Anti-Climacus

QUOTE: Mickey Kaus, on the fallout from last Tuesday:

"Suddenly, it's 1983! Wait, I've lived through this already. Defeated Democrats need "ideas," says Michael Waldman. And make it snappy! (Get Gary Hart! Didn't he have "new ideas"?) .. I respect Waldman -- his politics are close to mine, and he wrote a good, entertaining book about the Clinton Presidency. But 1) "ideas" aren't like a crop of wheat you can reliably grow if you just put enough think-tank farmers on the case. It's fair to say that if Democrats can't say immediately, off the top of their heads, what they believe in that's different from Bush, the Brookings Institution isn't going to tell them; 2) Nor is it just a question of new neoliberal, market-oriented "means" to traditional liberal "ends." The Democrats' problem may be that some of the old "ends" -- the ones they would give you off the tops of their heads -- have been grokked and rejected. Like what? Like the relentless pursuit of "more" economic equality. 3) So what's a new, more acceptable Democratic end? Off the top of my head: Affirmative government to insure social, not economic, equality -- in part by guaranteeing health care to all (not a new "idea"!); 4) Waldman says Democrats should "look squarely at welfare reform and crime, and instead of kvetching about Republican plans, offer some of their own, proposals that do not undo the social progress made under a Democratic administration." Right. But what if Bush's proposals are the ones that don't undo the social progress made under Clinton? On some level, Waldman seems to want the Dems to come up with an alternative just for the sake of having an alternative."