Well, maybe the falcon does hear the falconer after all

The Moving Finger is off attending to his charitable works today and so was nice enough to let me post in his stead. Today's topic is (surprise!) politics. Here goes:

Tuesday's election was not just historic, it was different. It might even have redefined the way we go about American politics. For the first time since the Kennedies, the a major party didn't vote as a coalition of factions, but as a unified party. I never thought I'd see it from either side, certainly not from the Left.

Here's the deal: since the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers in 1963 and 1968, American liberalism has been defined more by what it is against than what it is for. We've become a loosely affiliated group of often like-minded people who oppose racism, sexism, handguns, pollution, global warming, limitations on abortion, war, and pretty much everything the second Bush administration ever did. Opposition has been what we're all about, and it's been getting more complicated every election: Johnson ran against poverty and ran attack ads against Goldwater. It worked. McGovern ran against war and racial discrimination, and while I can't remember any attack ads, that may just been because he had no money. Anyway, it didn't work. Carter was against discrimination and pollution and right to work laws and sexism and Republican corruption, and it worked, but once he got into office, each of his constituent interest groups tried to jostle and elbow its way to the head of the line, which pushed his administration farther to the left than the electorate could tolerate, so he cratered after one term. Clinton put Carter's coalition back together and motivated minority voters, but he's not really a good example, because he never could have won if crackpot billionaire third party candidate Ross Perot hadn't siphoned off 19% of the center-right vote from Bush pere. Without Perot, Pere would have won in a walk. Really more of a stroll. Or an amble. Nevertheless, Clinton sneaked into power, and once in, he (personally, as opposed to those around him) seemed to understand that the party needed to stay towards the center to retain the White House. He hadn't really won, after all, and he was smart enough to know it. Here's where the perils of coalition politics took a bite out of his behind. There was never a chance that an outsider like him was going to have much impact on Congress, especially having won only 43% of the vote. Not that he really tried, at least not until it was too late. His people just didn't understand that they were more lucky than good and had no mandate to boss Congress around. Once again, each constituency group made loud demands, and with a Democratic Congress and a Democrat in the White House, they all expected action. Once again, it led to electoral failure, this time in the form of the 1994 mid-term elections.

When the Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994, a mere two years after Clinton's election (if we'd all remembered that he didn't really win we wouldn't have been so surprised) it wasn't as much his fault as everyone said. Dems had been too vocally partisan about fringe issues in Clinton's first two years. After twelve years of Reagan and Bush pere, by God, House Democrats were ready for a turn, and they demanded quick action on dozens of pet projects and harebrained schemes. Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, got Republicans nationwide to buy into the (mostly never implemented or even seriously attempted) Contract With America so that all of them were running the same campaign. It resonated everywhere in several senses of the word. Democrats dissolved into their various bickering splinter groups and failed everywhere. Newt may have been forming a coalition, or co-opting the Reagan one under his own banner, but it didn't look like it at the time.

During the post-Kennedy years, the Republicans had started their own coalitions, theirs just didn't have as many moving parts. At least not to start. Republicans up through Nixon had run as fiscal conservatives who saw foreign relations as a route to trade, peace and prosperity. In the post-Nixon period, Reagan figured out that there were a lot of "values" voters who didn't think their voices were being heard throughout the south and Midwest. He welcomed them into his tent. He managed to say things that traditional conservatives wanted to hear about balanced budgets, strong defense, and smaller government, and also managed to convince conservative Christians that he shared their views on abortion, gun rights, gay rights, prayer in school and that kind of thing--issues that had never been aired on the national stage before. It's odd that he convinced them, since he never went to church, but such was his appeal (George Will loved him) that nobody ever questioned him on any of this. His voters thought of themselves not so much as a coalition as two groups with a common purpose who were working together.

In reality, though, his voters were a coalition of a complicated suite of Christian conservatives on the one hand and a simple group of fiscal/foreign policy conservatives on the other, two sets that had noting in common but who were sustained in harmony by the charisma of Reagan himself. In the absence of Reagan, the Christian Right was unenthusiastic about Bush pere (unfortunate for history, since he knew how to start a war, which fils did not). It abandoned Pere to defeat at the hands of Clinton/Perot and only found its footing in the nineties when it was united not by previously-acknowledged common purpose but by its newly-discovered hatred of Bill Clinton. When the same coalition was reassembled in 2000 by Bush and Rove, the bickering and infighting amongst different Republican factions reached a volume not heard since the Democrats of the Carter administration.

