What's the matter with politics in America?
Republicans/conservatives are one team and the liberals/Democrats are the other and we are all supposed to take up sides. Mostly, we do. We cheer for our side and fervently believe the other team is bad, very bad! Even Evil doers! It's reminiscent of high-school students cheering for their respective football teams.
I'm not confident I know what a liberal or a conservative is exactly. When I start listing issues that are supposed to be conservative, I don't find the Republicans living up to those issues and, sadly, the same is true of Democrats with liberal issues. I don't like the thought, but it seems like the difference is more one of group identification than it is of issues. This seems more clear with the Republicans now, but maybe that is because they are now in power. In my first draft of this article, I was willing to grant that Democrats are equally guilty, but I now have some new information. John Dean (of Watergate fame) has a new book called Conservatives Without Conscience that presents a large body of evidence that on this charge, conservatives are by far more guilty. The studies are apparently not political in nature but are conducted on psychological and socialogical grounds.
The Bush administration has been one of growing, ever more intrusive and powerful government that spends faster with each passing day. Is this not the exact opposite of what Republicans are supposed to stand for? I used to think that conservatives believe in law and order. They used to believe that even the President is not above the law, but I don't hear them saying that any more. What do conservatives conserve? Gee, that's a tough one!
Still, Republicans blindly support Bush because he is a conservative. He's one of us! many Republicans still believe. If the studies that John Dean references are correct, there is quite literally nothing that Bush could do to alienate this firm base of support.
One rationalization that fits both Republicans and Democrats for this team spirit is that politics is a tough business and politicians can't get elected by staying ideologically pure. This brings us to a point where it is the Democrats that may have more obviously gone overboard. You can't elect a liberal (by which it is meant that you can't elect anyone with populist leanings). Harry Truman could never get elected today! The press would just declare him not to be a viable candidate and that would be that. Probably true, but does it have to stay like that?
This belief, that Democrats have to be Republican-light to have any chance seems to date back to George McGovern. George was a liberal and a populist and in 1972 he was soundly defeated in his run for President on the Democratic ticket. What a lesson that taught the Democrats! They have run away from their base for nearly forty years as a result. Everyone knows that a liberal cannot win.
But 1972 was more complicated than that. McGovern did not lose the election just because he was a liberal. A war was ongoing, and just as we have experienced recently there were many citizens who voted for Nixon as a proxie for the war, so as to make themselves feel patriotic. Also, there were hippies in the street demonstrating against the war and having sex and taking drugs and who knows what? Many voters saw a vote for Nixon, seeing this vote as an opportunity to protest against hippies.
Too, there were the police riots in Chicago at the Democratic convention. I clearly recall knowing people who strongly preferred McGovern to Nixon saying they would vote for Nixon in order to punish the Democratic Party for the debacle in Chicago. These good progressive people may well have been instrumental in electing Nixon. And who can tell how much influence McGovern's loss in the 1972 election had on the largely Republican hold on the Presidency since then.
No, George McGovern was not defeated only because he was a liberal, but that is how it was spun within and without the Democratic Party and that is the common wisdom of pundits and political consultants to this day.
Let Democrats take to heart what Republicans are fond of saying, let's just get over it.