What do Democarts in 2006 stand for? That's the big question political thinkers want to know. Are they "New Deal" Democrats or "Great Society" Democrats or "McGovernites" or "Clinton Democrats"?
Whenever I am asked what do the Democrats in 2006 stand for, the answer comes easily: common sense.
That's the universal term for nearly every Democratic candidate running in this election. John Tester is the "common sense" candidate for senate in Montana. Jim Webb is the "common sense" candidate for senate in Virginia. Eliot Spitzer is the "common sense" candidate for governor in New York. None of these men are seeking office as figureheads of some kind of populist uprising or movement. They all have simply pledged to do what
makes sense for their constituents.
However, that's not enough for the establishment punditry.
"We're about to enter another of those periods without a dominant ideology," eulogizes David Brooks in today's New York Times. "It's clear that this election will mark the end of conservative dominance. This election is a period, not a comma in political history."
What are we headed for? According to Brooks "disillusionment and a scrambling of political categories." The pendulum will swing "not from the left to the right but from politics to anti-politics."
Brooks isn't the only one sour on the state of politics. Bob Herbert on the same editorial pages charges that voters are just "fed up with everybody" and this is an election "between Republicans and not-Republicans."
My problem with this interpretation of current political events here in the US is this: why does having big ideas equal political momentum in the American media?
The Republicans certainly had big ideas when they took over all three branches of government in 2001. They were going to privatize social security, enact values legislation, and - after 9-11 happened - preemptively attack Iraq in order to set up a Potemkin democracy in the Middle East from which their Trotskyite visions of Muslim governments being toppled by pro-US people's movements would bear fruit and eradicate radical Islamic fundamentalism with better jobs and American TV shows with Arabic subtitles.
But Republican big ideas, it seems, have gotten the US in a heap of trouble. "If only the American government wasn't accountable to its people" - I can imagine supporters of such big ideas thinking - "Then the government would be free to institute its big ideas without popular support." You actually heard this a few times during the social security reform campaign in 2005. Republican loyalists were mad that winning the presidential election by two percentage points didn't give them a mandate to do whatever they wanted.
How did we get to this line of thinking? America is developing an organic, pragmatic take on how to deal with Iraq. Democrats agree that the war needs to end, we need to cut our losses, and that Iraq is now Iraq's responsibility. We differ on timelines, but we agree we need to get out if we are going to salvage our strengths.
Why do they insist that Democrats cannot be a genuine political force without some overarching ideas for change? Are pragmatism and consensus-building useless political ideas?
If anything, pragmatism trumps ideology at every corner. A Democrat looking to reduce global warming will frame the debate in the manner of: "There is a problem. How can we fix it?" while the Republican ideologue will frame the debate in the manner of: "There may or may not be a problem and we may not have the moral authority to fix it." The moral authority - of course - is defined by the position whatever economic guru on behalf of energy companies has taken. Hence there is no pragmatic, problem solving debate. Genuine problems are dragged into the political toil of ideological battles between "wingnuts" and "librools." It's a colossal political nightmare that ultimately harms our republic.
But still it's corroded so many minds it often seems like its preferred to having straight candidates who pledge nothing but to do their jobs and that's it. That is exactly the Democratic platform in this election - to do their jobs. "There were terrorist attacks, let's see what the 9-11 commission says and enact those reforms." See - how simple was that?
Brooks, Herbert, and others should take note. Pragmatism and logic can be politically refreshing.