On my way home yesterday, I was listening to an interview on the NewsHour with spokesmen for
Unity '08, an organization promoting the idea of an online primary to nominate a cross-party ticket, which participants would then try to get on the ballot. Their motivation is the idea that the two major parties are not "relevant to the major issues and challenges" and are excessively partisan and appealing only to their base.
The weird thing is, though, that I can't find anything specific in their issues or complaints that would actually be points of disagreement with the Democrats. They seem to be opposed to the Republicans and the GOP's caricature of the Democrats, and unable to recognize that both are created by the Republicans.
The quote that struck me most from the interview was from former Republican strategist Doug Bailey, former Republican strategist:
But what is true is that about 60 percent of this country is in the middle politically. And to the degree that they are given a candidate who is willing to talk about some issues other than the issues that turn on the base of the far-right or the far-left, like global climate change or energy independence or the soaring national debt.
Those are subjects that don't get any discussion in Washington, despite the fact that both parties are here. Their leadership is here, but there is no serious discussion of serious and major issues.
John Kerry talked about exactly these issues. Al Gore talked about these issues. When Bill Clinton was president, these issues got plenty of attention -- heck, he balanced the budget. The reason they don't get any discussion in Washington now is not that the two major parties are somehow systemically unable to deal with them, it's that one party is systemically unwilling to deal with them, and that's the party that controls Washington!
Bailey again:
What's happened, Judy, is that politics in Washington has become so polarized that, in fact, the city has become paralyzed; it cannot deal with the major issues, and the public knows that. And part of the problem -- part of the solution is to get the two parties talking to one another, bring them back to the middle.
I understand the desire to bring back the politics of compromise that many of us grew up with, but it's not going to happen by pretending that it's everyone's fault equally. Conservatives deliberately poisoned the well; as speaker, Newt Gingrich instructed his troops not to even talk to members on the other side of the aisle, told them that they weren't their opposition, they were their enemies. Democrats have only belatedly (and insufficiently) become less willing to compromise and talk to the other party after years of "Bipartisanship is another name for date rape" Republicans not only using it to make suckers of them, but crowing about it afterwards.
Bailey talks further about how the two parties are only talking about issues that "turn on the base of the far-right or far-left," but neither the interview nor the group's website gives any indication of "far-left" issues (except perhaps in the conservative straw-man sense that anything to the left of McCain and Lieberman is "far-left.") The closest it comes is this:
Unity08 divides issues facing the country into two categories: Crucial Issues - on which America's future safety and welfare depend; and Important Issues - which, while vital to some, will not, in our judgment, determine the fate or future of the United States.
In our opinion, Crucial Issues include: Global terrorism, our national debt, our dependence on foreign oil, the emergence of India and China as strategic competitors and/or allies, nuclear proliferation, global climate change, the corruption of Washington's lobbying system, the education of our young, the health care of all, and the disappearance of the American Dream for so many of our people.
By contrast, we consider gun control, abortion and gay marriage important issues, worthy of debate and discussion in a free society, but not issues that should dominate or even crowd our national agenda.
Who's putting gun control, abortion, and gay marriage on the national agenda? It's certainly not Democrats trying to appeal to the "far-left." These issues are only hot national issues because conservatives don't like the direction or pace of the country on the issue and are constantly on the attack (and using them to fire up their base as well, something that is openly admitted in many of their strategy documents.) Is there anyone who imagines that Democrats would be running on these issues if the Republicans just left them alone? There may have been a time when it was so, but to consider that part of the "current environment" is just ludicrous.
I understand the desire to get back to more amicable politics, and I realize it must be hard for moderate Republicans to accept that they're unlikely to get their party back, but if you've got a bully on the playground, then declaring "let's not talk about who started the fight, let's just play nice together" isn't going to make it so. And buying into the myth that the polarization and incivility are the equally the fault of both ends of the spectrum when they manifestly aren't, just like phony media "balance," will inevitably lead to the perception that the "center" is far closer to the noisy radicals than it really is.