Who Is Going To Do The Hard Work?

Reconstruction Begins. Again.

Joe Biden is a Democratic centrist. This means, of course, that the extreme on the Right don’t like him. The farther end of the Left don’t like him much either. But, to be clear, the ‘extreme’ on the Left is a lot more likeable and much less prone to violence than the truly extreme on the Right.

But America, overall seems to like Democratic centrism. Certainly they’ve voted for them in overwhelming numbers. FDR was a Democratic centrist as was his successor Truman. Dwight Eisenhower was a Republican centrist though his political heir is Elizabeth Warren.

If you think about it, you’ll find a pattern and much similarity running through most of the last forty or so years of Democratic Presidential candidates and nominees. There is a consistent strain of intelligent, pragmatic, policy oriented — indeed somewhat wonkish — Democratic centrism that consistently receives quite a lot of votes in this country. There is also a lot of messiah-seeking from the Left which is its own problem.

In ideology, smarts and temperament, James Earl Carter wasn’t much different than Walter Mondale, his Vice President. Both of them are, in fact, still alive, in their nineties. Mondale was the Democratic nominee for President in 1984 and the first to choose a female, Geraldine Ferraro, as his running mate. Both men, and Geraldine Ferraro, were serious policy wonks who worked long and hard to move Democratic values forward.

Carter, Mondale and Ferraro were not very different from Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee in 1988. An intelligent and earnest Governor of the Commonwealth, Dukakis was, to my knowledge, one of the first politicians tagged with what was supposed to be an epithet, the word ‘technocrat.’ Senator Paul Tsongas, like Dukakis another son of Massachusetts, almost the nominee in 1992, was of a similar kind, strong policy chops allied to a big brain and an even bigger heart. And so it was with Bill Bradley and Al Gore in 2000. John Kerry in 2004. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in 2008. Obama again in 2012 and Hillary Clinton again in 2016.

Now we have President-elect Joseph Biden.

This is the time that many on the Left trot out the old saw that says ‘insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.’ They mean, of course, running the same sort of candidates, cycle after cycle, expecting them to win. But that’s not the insanity. The insanity was rejecting the Democratic centrists, again and again, expecting something different to happen. Well, in rejecting James Carter we got Ronald Reagan who was pretty bad. Rejecting Al Gore got us George W. Bush who was worse than Reagan in a truly awful manner and rejecting Hillary Clinton got us Donald Trump who is— one hopes — the rockiest of rock bottoms.

All these Democrat centrists were, or are, sober-minded, earnest — perhaps even boring — policy professionals who either took, or still take, their jobs seriously and who, respecting both the jobs and their constituents, always strive to do their best. Politicians grounded in Democratic, even progressive, values, allied to a firm grasp of policy and dedicated to the long hard slog that is the real work of politics.

Collectively, their best characteristic is a willingness to work very hard at the serious parts of the job. Not the popularity contest of elections nor the pomp and circumstance of the presidency or Senate but the words on the page and the hard job of convincing others. They know that a gee-whiz neat-o idea is only the beginning of the work: nobody is going to genuflect to your ideas, even if they are brilliant; you have to do the work. Each and everyone of them has the same spirit animal and it is an economics textbook.

Regardless of their individual merits, their similarities seem to have struck a chord with the body politic garnering quite a lot of votes. Al Gore, Hillary Clinton and now Joe Biden all won their respective popular votes running away. John Kerry aquitted himself nobly, running bravely and fearlessly at a wall of fear and smear against a man-child whose spirit animal is Alfred E. Neuman. Kerry even faced the so-called ‘party of the military’ who were wearing ‘purple-heart’ bandaids. Then he dusted himself off and asked to go again.

Unfortunately, the very thing that makes these people the most excellent and effective Presidents and legislators is also the very thing that makes them poor electoral candidates: hard work is hard work, often boring and dull and they, in fact, seem to enjoy it. Yet the electorate wants bumper-sticker slogans, tractable problems and charismatic leaders. So what happens is jokes; Al Gore is so boring his Secret Service code name is Al Gore; John Kerry is an inspiration for the millions of Americans suffering from Dutch Elm disease; Hillary Clinton once disappeared for a month, she was playing hide-n-seek and nobody looked for her. And so many of them lost their respective elections.

Not this time.

And for this reason of perceived boredom, and this reason alone, Democratic centrists despite the favor they enjoy from a majority of the electorate, have rarely been allowed to govern. Al Gore won the popular vote, but did not become President because of the utterly amoral right wing of the Supreme Court. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost the electoral college, vestigial tail of the monster compromises with slave states in the Constitution. The rest of them lost their respective elections, usually closely, although Mondale was clearly routed by Reagan.

Not this time.

The astute reader will note, in the above depiction of Democratic centrists, the glaring absence of one William J. Clinton, who in fact was President from 1992 to 2000.

For myself, I don’t consider Bill Clinton a Democratic centrist: he was, if anything, a political centrist; someone only willing to work from Democratic values up to a point. Instead, all too willing to compromise those Democratic values for the sake of political terrain. In my estimation, he — and his bloody-knuckles, pugilist councilors James Carville (known as the ‘Ragin Cajun’) and the repellant, and very Republican, Dick Morris — confused the distinction between the fight and the defense of values: the distinction of loving the fight for the weapons in it; the sword for its sharpness, the spear for its thrust, the gun for its shattering report and devastating effect; Not, unfortunately, those things that are defended, like Democratic values.

