For most of this generation the Democratic Party has lived as if it did not have a past. When was the last time you heard a Democratic presidential candidate evoke his or her party and mean it? For some time now the preferred tactic for Democrats has centered on masquerading as an “outsider” and avoiding any mention of the party at all costs. Candidates seem embarrassed by their own party, the way people from a disreputable family are afraid of their names.
This year continues to follow the pattern. The word “Democrat” or “Democratic Party” does not appear in the biographies on Hillary Clinton’s web site or Mike Gravel’s. John Edwards, Chris Dodd and Barack Obama mention it once in their web site biographies. Bill Richardson gives the party three mentions in his bio. Joe Biden wins the award for most mentions with four. Dennis Kucinich’s web page would not even load.
As for expressing pride in being a Democrat or citing the history of the party, Democratic presidential candidates avoid that almost as gingerly as they avoid talking about taxes. Notably only Bill Richardson recognizes the importance of the past, evoking a Democrat who today is almost forgotten or regarded as a loser and a dinosaur. Richardson writes:
His interest in politics was sparked while on a school trip to Washington, D.C. during which Senator Hubert Humphrey stopped to talk to Bill and his classmates about American values and the power of public service. Governor Richardson calls this a turning point in his political awareness: “Senator Humphrey was a proud Democrat and presented his convictions with such strength, that I began to realize how a progressive vision could change the world.”
Here in one paragraph a Democratic candidate has–say we the cajones–to positively mention his party, Hubert Humphrey and the importance of a “progressive vision.” That alone is enough to get this blogger A LOT more interested in a candidate most still regard as a non factor. Blogdom overflows with words and snarky comments about Clinton, Obama and Edwards, yet none of these candidates mentions ” a progressive” vision with Richardson’s sense of passion, history and values.
Perhaps one reason the other candidates avoid mentioning their party stems from their party’s inability to define itself. I dare you to ask anyone you know what the Democrats stand for. If you get an answer other than “I don’t know” or one of Rush Limbaugh’s rants or something about the war, please post a comment immediately. You may have found something rarer than an endangered species in the Amazonian jungle.
Lacking a unified set of values, the Democrats have also lacked an agenda, putting them on defense much of the time. Since the Reagan Administration, the GOP has set the agenda and the Democrats try to respond, which represents a complete reversal of the situation even as far back as the days of William Jennings Bryan. This causes the Democratic Party look weak and indecisive; the equivalent of that venerable carnival act when a car stuffed with clowns tries to put out a fire.
The ahistorical vision of the contemporary Democratic Party strikes me as especially strange since the American twentieth century was in many ways the Democratic Century. It was the Democratic Party that crafted a unique vision and philosophy that applied the core values of the Declaration, Bill of Rights and the Constitution to the Industrial Age. Yet less than a decade into the new millennium few evoke the names of Kennedy, Truman, Roosevelt, Wilson. Rarer still is any reference by Democratic candidates to the programs or ideas of these great leaders.
No one refers to the values that stretch from from William Jennings Bryan into the 1970s, values that defined the Democratic Party and made it a political dynasty. Harry Truman summed them up:
I have told the people that there is just one big issue in this campaign and that’s the people against the special interests.
The Republicans stand for special interests, and they always have.
The Democratic Party, which I now head, stands for the people–and always has stood for the people.
To show how things have reversed, it is now the Democrats who have earned the tag as the party of special interests. Truman believed–as did every Democrat from Bryan to Kennedy–that the most important value was a belief that government’s role was to keep the playing field level. To quote Truman again:
The Democrats have believed always that the welfare of the whole people should come first, and that means that the farmers, labor, small businessmen, and everybody else in the country should have a fair share of the prosperity that goes around.
From Bryan advocating the income tax, to the programs of the New Deal and the New Frontier, that value guided candidates and administrations that are regarded as some of the greatest in American history. This idea also governed foreign policy from Wilson’s Fourteen Points, to the Four Freedoms, the Marshall Plan and the Peace Corps.
Since Bill Clinton decided to join Ronald Reagan and proclaim that government was not the solution, Democrats have turned their back on what made them great. In his 1996 State of the Union speech Clinton uttered the words that ended the Democratic Century and cast aside the core value that had defined his party:
We know big Government does not have all the answers. We know there’s not a program for every problem.
Even before this, the Democrats had become a shadow of their former selves, but it was Clinton who articulated the clear break with the past. Since Clinton consigned Wilson, FDR, Truman and their values, voices and history to the rubbish heap, the Democratic Party has failed to articulate an alternative.
Meanwhile the largest party in America has become the nonvoters and a great many of those nonvoters represent demographic groups that once formed the heart of the Democratic Party. Curiously, I know of homes of some of those people that still have pictures of John Kennedy and not that long ago knew a few with pictures of FDR. I’ve never seen Bill Clinton’s picture in anyone’s home. If 2008 becomes another campaign of Republican vs Republican Lite, it could well signal the permanent loss of these voters and the swan song of the Democrats.
It is interesting Bill Richardson evokes Hubert Humphrey for written on Humphrey’s grave are words that give me optimism a candidate will emerge who is proud to be a true Democrat. Humphrey’s grave stone is a low, gray monument into which is incised his signature and the following phrase:
I have enjoyed my life, its disappointments outweighed by its pleasures. I have loved my country in a way that some people consider sentimental and out of style. I still do, and I remain an optimist, with joy, without apology about this country and about the American experiment in democracy.
These words capture as well as any the combination of optimism, faith in the common people and belief in the importance in the level playing field that form the heart of the Democratic Party tradition. What the Happy Warrior is trying to tell us from beyond the grave is that if we lose faith in these values we lose faith in ourselves, our institutions, and our country.
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