“I hope you’re all aware we’re all Eisenhower Republicans now,” Bill Clinton told his Cabinet in 1993. “We stand for lower deficits and free trade and the bond market.”
The remark has always been described as angry and sarcastic, but coming from the president who dramatically reshaped the Democratic Party in the 1990s–proclaiming an end to the era of big government, advocating school uniforms, ending welfare as we knew it–the comment could easily be a simple statement of fact.
Remember, Clinton went on to erase the deficit, pass landmark free-trade legislation and cater to the bond market, often to the disgruntlement of mainstream and liberal Democrats.
Jimmy Carter earlier had a hand in reshaping the Democratic Party’s civil rights image with his fawning support for maintaining the “ethnic purity” of neighborhoods. He’s thought better of it since.
What Carter and Clinton had in common was that they won their elections–at least Carter won one out of two–which speaks to the tactical value of Democrats adopting Republican programs, or at least their language. The question is always to what extent the tactic becomes a redefinition of the party’s core principles: Is it just a face-lift or a genuine makeover?
Last month’s Democratic National Convention raised a lot of those questions all over again with its incessant beating of the military tom-toms right up to the moment nominee John Kerry mounted the podium, saluted and announced he was “reporting for duty.”
As columnist Roger Simon put it, “A time-traveler from 1972 would not recognize the Democratic party today. The party that once opposed the war in Vietnam is now wallowing in it.”
There’s good political reason for all that wallowing.
Because of the party’s opposition to the Vietnam War–and its preference for social issues such as minority and women’s rights, health care and the like–Republicans successfully stigmatized Democrats as soft on national defense. The image was costly during the Cold War and hurts doubly in this post-Sept. 11 era of Islamist terrorism.
Emphasizing Kerry as a hero of the Vietnam War resuscitates the image of the nation’s great warrior presidents, especially wartime Democratic leaders Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. Kerry is presenting himself as strong in a time of trouble–contrasted with a draft-evading, part-time Air National Guardsman who may or may not have been AWOL.
Which is the war party?
Ironically, for many years Republicans attacked Democrats as the “war party.” In a 1960 presidential debate with John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon jabbed him with “three Democratic presidents who led us into war” and praised Dwight Eisenhower as the man who made peace in Korea as soon as he was elected. Nixon failed to note that Ike also had us in Vietnam, though it had not yet reached a stage of major combat.
Kennedy, nevertheless, found it expeditious to run to Nixon’s right on defense by proclaiming the existence of something called a “missile gap.” He suggested the Soviet Union was ahead of us in the new technology of war and therefore even Eisenhower was permitting us to slip behind in the arms race and our death struggle against world communism.
There’s little evidence today that the gap ever existed, but the dubious charge likely contributed to Kennedy’s narrow victory that year. Soon after his election, JFK upped the Eisenhower ante in Vietnam and ultimately inspired Kerry to report for duty there. Lyndon Johnson went on to up Kennedy’s ante even further, the war went sour and Johnson became the fifth Democratic president to immerse us in war.
Kerry turned against the war, as did most of his party, but at the same time Nixon returned to play the extraordinarily clever double game of portraying the Democrats as unpatriotic wimps while hinting at his own secret plan to end the war. It was Nixon, too, who masterfully exploited the country’s racial divide and cultural differences to the disadvantage of the Democratic Party.
Had it not been for the corruption of Watergate, Carter might never have been elected–and it is quite possible that Clinton might not have become president if there were a war or terrorist threat looming in 1992.
Which brings us again to this year’s Democratic face-lift.
Lifted from the GOP?
The party platform calls for a “new military to meet the new threats of the 21st Century.” Like its call for “fiscal discipline,” the language might have been lifted from any Republican platform of the 20th Century. It says, “tomorrow’s military must be stronger, faster, better armed.”
Kerry’s acceptance speech went on to outline how he would create an even stronger military than the bellicose President Bush. Was he taking his cue from Kennedy’s missile gap ploy or is the military now permanently embedded in the Democratic faith?
Republicans have wrapped themselves in the flag for so long they think they have permanent possession. This convention said no–it’s our flag too! So they decked the hall in a galaxy of stars and enough stripes to reach all the way to Iraq. A fine tactic. So was the move to inject “values” and faith into the party’s rhetoric.
Conventioneers listened to more calls for God’s blessings on our country and its people than they would hear in a whole semester at Bob Jones University.
But what about the other core principles of the Democratic Party?
Take gun control, one of the litmus-test issues.
I didn’t hear a single speaker mention it–though the assault-weapon ban was invoked. Gun control is usually played as an anti-crime measure, but the National Rifle Association, in league with Republicans, leads voters to believe that the Democrats will be confiscating their hunting rifles the day after election. This cost Al Gore Ohio and West Virginia and therefore the election in 2000.
Thus the tightly scripted convention performance omitted discussion of the gun issue, while there was a remarkable reference in the platform, a 41-page document that was accepted unanimously without discussion–and perhaps without reading.
“We will protect Americans’ Second Amendment right to own firearms and we will keep guns out of the hands of criminals and terrorists by fighting gun crime,” says the platform, making a significant new concession by referencing the amendment. Earlier platforms make no mention of the amendment, the bedrock of the NRA, because there has long been debate on the true meaning of the language authorizing a right to bear arms.
Kerry himself often mentions he is a hunter and has been photographed carrying a rifle. This is a fine political play for those two battleground states, though, unlike decorating FleetCenter with red, white and blue bunting or wearing a flag on your lapel, it seems a bit of a concession of principle rather than window dressing.
Affirmative action, abortion?
Not even the off-script, firebrand speaker Al Sharpton mentioned affirmative action, though almost all the speakers tipped their hats to diversity and equal opportunity. Here, however, the platform said the words the speakers shunned: “We support affirmative action to redress discrimination.”
Likewise we heard next to nothing about abortion–late-term or otherwise. Again you would have to go to the platform to find the Democrats’ long-standing support of Roe vs. Wade and “a woman’s right to choose,” capped by the refrain that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.”
Instead of abortion rights, the convention focused on the theologically related issue of stem cell research, which is opposed by hard-core anti-abortionists of the religious right–and in turn by the incumbent president who caters to them. This creates a wedge issue the Democrats can use to pry away a few moderate Republicans. Deftly, it was presented by the scion of a good Republican family named Reagan.
The Republicans’ current wedge issue, gay marriage, was unmentionable at FleetCenter. Even the designated lesbian speaker, U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), dared not speak its name. Nor did the platform even reference civil unions, proclaiming merely that marriage should be defined at the state level. Well, OK, why give the Bushmen something more to shoot at?
Does all this ultimately mean the Democratic Party is simply being tactical or tacking to the right? My sense is that downplaying all the litmus-test issues is purely tactical: a matter of keeping one’s political head down without alienating the base. The exception is gun control, which I believe may be compromised further, though not thrown out. Gay rights, affirmative action, abortion rights and other causes of the ’60s will continue to be bedrock principles, though used strategically.
The party seems to have recaptured the flag, and it will continue to display “values” and more than a hint of religiosity. With it will come a renewed commitment to the military and national defense–recasting the party in the image of Kennedy 1960, not McGovern 1972.
Remember, Kerry proudly displays a photograph of himself with Kennedy. So did Clinton, and Clinton won.
