing going to look like when it's done? How big is it going to be? How will we know when it's finished? And just in case there's any doubt that they are conservatives, how much is all this going to cost?...

Let's cut to the chase, Faithful Reader, and simplify it all. Here are the Democratic Party's nominees for president since 1972:

• George McGovern
• Jimmy Carter
• Walter Mondale
• Michael Dukakis
• Bill Clinton
• Al Gore
• John Kerry

Who's the big winner in that crowd? Apart from the 1976 fluke, in which Jimmy Carter was elected because Gerald Ford had pardoned Richard Nixon, the only winner is Bill Clinton.

Apart from being a presidential winner, what sets him apart from the others? To look at it from the other direction, what do all of them have in common, except for Bill Clinton?

Here's what they all have in common. McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry: none of them have the slightest hint of a trace of a sense of humor.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 02/04/05 07:52:56 AM
Categorized as Most Notable & Political.