TROPIC CANCER

Temperament Wars (James Traub, July 6, 2003, NY Times Magazine)

Why are the Democrats so much more willing than the Republicans to make political sacrifices in the name of procedural fairness or of good government? Maybe Democrats are just nicer, but a more philosophical view is that liberals are committed to, are in fact bedeviled by, ideals about process that do not much preoccupy conservatives, at least contemporary ones. Liberals put their faith in such content-neutral principles as free speech, due process, participatory democracy. Is that too lofty? Then maybe we should say that today's liberals, unlike today's conservatives, don't believe in any particular set of ends ardently enough to blind themselves to the means they are using to achieve them. [...]

The Democrats are essentially devoted to tempering the harm caused by the Bush administration, which is not much of an agenda at all, though it certainly makes a virtue of moderation. Ruthlessness is just not in the party's DNA.

It's an odd reversal, if you think about it. The Republicans used to be the party of the First Methodist Church, and the Democrats of the great unwashed. Now the Republicans are the hellions, and the Democrats are the ones you want to bring home to mother. The G.O.P. is making such inroads among younger voters for the same reason that Fox News is making inroads among younger viewers. We live in a culture that values brazen certainty and loud conviction, no matter how wrongheaded. Pity the Democrats, stuck with the wrong set of virtues.

This whole--Democrats are losing because they're too nice--trope may be the most self-destructive of the many problems facing today's Democratic Party. Mr. Traub approaches the truth here but can't quite grasp it: the GOP was the nice party for the many years when it refused to enunciate its core principles. Any party without ideas is "nice" in the eyes of the other side. Hell, they're wonderful, because they are no threat. The most they can do is toss up procedural roadblocks to slow the party of ideas.

But since the collapse of big government liberalism in the late '70s and the ensuing victory of the intensely ideological Ronald Reagan, Democrats have been devoid of any ideas, except for when they retreat to bad ones, like the Hillarycare health plan. Until they manage to come up with a new set of ideas or return to an unambivalent belief in a more-socialized America, they are going to suffer from the kind of self-pity that Mr. Traub bathes in here and that characterized conservatives during their decades in the wilderness. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 5, 2003 7:38 AM