Cross-posted at
Dem Talking Points
The cover story of tomorrow's New York Times Magazine is a profile of Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) by Joseph Lelyveld entitled "The Republican Loner." The Times hasn't posted articles from this week's magazine on its website yet, but when they do I will update this post with the link.
The article is an interesting look at the man whom Lelyveld has called "the heartland dissident." The last of a dying breed of Republican. The type of Republican who believes in balanced budgets, smart foreign policy, and (while he is a social conservative) "thinks religion is a private matter." As such, he has been a vocal critic of the Bush administration's policies, ranging from the war in Iraq (which he voted for, but has since compared to Vietnam) and its out of control spending.
Chuck Hagel never became a dove, but he became a bird that's nearly as rare in the Republican aviary. He became an internationalist, someone who's capable of feeling intensely about alliances, multilateral endeavors, the value of global institutions; a fellow traveler of the Council on Foreign Relations, a politician who actually reads Foreign Affairs. A singular Great Plains Republican, in other words, who cares about the rest of the world for reasons that don't begin and end with agricultural exports. Tellingly, when he was elected to the Senate in 1996, he was the one new Republican whose first choice for a committee assignment was the Foreign Relations Committee, which had declined steadily in prestige since the Vietnam-era days of a Democratic chairman he sometimes mentions as a role model, J. William Fulbright. An instinctive and unwavering conservative on most issues - in particular, big government and deficits - he was the antithesis of a neocon, a profile to which The Weekly Standard paid backhanded tribute in 2002 when it included him (along with [Colin] Powell, [Brent] Scowcroft, and The New York Times) in what it called "the axis of appeasement." In the cruelest cut, in that brief period of easy, triumphalist anticipation before the invasion and its turbulent aftermath, National Review put Nebraska's senior senator down as Senator Hagel (R., France).
If his tendency to fall out of step with the administration and to ignore talking points sent around by the Republican National Committee has been most conspicuous on foreign affairs, he has been just as much his own man on domestic issues. ("Nothing in my oath of office," he recently told reporters, "says, 'I pledge allegiance to the Republican Party and President Bush.'") The senator from Nebraska broke with his party leadership to vote against the new prescription-drug program under Medicare, the No Child Left Behind bill and a big farm bill stuffed with incentives for corporate agriculture. Each, he felt, was ill conceived in practical terms and unwarranted as an expansion of federal mandates and spending. Only on the Bush tax cuts - all of which he has supported - has he been deaf to warnings about the consequences for the federal deficit. (Though, he says, he'd never take "the pledge" to oppose any and all tax hikes.)It can be argued, as David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, pointed out, that Hagel has taken a more conservative position than the Bush administration every time he has broken with it on a major issue. Keene's outfit gave the senator a 100 percent rating for his votes in 2003. His lifetime rating for his eight years in the Senate stood at 85 on the union's scorecard, which translates into baseball talk as better than a .300 batting average. Here's a certified conservative, then, who has regularly decried partisanship - even during the do-or-die Florida showdown in 2000, when he suggested a statewide recount - and doesn't go on about "values." (He has them; most people have them, he says, so seeking to impose one's own values on others isn't right.) A regular churchgoer, an Episcopalian who sends his two children to Catholic school, he thinks religion is a private matter. In today's partisan climate, what are so-called movement conservatives to make of such a man? Facing conservative audiences, he struggles to overcome the suspicion that he's unpredictable, a throwback to old-school G.O.P. moderation, a dissident.
The article concludes by examining the possibility of Hagel running for President in 2008. One problem for Hagel's potential campaign is that not being a neo-conservative may not distinguish him very much from the rest of the GOP field. Early polling of the potential Republican candidates in 2008 shows Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani as the front runners. Both have worked hard to create reputations for themselves as moderates, McCain through his straight talk and occasional criticism of the Bush administration, and Giuliani through his liberal record on social issues.
Whether or not Hagel gets the nomination (and whether he could be our next President if he does) hinges on far too many things to examine in this post, however one question that was not examined in the article is what Democrats should make of this "staunch conservative"? Sure, he looks great when compared to President Bush, but Democrats should remember that they did spend years fighting against this type of conservative. The type who, if he were leading our nation, would try to reduce the deficit through some of the deepest program cuts in America's history, while possibly extending the irresponsible Bush tax cuts, that, many argue, are the real culprit for our fiscal condition.
If the Democratic nomination in 2008 goes to a moderate candidate such as former Virginia Governor Mark Warner or Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN), swing voters and moderates will likely grow in number and be forced to make a difficult choice, (that is assuming McCain, Giuliani, Hagel, or a fellow moderate gets the GOP nomination.) However an election between some of the candidates mentioned above may be necessary first steps towards healing a polarized nation.
For more on the battle for power in the GOP, see Kevin Drum's review of Bruce Bartlett's new book The Impostor, in this month's Washington Monthly.