July 31, 2004
RUNNING FROM WHAT YOU ARE:
Courting 'the People': To Cross Ideological Blocs, Kerry Says Little (George F. Will, July 30, 2004, Washington Post)
The process of picking presidential nominees has been democratized. The proliferation of primaries has removed the process from the supposedly unclean hands of elected officials and party bosses. Bosses were always important and often decisive when they had machines to boss -- until about 40 years ago. As recently as the late 1960s, the governor of Pennsylvania controlled 40,000 patronage jobs. Twenty years later there were 2,000.Today it is possible for remarkably few voters -- representing only themselves, unlike the officeholders and bosses of the bad old days -- to be decisive. John Kerry won the nomination in a sprint that lasted 29 days -- from the Iowa caucuses to the Wisconsin primary. Effectively, he was picked by the approximately 135,000 people -- 0.06 percent of Americans of voting age -- who supported him in Iowa and New Hampshire.
The convention actually was a useful laying-on of hands -- the uniquely clean hands of the great unwashed, "the people" from around the nation. Or at least a fair sampling of the current composition of the activist base of the world's oldest party. For example, about one in 10 delegates was a teacher, including 415 members of the two big teachers unions.
Kerry's platform is a 37-page flinch. It turns a perpetual chimera, "energy independence," into a promise, but it flinches from suggesting a tax on gasoline consumption or drilling anywhere that might annoy Democrats, which means . . . anywhere. His platform advocates "rigorous new incentives and tests for new teachers." Notice: only new teachers. Of today's teacher-certification tests, the Wall Street Journal reports that "someone with about a 10th-grade education could pass them."
George W. Bush's scarlet sin against the environment supposedly was his turn away from the Kyoto agreement on global warming, by which the world agreed that Americans should pay most of the costs. But the two paragraphs that Kerry's platform devotes to "[i]nternational leadership to protect the global environment" mentions neither "global warming" nor Kyoto.
That is how a Massachusetts Democrat runs for president when he knows that four of the past five Democrats elected president were from Southern or border states (including Harry Truman from Missouri).
The need to hide core Democratic beliefs from the general public is suggestive of liberalism's demise. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 31, 2004 9:56 AM
I don't know why the Dem platform didn't emphasize alternative energy more. This seems like the perfect time to push for it:
*The US is currently involved in an oil-driven war in the Middle East, with the promise of more to come.
*It would be easy to compare and contrast the costs of maintaining quasi-stability in the Middle East against the costs of developing alternative energy sources. With the costs of Desert Shield/Desert Storm being fully quantifiable, the bulk of current conflict costs being known, and the cost of various alternative energy systems being very well known, we now have all the necessary data points for a good cost/benefit analysis, which was largely speculative the last time there was a big alternative energy push, during the Carter administration.
*Gas prices are nominally high, which would give Congress political cover to invest in alt. energy research.
*President Bush himself is pushing alt. energy, at least giving it lip service. Like welfare reform, once both sides of the political spectrum pick up an idea, it becomes possible to fund it.
*This seems like an issue where the Dems could very credibly claim that although it's an idea with bi-partisan support, the Dems are better qualified to manage and implement it.
Posted by: Michael " 'H' Nation" Herdegen at July 31, 2004 11:59 AMExcept that then they'd have to pass W's plan.
Posted by: oj at July 31, 2004 12:07 PMSure, but if it occurs under President Kerry, what do they care ?
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at July 31, 2004 2:49 PMIn a speech that promised to double the number of special forces troops and get France to cooperate, there wasn't room for the energy independence fantasy.
Posted by: David Cohen at July 31, 2004 9:17 PMWe aren't going to become energy indepemdent by drilling in ANWR. That can only buy us some time, and it is worthwhile doing for that purpose. There is no energy future without nuclear (nuculur) power. Let's start getting the citizenry used to that idea.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at August 1, 2004 1:23 PMDavid:
It's not a fantasy, it's a question of how much we're willing to pay to achieve it.
So far, not much.