This strong endorsement by The New Republic of Senator Joe Lieberman for the Democratic nomination for President begs the Democratic Party to come back toward the serious, sensible center, because that's where America is.
TNR's editors characterize the last three years as disastrous for a Party that looked to be in ascendance with the nomination of Gore-Lieberman in 2000. That ticket...
"...had seemed to secure the New Democratic legacy. Foreign policy hawkishness, free trade, and fiscal discipline--once heresies in the party--were now mainstream. Indeed, the dominant Democratic response to Gore and Lieberman's loss was to chastise them for not running more explicitly on Clinton's record."
But since January 2001..
The Democratic Party is racing back to the '80s, with interest groups enforcing litmus tests on everything from partial-birth abortion to steel tariffs, and party activists dangerously out of touch with a country that feels threatened by terrorism, not Donald Rumsfeld. Dean has helped create this mood of self-righteous delusion, and his competitors have, to varying degrees, accommodated themselves to it. Only Lieberman--the supposed candidate of appeasement--is challenging his party, enduring boos at event after event, to articulate a different, better vision of what it means to be a Democrat. Three years ago, that vision seemed ascendant. Today, it is once again at the margins.
Lieberman has been both consistent and courageous in standing up to the far left in his own party, and to the problems of tyranny and terrorism. Another excerpt:
"...global anxiety about America's overwhelming power means it is likely that any significant U.S. military intervention short of an Afghanistan-style response to direct attack will provoke hostility in Europe and on the American left. A Democratic president may have to defy both America's allies and his domestic political base to aggressively fight terrorism and defend freedom. So far, at least, Dean's record on the national stage suggests he doesn't understand that. Lieberman does........The deep irony of Lieberman's campaign is that many Democrats view him as timid. But how much courage does it take for Dean to throw red meat to the party faithful?.....
....Dean and his supporters identify viscerally with the foreign governments that resent being bullied by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Yet they identify barely at all with the largely voiceless people--in countries like Syria and Iran--who might consider a democracy's projection of power into the heart of a region defined by tyranny to be progressive, even inspiring."
For Dean to consider that possibility, he would have to acknowledge that George Bush is a progressive. It's more likely he'll call the folks at MoveOn.org and tell them to keep those TV spots coming.
I do take issue with one part of the TNR editorial.
Here's the paragraph on Lieberman's anti-orthodox stance on school choice: (emphasis added)
"Where Lieberman diverges most from his competitors on domestic policy is in his willingness to challenge entrenched party interest groups. Many liberal intellectuals privately fret about the teachers' unions' stranglehold on Democratic education policy. But Lieberman is one of the few national Democrats to challenge them. He supports experimenting with school vouchers, not because of free-market theology but because of neoliberal empiricism: He wants to see if they work. And his educational heresies extend beyond school choice. In 2000, he rankled Ted Kennedy and the teachers' unions by endorsing tough new testing for schools, yet he also proposed generous funding increases to make those standards achievable. This was the Third Way at its best: government demanding accountability but providing real help.
While implying they agree that "school choice" is an idea whose time has come, the editors feel that conservative motives as champions of school choice programs must be smeared as base "free-market theology", (read: "worship of money"), while Lieberman's motives are naturally more honorable. You see, he actually "wants to see if they work".
Why didn't conservatives ever think of that? Let's try them to see if they work, because the alternative is continued miserable failure for many. The whole notion of trying to do something to improve the education of American children had not occurred to conservatives, so busy were they conducting theological experiments in wealth creation on our kids. Off sarcasm.
How incredibly insulting that is to the many thousands of parents, educators and yes, politicians of both parties, who have worked so hard for so long to provide some sound choices to low income parents trying desperately to rescue their kids from a public school system that has increasingly been failing them.
Read the whole piece. I agree with them that Lieberman is the best man in the race for the Democrats. I hope that still means something, even two months from now.
UPDATE 1/10: David Adesnik at Oxblog thinks Howard Dean should be Governor of something, and he makes some great points on Bush foreign policy while commenting on the TNR article. Great blog, Oxblog!
Posted by dan at January 10, 2004 12:25 AM