Whether Reagan believed all of what he said is open to debate, but what he promised bore no resemblance to what happened, except for the tax cuts and increases in military spending. On his watch the government grew, the deficit ballooned, our international standing sagged (Jessie Helms made a mockery of the U.N., and Reagan did nothing), and discretionary spending soared. On the values issues his judges (O'Connor, Kennedy) upheld Roe v. Wade, and he allowed limitations on gun ownership (the Brady Bill). Rove and maybe Bush appear to have learned from Reagan that promising conservatives what they want is important, but actually giving them what they want is less so. Who else are they going to vote for?

So the overarching themes of the last forty years of presidential politics are that (1) governors usually win and Senators usually lose (just think back) and (2) that you can't get elected president except at the head of a coalition, but once elected, that coalition will make it more difficult for you both to govern and to retain power. Your constituents will want to pull your party towards its extremes, and disappointed factions will splinter and complain and develop a sense of frustrated entitlement.

All of this factionalization leads to lots of anger, too. Single issue voters on both sides are so sure of their positions that they have no ability to find middle ground. Anti-abortion Republicans feel justified in protests and demonstrations that seem utterly unreasonable to any outside observer. Pro-environment liberals set fire to Colorado condominium developments and Hummer dealerships. They call themselves "pro-life" and "pro-environment," but they're not. They're not "pro" anything. They're against abortion and against gas-guzzling SUVs. The fact that abortion and gas-guzzling are wrong is what's important, otherwise they'd be working in orphanages and giving flowers to Prius drivers. Being for something doesn't make you angry, certainly not angry enough to commit murder or arson.

There's a lot of anger and impatience associated with the things liberals have been against over the last forty years, and a lot of it is understandable. African-Americans were angry at discrimination and the awful way they've been treated throughout our history. Women were angry at being paid less than men. Environmentalists were impatient with a government that relied on crackpots to turn a blind eye to global warming. Civil libertarians watched with horror and anger as phones were tapped and non-combatents were detained in military prisons. All of that liberal impatience and anger is hard enough to suppress when a Regan or a Bush is in the White House, but it comes bubbling to the surface scalding hot once Clinton or Carter gets elected. "Our guy is in the Oval Office. He promised us he'd do something about this. He couldn't have gotten elected without us. This issue is extremely important to me. Why isn't he doing anything?"

Over time the coalitions on both sides have become increasingly unstable and uneasy, because every member wants to be first. The same coalition that adhered like rubber cement to the charismatic Reagan abandoned the less charismatic Bush pere and blew up like a hand grenade under the awkward Bush fils.

Until now. Everything just changed.

Last Tuesday the board got swept clean. It's all the sudden different. A young man with a soaring message of hope and coalition did not, as all of his predecessors had for forty years, appeal to our fears and feeling that we've been victimized. He did not collect a bunch of pre-existing factions and make promises to them. He didn't even specifically appeal to organized labor or civil rights groups. He appealed to all of us. He identified the major challenges facing our nation: the war in Iraq, the economy, global warning, health care, and energy independence, and told us his plans for dealing with them. He then built a political organization like only a Chicago pol knows how: from the ground up. Volunteers showed up from everywhere, and he used them--he didn't need Clinton's donor list or the Teamsters' volunteer list. He utilized the Internet to raise untold amounts of money--more than they could spend--from millions of small donors rather than a few big ones. When Bill Clinton was in the White House, if Hollywood came calling with requests to extend copyrights beyond the dreams of avarice (and certainly beyond the authorization of the Constitution) Bill had to listen. Not Barrack. When a coalition of big box church preachers wanted to talk to Bush fils or pere about the Biblical implications of tax policy, Bush (either) had to listen. Obama won't. He doesn't owe anybody anything. Several actors in the most recent presidential drama stepped on to the presidential stage tried to reinvent themselves to appeal more to their party's base. Not Obama. He knew who he was and he stuck to it. Finally, a real deal. And finally, no coalition. No special interest except a national interest.

His overarching message is one of cooperation, transformation, collaboration, and hope. It is an inspiring message. The Democratic Party, and I hope the American liberal movement, has suddenly, in the course of just two years, defined itself in terms of what it is for, rather than what it is against. The energy and patriotic pride we're feeling can transform politics into a more productive, more civil, happier future. Without coalition politics and all the jostling and trying to elbow our ways to the front of the line it entails, we can develop priorities as a nation. Without the angry baggage that comes with issue politics, we can address our most pressing needs, rather than the ones with the most vocal protesters.

I think our homework is to get along, to remember that the country is governed from the center, not the left, and to concentrate on what we're for, not what we're against. And that would be wonderful.

I know the election was historic, and wonderfully so. But it was unusual, too, and its unusualness may turn out to be more important than its historicity.

Sorry for going on.

For pieces containing more such foolishness, visit http://polycarpblog.blogspot.com/. The link to the right containing a similar link doesn't work for some reason.