Mr. Dionne is off base in his editorial of this past Tuesday. His general thesis, that "Democrats' real problem is that they have failed to show that their critique of the Republican status quo is the essential first step toward an alternative program" is slightly askew, for it is based off of a false premise. The public does not see a "Republican status quo" so much as they see a larger and heavily political status quo in Washington, cultivated by both parties and deeply odious to the prevailing public sense. A recent Battleground poll demonstrates that the public places a pox on both houses, not Republicans or Democrats alone. 92% of Americans feel lawmakers in Washington place partisan politics above all else and 64% believe both parties are equally responsible for the current problems facing congress in regards to lobbyist reform. Democrats will be hard-pressed to run against the status quo on a national basis when the American people find them equally complicit in creating and propagating that status quo. "The bottom line", says Republican pollster Ed Goeas, "is that the mood of the electorate is not an anti-incumbent mood, an anti-Democratic or anti-Republican mood, but an anti-Washington mood." He is exactly right.
Prior to the statement of his thesis, Mr. Dionne mis-characterizes and misinterprets the substance of the '94 mid-terms, discounting the necessity of "offering a clear program" to achieving broad victories in a national election. He correctly states that in '94 "it was disaffection with Bill Clinton.....which created the Republicans' opportunity", but he does not follow this valid argument to it's valid and logical conclusion. Public dissatisfaction with President Clinton created an atmosphere where the public was open and receptive to "a clear program" from Republicans, which Republicans provided. Republicans could not have seized control of congress on public dissatisfaction with President Clinton alone however. They had to complete the sale of a clear plan to the American public who, through their dissatisfaction with the president, gave Republicans the opportunity to pitch. In other words, there was a two-step process towards widespread Republican victories that year. Insinuating Democrats can succeed based on President Bush's unpopularity alone without "offering a clear program" of their own is wishful thinking. They may enjoy modest, scattered gains in one or both houses---such is historically typical for the party out of the White House in mid-terms---but not the massive, nationwide gains Republicans achieved in '94.
Mr. Dionne moves on to dropping a few disingenuous assertions typical of liberal critics of the president. He laments the "budget policies saddling our kids with debt tomorrow to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy today." It is not tax cuts which are saddling future generations with debt, but monstrous and rising entitlement costs and profligate federal spending. As one very wise man once said, "we don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much."
Moreover, if we got rid of the Bush tax-cuts federal revenues would increase in the short-term but begin to lag as time progressed. It was the tax-cuts which stimulated the economy in the midst of the last recession and made it much shorter and shallower than it would have been without them. Mr. Dionne seems ignorant of the fact that the millions of jobs created in the last two years and the subsequent growing federal revenues have been predicated on the economic stimulus the tax-cuts provided.
Refusing to stop there, Mr. Dionne asserted that neither Democrats nor President Bush have any "good answer to Iraq." Whether an answer is good or not is subjective, but Mr. Dionne may rest assured that both Democrats and the president have one. Democrats want to get out now while the president continues to execute a policy of supporting and allowing Iraqis to set up their government and nation while training Iraqi security forces to secure their own country. On this front progress is being made. Victor Davis Hanson, a renowned historical scholar and someone far more knowledgeable on the subject of Iraq than Mr. Dionne, says of the situation, "[a]fter visiting the country, I think we can and will win, but just as importantly, unlike in 2003-4, there does not seem to be much of anything we should be doing there that in fact we are not." Iraqis are well on their way down the rocky path to self-sufficiency, terrorism and violence aside. Mr. Dionne is just going to have to deal with the intellectual insult he claims to feel by the president's refusal to vacate a working policy.
Mr. Dionne's general thesis, along with these substantive errors, is intrinsically flawed. Democrat's central problem is not that they have not formed a cogent critique of the Republican status quo, but that the public views them as part of the general status quo in Washington it has grown tired of. If Democrats want to achieve a general, nationwide victory in November they have to change their own course and prove they can change their own churlish behavior and thus alter the culture in Washington. If they do not negligible change in the composition of congress will occur in '07.
Hat Tip: Tom Bevan
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