Noonan: the party pros hate their bases
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110008547
PEGGY NOONAN
Off Base Washington Democrats think their core voters are barking mad.
Thursday, June 22, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
It has occurred to me that both parties increasingly dislike their
bases, but for different reasons and to different degrees. By both
parties I mean the leaders and representatives of the Democrats and
Republicans in Washington. I believe I correctly observe that they
feel an increasing intellectual estrangement from and impatience with
the activists who people their base of support.
And this is something new.
In the past, Republican leaders in Washington bowed either
symbolically or practically to the presumed moral leadership and
cleanness of vision of the people back home. They understood the base
wanted tax cuts and spending cuts, and for serious reasons. The base
had deep qualms about abortion. The base intuitively recoiled from
big government: They knew the best arrangement was maximum possible
power to the individual and limited, policed, heavily checked power
to the state. Or, as some back home might have put it, Don’t put your
faith in governments, which are made by men; put your faith in
individuals, who are made by God.
Republican leaders in the capital bowed to this wisdom–if not in
their actions, at least quite often in their hearts.
Now they seem to bow less. They know the higher wisdom on such issues
as immigration. They feel less fealty to the insights of the base.
They know more than the base, are more experienced than the base,
have a more nuanced sense of reality. And as for conservative social
issues groups, the politicians resent those nagging, whining pushers-
for-the-impossible who are always threatening to stay home or go
elsewhere. (Where?)
Some Washington Republicans have been in leadership so long they’ve
learned–they’ve learned too well!–that politics is the art of the
possible. It is. But this is not an excuse to be weak, or ambivalent,
or passive, or superior.
On the Democratic side, it is not just as bad but worse. They don’t
only think they’re more sophisticated than their base, more informed
and aware of the complexities. I believe they think their base is mad.
You can see their problem in their inability to get a slogan. Which,
believe me, is how they think of it: a slogan. “Together for a Better
Future.” “A Future With Better Togetherness.” Today for a better
tomorrow, tomorrow for a better today.
A party has a hard time saying what it stands for only when it
doesn’t know what it stands for. It has trouble getting a compelling
slogan only when it has no idea what compels its base. Or when it
fears what compels it.
I got a sense of the distance between Democratic leaders and the base
a few years ago when I met up with a Democrat who was weighing a run
for the party’s 2004 nomination. He hadn’t announced but was starting
to test the waters, campaigning out of state.
I mentioned to him that the press gives a great deal of attention to
the problems of Republican leaders and their putative supporters on
the ground in America, but I was interested in the particular
problems a D.C. Democrat has with his party’s base.
His eyebrows went up in the way people’s eyebrows go up when they’re
interested in what they’re about to say. He said–I write from
memory; it was not an interview but a conversation–that he was
getting an education in that area. He said when he spoke before local
Democratic groups they were wildly against the war in Iraq and
sometimes booed him when he spoke of it. It left him startled. He had
supported the president for serious reasons: He thought Saddam a bad
actor who likely had weapons of mass destruction. He wanted to talk
about it, but they didn’t want to hear him. They were immovable.
But there was something else. He didn’t say it, but something in his
manner suggested he thought they were . . . just a little crazy.
I thought of him the other day when I saw Howard Dean say something
intemperate on TV. I actually can’t remember what it was, one
intemperate Dean statement blending into another as they do. I was
standing near a small screen with recent acquaintances, all of them
relatively nonpolitical, and as I watched Mr. Dean speak I blurted,
“Why does he say things like that?” A middle-aged woman–intelligent,
professional–answered, “Because he thinks they’re stupid.”
He thinks who’s stupid? I asked. The press? “His party,” she said. We
both laughed because it sounded true.
But today I’m thinking that’s not quite it. Howard Dean is actually
the most in touch with his base of all D.C. Democrats because he
speaks to them the secret language of Madman Boogabooga. Republicans
are racist/ignorant/evil. This is actually not ineffective. It’s a
language that quells the base and would scare the center if they
followed it more closely, but they can’t because it’s not heavily
reported because “Dean Says Something Crazy” is no longer news.
I watched the Senate debate on Iraq yesterday. I happen to respect
the Democrats’ attempts to debate the war, argue it out, bring it
again to the floor of Congress. I am impressed that the majority of
them seem to oppose calling for a date-certain pullout. There was a
lot of administration-bashing, some strange rhetorical sallies. But
bottom line they seemed to be saying that while new management for
the war is desirable, declaring “it’s over, we’re tired, we’re gone”
is not.
This struck me as essentially sane, and as I watched I wondered if
these Democrats would take major hits from the base because of it. Or
if John Kerry, who is pushing for a declared date certain for
withdrawal, would greatly benefit.
Here is my read on a lot of Democratic senators: They think they know
more than their base and they think they’re more–how to put it?–
stable in their view of the world than their base. In their hearts,
in fact, they don’t really like their base. (They like–they love–
the old base: old union guys who drink Schlitz and voted for FDR and
JFK. But today those old union guys are mostly dead, dying or
Republican.)
Democratic leaders in Washington are in a worse position than
Republican leaders in Washington. Neither likes their base, really,
and both think they are smarter. But the Democrats think, deep down,
that their base is barking mad. The Republicans don’t. They just
think their base is a bore.
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.