« Ronald McDonald Murdered on McBirthday ! | Main | The UN resolution on Darfur »

April 19, 2005

Wanted: an opposition party

Something to keep in mind about America and the world is the absence of a U.S. opposition party. The Democratic Party has effectively ceased to exist. Why does this matter? Because the “America” that is arousing most of the globe’s anti-Americanism is, basically, not the country itself; it’s the Republican Party.

In other words, the old notion that the United States’ two big parties don’t really differ from each other is wrong. The no-real-difference thesis is an old Left idea which in the theoretical sense is true – both parties are pro-capitalist – but in the real world of people and legislation and practical ideas is false. Putting the matter simply, the Democratic Party invented the New Deal, and now the Republicans are destroying it. We can call that a distinction with a difference.

Granted, in foreign policy the differences between Republicans and Democrats were a little blurrier – until George W. Bush came on the scene. His combination of belligerence and ignorance is a new formula. It could only have come from his party, whose culture provided the key ingredients of militarism and a contempt for the rest of the world.

So, where are the Democrats? They’ve disappeared into their various factions. Don’t look to them for any ideas that reach across the various Democratic constituencies, much less that appeal to the nation as a whole.

Mickey Kaus, Slate Magazine’s own blogger, states the case brutally but effectively. Yes, he’s hostile to immigrants and to unions, but he sees the big picture clearly. The devolution of the Democratic Party explains why the only Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt (who died 60 years ago, remember) to win more than one term in office was Bill Clinton, whose political talents put him in a category all his own.

Kaus is not the only one to notice the Democratic collapse. The so-called “national security Democrats” who have formed the Truman Project have drawn more or less the same conclusion, though they don’t phrase it that way.

I suspect that their solution, which is a Marshall Plan-style combination of force and benevolence, won’t appeal to many of those who blog here. They should consider the alternative, which is what we’re experiencing.

Peter Beinart, editor of The New Republic, who’s in the Truman Project circle, wrote a piece a couple of months ago that served as a rallying cry for Democratic internationalists. It was, of course attacked in The Nation magazine, a journal that specializes in reinforcing the political self-esteem of its readers rather than challenging them (The Weekly Standard, the neocon weekly, is even worse in this regard, not that that’s an excuse).

Personally, the Truman Project/New Republic notion of muscular liberalism doesn’t get my motor running. But that’s not the point. Yes, political parties need to excite some enthusiasm, but ideas come first. American voters found the Democrats lacking when it came to ideas about national security. And so, with Bush having dragged the country into a counterinsurgency war with no end in sight, and whose original rationale had collapsed, Americans voted for him anyway. If a coherent opposition party had existed, he might have lost and the perception of the U.S. in the world would have been much different.

Posted April 19, 2005 05:32 PM

Comments

Post a comment