Now there's a post title nearly worthy of an Al Franken book; long, bloated and tedious.
But I digress.
The ascension of Howard Dean as DNC chair has the potential to reform and revitalize the left just as Newt Gingrich's Contract With America did for the right. (I can hear jaws from both sides of the ideological aisle ricocheting off of their keyboards right now as I compare The Scream © to St. Newt. It's kinda fun when I do that.)
Just think back to 1992 when we really didn't know much about Newt, who he was, or what he was. He was the Minority Whip, and had a reputation as an extremist, a rabble rouser, and the kind of guy you use to rally your base, but hide in the closet when the campaign goes national so as not to scare off the swing voters.
Sound familiar?
And all this supposedly scary man did was to take core conservative values, frame them in a way that made them acceptible to those very same swing voters, and used those values to create a platform that in 1994 wrested control of the House of Representatives from the Democrats for the first time in 4 decades. He did this in a time when his party had suffered an embarrassing defeat in a presidential election and was fragmenting into a loose coalition of special interests.
Again, sound familiar?
OK, so it's easy to see how this is good for the left; how is it good for the rest of us?
Since truth is usually found somewhere between thesis and antithesis, a vigorous and active party of opposition is crucial to avoid swinging too far in one direction or the other. If either side becomes too weak, the excesses of the other will grow unchecked, and since we know where that road leads, it's much better to have two strong, ideologically opposite parties that are then forced to work together and compromise to get things done. (Note that I said "opposite" and not "opposed." Mindless opposition only weakens you. If I may quote Michael Palin for a moment "Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says." And we all know just how silly that sounds.)
And if they can't compromise, then we get the added benefit of gridlock, which for a libertarian minded fellow like myself, is a feature of a two party system, and not a bug.
Of course, all of this assumes that Dean is just as astute a pol as Gingrich was. While this may be a valid question, the fact that he was able to clear the field of all contenders, despite considerable resistance by both Clintons ( incidentally marking the first time Bill and Hillary have worked together politically, or in any other way, in about 4 years) and other entrenched Democratic interests gives us a clue as to the answer.
His success also depends on whether the Democratic Party is willing to compromise in order to achieve unity, and this will be a much more problematic question for him. Will he be able to retain his appeal to the hard left while successfully courting the moderate factions? If he's able to raise money for the party at the same clip at which he raised it for his presidential bid, the moderates will come. BUt will the zealots stay?
It'll be fun to watch, that's for sure.
Posted by Rich at February 28, 2005 1:47 AM | TrackBack