Bill Clinton introduced two innovations to the political arena: the first of which was the permanent campaign; And the second idea that of ‘triangulation.’

The first idea, that of the permanant campaign, is analagous to the basketball tactic of the full court press, always running, pressuring and, for politics, spinning, spinning, and spinning. It elevated the campaign to the importance of the legislating and might, in fact, be the birth of Trumpism — where image and will count far more than actually being good at the job.

The second innovation, ‘triangulation,’ is an utterly amoral, yet laser like, focus on the political positions and terrain held. ‘Triangulation’ did not depend on any held Democratic values (if, in fact, Clinton held any) but only a perception of the other politicians perceptions and an overconfidence in an ability to outmaneuvre them.

In 2004 Bill Clinton counseled John Kerry, the Democratic nominee to embrace the virulently anti-gay agenda of the Right in an effort to win. (In that year, some eleven states had anti-same sex marriage ballot amendments or otherwise homophobic legislation in a concerted, ultimately successful effort to drive evangelical voters to the polls.) When John Kerry ended the call, he turned to his advisors, who had been listening, and said, “I’m never going to do that.” It might have won Kerry the election but to do so would have abrogated clear Democratic values. Clinton was willing to do that. Kerry was not.

It’s also worth noting that Bill Clinton only achieved the Presidency in 1992 on 43% of the vote, and despite winning again in 1996, didn’t crack 50%. Triangulation and the permanent campaign both give birth to, and feed off of, division and conflict.

The closest we’ve ever come to implementing Democratic centrism since James Earl Carter is in the election of Barack Obama.

How did that work out?

Very well. And then, not that well.

The 111th Congress, which sat for the first two years of the Obama Administration, was one of the most productive Congresses in recent — and not so recent — memory. From the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which pulled the entire economy back from the brink of collapse to the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to the Affordable Care Act ( ACA, or what is now known as Obamacare), and with many initiatives in between, including the wildly successful Cash for Clunkers, the Dodd-Frank Act and the ultimate repeal of ‘don’t ask don’t tell,’ the 111th Congress worked hand in glove with the Obama administration to get things done.

You don’t have to agree with every piece of legislation, or even any of them, to stand in awe of the sheer amount of work done in one session. And while, indeed, nobody went to jail for nearly flatlining the entire global economy, all the ‘bailouts’ were paid back with interest. If you lament the compromises made, you can at least acknowledge the general movement in the progressive direction.

Despite the clear will of the American people, the Republicans refused to recognize Obama’s legitimacy and, after taking control of Congress, would not play ball. First, John Boehner (whose spirit animal is a fifth of Bourbon) and then Paul Ryan (whose spirit animal is a very dirty gym sock stuffed with a clean new bar of soap) worked against his very legitimacy. This they did, seemingly, at the behest of Mitch McConnel, whose spirit animal is Nathan Bedford Forrest. And, not for nothing, all of the Republican controlled Congresses since the 111th Congress have done nothing notable in comparison.

Another success of this kind of Democratic centrism lies in Barack Obama’s foreign policy where the maximally awful and manifestly obtuse belligerence of the George Dubya Bush adminstration was carefully and patiently overturned at the State Department by none other than, first, Hillary Clinton and then John Kerry. People seem to forget the contempt the rest of the world held for America in the wake of the Bush administration with its neo-conservative mix of criminal stupidity, feckless arrogance and moral blindness. People forget that because of the patient, consistent, continuous hard work of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry the standing of America in the world was restored after the gaping moral wound that was the Bush Administration.

Looks like we’re going to have to do that one all over again.

And now, there’s Donald Trump — a man whose spirit animal is the Reichstag fire — doing his utmost to race past, and below, that bottom achieved by the Bush administration, not even attempting to veil his contempt for most of the rest of the world. Joe Biden is going to have to assemble the team that can repair the relationship with almost the entire rest of the world.

It’s of particular fascination, if you think about it, that Democratic Centrists seem to need a national crisis to get elected and that, once elected, they tackle the crisis with skill and intelligence. James Carter was elected in the aftermath of Watergate and the war in Viet Nam. Barack Obama inherited a Chernobyl economy and pulled it back from the brink. If, for instance, John McCain had won the Presidency in 2008 and did everything in the same manner as Barack Obama, we’d have already carved McCain’s face on Mt Rushmore.

Now we have the twin crisises of Donald Trumps manifest incompetence and malignant narcissism allied with a global pandemic. Who ya gonna call?

Joe Biden. Democratic centrist.

This manner of patient, dogged, politics by Democratic centrists is oft directly opposed by the Right, but more often undercut and unbalanced by the progressive Left. While they often have their heart in the right place they are hampered by a combination of youthful naivete and impatience. This leads the Left to seek anew for the messiah every election cycle. In 2000 it was Ralph Nader. In 2004 it was Howard Dean. In 2008 it was Ralph Nader, again. In 2012 it was Jill Stein. In 2016 and 2020 it was Bernie Sanders. (Although, I can’t help, son of Massachusetts that I am, swelling with pride that all these perceived messiahs are from New England.)

The similarity that the extreme on the Right share with the naive on the Left is that the electorate can eat all the cake and cookies they want. Their pitch is not only that we can have it all, but that we all deserve to have it all.

When put against that, the Democratic centrists who say you have to eat your vegetables are always at a disadvantage. Now we have, yet again, an opportunity to put hard workers to work to solve the problems. It’s going to involve eating vegetables. So get used to it.

© Petr Swedock 2020