Noonan on the Dems
[damn, she can be good - the lead sentence is pure genius - the rest
of it leaves something to be desired - just how are pragmatism and
social conservatism the wave of the future?]
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110008516
PEGGY NOONAN Untangling Webb
Ronald Reagan’s Navy secretary runs for Senate as a standard-issue
Democrat.
Thursday, June 15, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
The Democratic Party is that amazing thing, out of power for six
years and yet exhausted. They’re pale, tired and unready. Too bad,
since it’s their job to be an alternative, not an embarrassment.
This week Democratic members of Congress and other elected officials
unveil their “New Direction for America,” the party’s declaration of
its reason for being. It said it stands firmly and unequivocally,
without fear or favor, unwaveringly and with grit for . . . reducing
the cost of student loans. And making prescription drugs less
expensive. And raising the minimum wage. Etc.
This is not a philosophy but a way–an inadequate way, but a way–of
hiding the fact that you don’t have a philosophy.
One can argue about why the Democratic Party no longer seems to have
a reason for being. I believe the reason is this: They have achieved
what they set out to achieve in 1932, when the modern Democratic
Party began. They got what they asked for, achieved what they fought
for. They got a big government that offers a wide array of benefits
and assistance; they got a powerful federal establishment that
collects and dispenses treasure, that assumes societal guidance. They
got Social Security and Medicare. They got civil rights (much murky
history there, the Southern Democratic lions of the U.S. Senate
having retarded the modern civil rights movement from 1940 through
1964; still, by the late ’60s Democrats came to seem to own the
issue, and that hasn’t changed). They got what they stood for. They
went on, in the 1970s and ’80s, to stand for things about which
Americans showed they had doubts and ambivalence: abortion, the
modernist social agenda. By the time the Democrats ran out that
string, they got tagged for the cost of their dreams. Big government
is expensive, and the American people didn’t enjoy being forced to
pay, through high taxes, for the pleasure of being pushed around.
Also the Democrats, since 1968, hate war. But that’s not really a
philosophy. No one likes war, or no one who’s normal. The real
difference is between those who think war is bad and must never be
fought and those who think it’s bad but sometimes must be fought. The
vast majority of voters are in the latter camp.
A second reason the Democratic Party has trouble knowing what it
stands for, and thus articulating its purpose, is that it is so
spooked by polls, focus groups and past defeats that it’s afraid to
take any vivid and differentiating stands, and seeks refuge in the
muck of small issues. But small issues are small. And in this case
don’t even offer a philosophical pattern. “We stand for lower college
loan costs and better prescription drug benefits.” That’s something
you’d die on the battlefield for, isn’t it?
Which gets us to what is being called one of the most interesting
races to watch this year, in Virginia, where Reagan-era Navy
secretary James Webb last night won the Democratic nomination to run
against Republican senator and expected presidential contender George
Allen. I like George Allen and I’m a conservative, but in the Reagan
administration I admired Jim Webb, and I admire his books, especially
“Born Fighting.”
On the face of it, the Webb-Allen contest looks like something new.
It’s being painted as that, and maybe it is, but I’m not sure.
Mr. Webb is running on his biography. Nothing wrong with that.
Lincoln sold Lincoln’s, having his men parade rails he’d supposedly
split through the halls of the 1860 Republican Convention. Mr. Webb’s
bio is classic conservative: service to country, pride, personal
heroism. The combat boots he wore in Vietnam were used as model and
inspiration by the sculptor of the statue of the war’s great grunts
at the Vietnam memorial. (Mr. Allen often wears cowboy boots. I bet
combat boots versus cowboy boots becomes an iconographic signature of
the campaign.)
Mr. Webb is an artist (novelist, essayist) and warrior. This is an
unusual combination and a beautiful one. But he does not seem to
think politically, which can be a drawback when you go into politics.
He is campaigning as the antiwar candidate–he has opposed Iraq since
the runup, as Mr. Allen has supported it. But if Mr. Webb is only an
antiwar candidate who on other issues–the social issues, taxes–
cleaves to standard Democratic positions, then he’s not something
new, he’s something old.
Mr. Webb says he is “pro-choice” on abortion, “pro-gay rights,” and
“pro-Second Amendment.”
I don’t doubt the sincerity of his views. I’ve never met a career
military man who was a conservative on social issues. I think they
tend to see questions such as abortion and marriage as essentially
uninteresting, private and not subject to the movement of machines.
(Connected to this, I suspect Mr. Webb will benefit to some degree by
the high number of military retirees in Virginia. They’re always
assumed to be hawks on Iraq. From personal experience I’d say a high
percentage have been dubious about the war, many from the beginning.)
To be an antiwar Democrat who’s a liberal on social issues is not
something new in the Democratic Party. It’s the same old same old
with a new biography. Or so it seems to me.
It is true that Mr. Webb has said he supports the Second Amendment,
and much is being made of this. But that doesn’t strike me as
significant, or rather it strikes me as significant only in what it
underscores: The Democratic Party has lost on the right to bear arms.
They know it. It’s why they don’t speak of gun control anymore on the
national stage. It used to be one of their primary issues. They went
as far as they could in terms of control–licensing, background
checks, etc.–but on what was once their obvious desire to make
private gun ownership in America illegal, the Democratic Party has,
in the past dozen years, quietly, almost soundlessly, caved in.
That leaves taxes. From his Web site it’s not clear where Mr. Webb
stands. He wants our tax system to be “fair,” but in no way does he
wave the anti-costly-government, antitax banner.
Mr. Webb has interesting and important things to say about the war,
and we’ll find out if that is the No. 1 issue in Virginia, and how
Virginians come down on it, in the coming months. But in terms of
domestic policy, of all other nonwar policy, he sounds to me like
Nancy Pelosi with medals.
At the end of the day elections are not only about personalities, not
even primarily about them, but about issues. Mr. Webb’s issues seem
standard-issue.
Let me close with something that I thought had the sound of the
future in it. I was at a Manhattan Institute lunch this week at which
Rudy Giuliani spoke. He impressed the audience of 200 or so, which
was not surprising as it was his kind of group, urban-oriented
thinkers drawn not to ideology but to what works and will help in the
world. (I am a longtime supporter.) At one point he was asked about
national education policy. Mr. Giuliani said he wanted more national
emphasis on choice. He spoke of it as a civil rights issue, and told
stories to illustrate the point.
Then–this is the part with the sound of the future in it–he laid
out the reasons both parties have failed to push the ball forward.
The Democrats fear the teachers unions and the educational
establishment. The Republicans are heavily represented in and by
suburban and country areas, which tend to have good schools, tend to
be happy with them, and are wary of a movement they fear might take
something from them. And so the students who need the most help, city
kids who would benefit the most from creativity, are held captive to
a failed public-education monopoly.
His candor was refreshing. Mr. Giuliani’s approach was nonpartisan in
the best sense–i.e., not fuzzy but frank. It wasn’t Public schools
want to be free; it was This is what will help, this is why it isn’t
happening, this is why we have to make it happen. That didn’t sound
like the same old same old. It didn’t sound like the past.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and
author of “John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual
Father,” (Penguin, 2005), which you can order from the OpinionJournal
bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.