[Mb-civic] The Democrats' Real Problem - E. J. Dionne - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

The Democrats' Real Problem

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, March 7, 2006; A17

It is now an ingrained journalistic habit: After a period of bad news 
for President Bush, media outlets invariably devote time and space to 
"balancing" stories that all say more or less: "Yes, the Republicans are 
in trouble, but the Democrats have no alternatives, no plans," etc.

The pattern began to fall in place this weekend in the wake of two truly 
miserable weeks for Bush.

The stories about the Democrats are by no means flatly false -- 
Democrats don't yet have a fully worked-out alternative program -- but 
they are based on a false premise, and they underestimate what I'll call 
the positive power of negative thinking.

The false premise is that oppositions win midterm elections by offering 
a clear program, such as the Republicans' 1994 Contract With America. 
I've been testing this idea with such architects of the 1994 "Republican 
revolution" as former representative Vin Weber and Tony Blankley, who 
was Newt Gingrich's top communications adviser and now edits the 
Washington Times editorial page.

Both said the main contribution of the contract was to give 
inexperienced Republican candidates something to say once the political 
tide started moving the GOP's way. But both insisted that it was 
disaffection with Bill Clinton, not the contract, that created the 
Republicans' opportunity -- something Bob Dole said at the time.

The Democrats' real problem is that they have failed to show how their 
critique of the Republican status quo is the essential first step toward 
the alternative program they will owe the voters in the presidential 
year of 2008.

This failure has made it easier for Republicans to cast anti-Bush 
feeling (aka, "Bush hatred") as a psychological disorder. The GOP 
shrewdly makes the president's critics look crazed and suggests that 
opposition to Bush is of no more significance than, say, the loathing 
that many watchers of "American Idol" love to express toward Simon 
Cowell, the meanest of the show's judges.

The president's critics need to identify precisely why they oppose him, 
not only so they can make clear that they are not psycho basket cases 
but also to convey the idea that they know what needs to be put right.

Bush critics will almost always point first to the administration's 
arrogance, a word used recently not by some left-wing Bush hater but by 
the loyal conservative writer Byron York. In the New Republic, York 
chose the A-word to explain why Republicans are turning on the White 
House's "we-know-best approach."

The cure for an arrogant government that doesn't take critics seriously 
is accountability. Divided government never looked so good. That's 
especially true at a moment when polls suggest that a majority is 
yearning for more competence and greater moderation.

For example, moderates and liberals alike are mystified by budget 
policies saddling our kids with debt tomorrow to pay for tax cuts for 
the wealthy today. Moderating this radical fiscal approach is something 
the voters clearly could accomplish with their ballots this fall.

But Democrats have no good answer to Iraq. True. And neither does Bush, 
who started the war and should be held accountable for where we are now.

The philosophical man who owns our neighborhood Chinese restaurant 
recently shared with me a brilliant aphorism to describe how to build a 
good business. "You have to do the right thing," he said, "and you have 
to do the thing right."

That summarizes what unites Bush's Iraq critics. Many Americans opposed 
the war in the first place, but many who supported it are aghast that 
the administration did the thing so badly. It did not dispatch enough 
troops to achieve order at the outset, and it failed to plan for the 
inevitable conflicts that would arise among the country's ethnic and 
religious groups.

What comes from this is not isolationism but an awareness that even a 
very powerful country needs to be a careful steward of its power. It 
should never go into a war without considering the probability of 
unintended consequences and planning for the worst case and not just the 
best one.

This is the basis for a saner foreign policy in the long run. As for 
Iraq, the voters should let the president know that he can no longer 
keep repeating his rah-rah mantras about standing down when the Iraqis 
stand up. Presidents deserve to be punished for insulting our intelligence.

Thus the shortcoming of Democratic leaders is not that they don't have a 
program but that they have not yet convinced opinion makers that 
fighting bad policies is actually constructive -- and that, between 
presidential elections, keeping matters from getting worse is sometimes 
the most positive alternative on offer.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/06/AR2006030601613.html?nav=hcmodule
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