{"id":16,"date":"2005-05-16T21:22:00","date_gmt":"2005-05-17T01:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/atheneum\/2005\/05\/16\/rethinking-a-party\/"},"modified":"2011-03-03T23:29:06","modified_gmt":"2011-03-04T03:29:06","slug":"rethinking-a-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/atheneum\/2005\/05\/16\/rethinking-a-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Rethinking a Party"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"obama.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Le Figaro <\/em>stated that this year\u2019s presidential elections would lead the Democrats to \u201can examination of conscience.\u201d The French daily quoted party insiders who see the future of the Party in the hands of new figures like Barack Obama. \u201cWe came up short in the White House and in the Senate,\u201d complained Hillary Clinton to CNN\u2019s Larry King. \u201cI think that means we\u2019ve got to take a hard look at what we stand for as a party and how we present to the American people both the values and the priorities that Democrats are willing to fight for.\u201d This hard look will have to take into account the right swing of the American nation.<\/p>\n

Most pundits attribute George W. Bush\u2019s victory to the influence of Christian hardliners opposed to abortion and gay rights. The religious vote is but a factor in the complicated dynamics of a \u201cRight Nation.\u201d Bill Clinton\u2019s populist charm was keenly mindful of the right sway of post-Reagan America. The populist factor was, in 2004, one of the key ingredients in the Republican formula for success. For the American electorate, a distant East Coast Catholic patrician married to a Portuguese billionaire was no match for a warm and inarticulate Texas bully.<\/p>\n

Worse than the accusations of \u201cflip flopping\u201d on Iraq policy, the \u201cliberal\u201d stigma haunted Mr. Kerry\u2019s bid for the White House. Liberals are perceived as soft on foreign policy, economic disasters, and morally ambiguous. <\/p>\n

The American Left has had to reposition itself after the victory of the democratic free-market paradigm. Bill Clinton was able to sell his ideas on the basis of pure charm, articulating a right-of-center Democratic platform. Mr. Clinton presided during a period of unprecedented prosperity and foreign policy success. <\/p>\n

The contested 2000 election \u2013 where the populist element was noticeably absent chez Gore \u2013 was followed by the September 11th<\/sup> tragedy. The Bush administration used this historical juncture to advance the \u201cneocon\u201d agenda of Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, and ideologue Wolfowitz. Draped in the American flag, the militarization of society and foreign policy as well as the Iraq excursion became necessary compensation devices in light of the barbarian aggression. Little has been written of the Iraq adventure as a national compensation mechanism to a national trauma and the unsuccessful search for Bin Laden.<\/p>\n

Silencing the critical voice of Howard Dean in favor of a \u201chigh road,\u201d gave Republicans the time necessary to mount a serious campaign that dictated the terms of the debate. It afforded the Bush camp the possibility of ignoring the budget deficit, the absence of weapons of mass destruction and an exit strategy in Iraq, the medical insurance crisis, unemployment, and, above all, the findings of the 9\/11 Report<\/em> and the judicious, disparaging \u201ctell-alls\u201d of insiders Paul O\u2019Neill and Richard Clarke. <\/p>\n

Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge\u2019s The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America<\/em> (New York: The Penguin Press, 2004) singles out the sources of George W\u2019s brand of conservatism: Texas, business, and religion. <\/p>\n

The right swing in government policy is seen as the product of the many Conservative think tank alumni now in positions of power, the offspring of Protestant ministers currently in the Cabinet, the cultural cohesiveness of the Right leadership, and the sense of purpose afforded the administration by the September 11 th tragedy. \u201cConservatism\u2019s progress goes much deeper than the gains that the Republican Party has made over the past half century or the steady decline in Democratic registration. The Right clearly has ideological momentum on its side in much the same way that the Left had momentum in the 1960s.\u201d Micklethwait and Wooldridge argue that \u201cthe extent to which the center of gravity in American politics has moved to the right has been clearly illustrated by the current president and his predecessor. First came the first two-term Democratic president since the Second World War, who only achieved that feat by governing like an Eisenhower Republican. Now the grandson of Prescott Bush has cut taxes, catered to the Religious Right and generally governed like a Sun Belt business tycoon.\u201d The authors point to the most important characteristic of the 2004 election: \u201cIf our survey has been one of conservative success, it has also been one of liberal failure. American liberalism, as both a body of ideas and a political coalition, is a shadow of its former self.\u201d The Democratic Party will survive as a political alternative as soon as it confronts the right swing of American culture and the electoral need for populism. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Le Figaro stated that this year\u2019s presidential elections would lead the Democrats to \u201can examination of conscience.\u201d The French daily quoted party insiders who see the future of the Party in the hands of new figures like Barack Obama. \u201cWe came up short in the White House and in the Senate,\u201d complained Hillary Clinton to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":536,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1037],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-commentary"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/atheneum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/atheneum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/atheneum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/atheneum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/536"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/atheneum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/atheneum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":140,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/atheneum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/atheneum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/atheneum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/atheneum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}