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A Vibrant Democracy
 Just
when I was almost convinced that
President Disastro had guaranteed Democratic gains in this year’s
elections, and maybe in 2008 as
well, I
read Jeffrey Goldberg’s article on  the
Democrats’ strategies in The New Yorker. These guys
are hopeless.
Howard
Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, insists that
“this is a Democratic country, with a big D” — though
Goldberg observes that self-identified conservatives, the Republican base,
outnumber self-identified liberals, the Democrats’ base, by a 3-to-2
margin.
Dean’s
idea of a winning issue for his party? “The
Republicans are cutting school-lunch programs.” That ought to set the
voters on fire! More free lunches!
At the local
level, Goldberg finds Democratic politicians much more sensible. Many of
them fear for the party if Hillary Clinton gets its presidential nomination in
2008, because she alarms conservatives without satisfying principled
liberals. In this, she mirrors Bush’s
plunge in the polls doesn’t translate into
Democratic popularity. It may translate into opportunity for a third party,
such as the conservative Constitution Party, which is beckoning to the base
Bush has driven to desertion.
In 1992,
Bush’s father lost in his bid for reelection in large part because he
had betrayed his conservative base, which stayed home in November. The
younger Bush was determined to avoid his father’s mistakes, but he
has repeated them, even surpassing the old man’s unpopularity.
But
conservatives aren’t going to turn to liberals for relief from Bush.
Their chief complaint is that he has given us even bigger government than
the Democrats had. Some of them have finally figured out that war is pretty
hard to reconcile with modest government.
The
president Bush is most often likened to is Lyndon Johnson, who expanded
government in every direction with both war and entitlements but only wound
up loathed by both parties. And Johnson was a far smarter politician than
Bush.
The elder
Bush made a famous miscalculation. He thought he could get away with
breaking his promises to conservatives because “they have nowhere
else to go.” He didn’t foresee that they might vote for Ross
Perot or simply refuse to vote.
![[Breaker quote for A Vibrant Democracy: The two-and-only-two-party system]](2006breakers/060525.gif) Discontent
with
both major parties was so strong in 1992 that at one point Perot led both
Bush the elder and Bill Clinton in the polls. Then he suddenly withdrew from
the race; when he jumped back in, his base wasn’t there anymore. He
appeared merely eccentric, and nobody knew quite what he stood for.
He’d wasted a golden opportunity for a new party to defeat the
country’s political duopoly.
Now that
opportunity has come again, thanks to a second Bush. It’s easy to
forget how appealing and refreshing Perot seemed at first; he also had the
advantage of a huge fortune, despite his populist manner.
All of which
raises the big question: Can a third party challenge get anywhere without a
billionaire? Or is this “democracy” now doomed to the dreary
power struggles of the two plutocratic parties, debating school-lunch
programs?
Think of it.
If Hillary serves two terms in the White House, we will eventually have spent
We are said
to be in a conservative era. That seems to be true in the sense that both
parties now feel it’s vital to deceive the voters with conservative
slogans. Liberal slogans don’t seem to work anymore.
Some
conservatives are so alarmed by the specter of President Hillary that they
are frantically warning that her attempt to position herself as a moderate is
phony. But it can hardly be any phonier than Bush’s efforts to pose as
a conservative. Being confusing doesn’t necessarily make you
interesting. Both major parties are exhausted.
Goldberg
quotes House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on how a big Democratic victory
this fall might liven things up: “We win in ’06, we get subpoena
power,” meaning full investigations of the Bush administration. But
other Democrats fear that such talk may backfire, scaring off moderate
voters and rousing dispirited Republicans to fight. One party can’t do
anything right, and the other doesn’t know what to do.
In my
lifetime, the number of major league baseball teams has grown from 16 to
30. The number of television networks has exploded from three to several
hundred. Even the McDonald’s menu is much longer than it used to be.
But the number of major political parties has been kept stable: two.
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2006 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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