Anti-Climacus

LINK: The much ballyhooed WaPo piece on President Bush's latest policy moves. Well, you have to give the guy some credit for having the (fight over word choice: part of me wants to say "cajones," but feels that would be too obvious; part of me wants to say "confidence," which would allow you to interpret it as good or bad, however you feel. Anyway, choose for yourself.) to go after what he wants. Naturally, this is the nightmare scenario for the Democratic Party. And why is that, you ask? Good question.

The Democratic Party has been tremendously unsuccessful in winning any major policy discussion since 1973 or so. Some, myself included, would place much of the blame for this on the rise of the New Left, which favored ponderous and condescending attempts to foist unwieldy programs upon the American people with little thought of what they might actually want. Granted, the relative willingness of Liberals to capitulate to the whims of their radical brethren probably didn't help matters. Regardless, the end effect was to run out what had been, all things considered, a fairly effective supportive policy apparatus to the Party (Partisan Review, for example, now being a shell of its former self). So when it comes time every two years for the Elections That Matter, Democrats don't have the benefit of the internicene fighting that goes on amongst policy wonks as big, bold ideas are created and refined. Bush, having good advisers, knows this: all he has to do is come out, make big, bold proposals for everything he'd want, and, whaddayaknow, all of a sudden the debate is being fought on his terms.

Which means, of course, that it's tremendously difficult to defeat him, but, in the interest of fairness, I should add 'for now.' I've stated before, and don't mind saying it again, that the big political movement of the next 10 years might well end up being Neo-Liberalism; that is, a Left politics that looks more like the New Deal than the Great Society. Foreign policy could very easily be in the bag for any Democrat willing to go out and articulate muscular Leftism: we believe in fighting, where necessary, because we believe in democracy and the right of self-determination, the Four Freedoms, blah blah blah. And there are hints of it, too, in Lieberman's critiques of Bush on Iraq, and John Edwards' suggestions about treating the North Korea Crisis more seriously. But for any of this to have an effect, someone is going to have to come out swinging hard for it, and it's hard to see someone like that in the current crop of Democrats. But maybe someday soon.