Frank’s Case Book

Charity compels us to feel a genuine sympathy for Democratic Senate Leader Tom Daschle. He’s had a rough time of it recently. Last year his office was sent an anthrax-laden envelope that could have killed or seriously sickened members of his staff or the Senator himself. In early 2000, Daschle managed to gain control of the Senate for the Democrats by inducing Vermont Republican Senator Jim Jeffords to become an independent and vote with the Democrats for organizational purposes. Unfortunately for Daschle, Democratic Senate control lasted less than two years, as Republicans regained the majority in the Senate and extended their majority in House in the 2002 mid-term elections.

Daschle has long been criticized by Conservative pundits and commentators, but after the 2002 elections he was also roundly criticized by the Left for his failed leadership. Given a sluggish economy, Democrats had high hopes of maintaining and extending their hold on the Senate and re-taking the House. No wonder Daschle feels beleaguered. One receives the impression that Daschle feels like Senator Morris Udall who having lost in a primary to Jimmy Carter is reported to have said, “The people have spoken — the bastards.” [1]

What else can explain Dachle’s pouting and whining performance last week when he complained that criticism from Conservative talk show hosts was inducing threats on him and his family? Daschle specifically lashed out at Rush Limbaugh for calling him — now prepare your self — an “obstructionist.” Daschle complained that when he was labeled an obstructionist, “There was a corresponding, a very significant increase in the number of issues that my family and I had to deal with. And I worry about that.” Surely Daschle does not believe that the use of this pejorative induces violence, or he would not have used the same precise term himself to label his Republican adversaries.

It was not like Alec Baldwin who on national television said “We should go to Washington and stone Henry Hyde to death… And then we should go to his house and kill his family.” Baldwin was surely jesting, but these remarks were far more irresponsible than characterizing someone has an “obstructionist.”

Politics has always been filled with lively and colorful invective. Perhaps the British are the most adept at the quick insulting witticism. Of one opponent, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli once remarked, “The right honorable gentleman is reminiscent of a poker. The only difference is that a poker gives off the occasional signs of warmth.” Of another he said, “A crafty and lecherous old hypocrite whose very statue seems to gloat on the wenches as they walk the States House Yard.” It is too bad no one made a similarly clever observation during the Clinton perjury scandals.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was the recipient of many insults. She was labeled as the “Attila the Hen” by MP Clement Freud; the “Immaculate Misconception” by MP Norman St John-Stevas; and a “half-mad old bag lady” by MP Tony Banks. Reagan also had is poetically proficient detractors. Gore Vidal once described President Ronald Reagan as “a triumph of the embalmers art.” The Democratic Party used to have a cartoon at its web site showing George Bush pushing a elderly lady in a wheel chair down stairs. It was not particularly clever, but certainly not unexpected. [2]

Politics requires self-possession and a skin as thick as an elephant’s. Daschle seems to have forgotten how to laugh at himself and lost the ability to reconcile himself to both political victory and defeat. Perhaps Rush Limbaugh will mercifully ease up on Daschle. As Disraeli once said of another political opponent, “Debating against him is no fun, say something insulting and he looks at you like a whipped dog.”

[1] This quote is also attributed to Dick Tuck who lost a legislative race in California.
[2] Insult Monger.

The election returns last Tuesday for the Republicans were statistically remarkable and they follow a statistically remarkable election in 2000. Given the state of the economy in 2000, models of election outcomes constructed by political scientists predicted that Vice-President Al Gore would win the election with 56 percent of the vote. Perhaps Gore was a particularly inept and unattractive presidential candidate. Perhaps Gore was just too burdened with the Clinton scandals. Nonetheless, the 2000 presidential election should not have even been close and Bush eked out a victory.

Traditionally, the president’s party looses in the Congressional elections two years after the presidential election. Sometimes they loose big, sometimes they loose small, but the president’s party rarely wins Congressional seats. Last week, the Republicans bucked this historical trend and gained a few seats in the House. Before this last election, no president flipped the Senate to his party. Last week, President George W. Bush and the Republicans did this. All this is even more remarkable given the fact the electorate is pretty well evenly split ideologically.

Perhaps Bush was just the fortunate recipient of the natural tendency of Americans to rally around the president in times of war. However, after a series of opportune elections that defy statistical tendencies, it is time to concede that the supposedly dim witted president has managed to outwit the politically sophisticated Democrats.

After the Republicans swept into control of the House of Representatives in the 1994 elections under Newt Gingrich, Republicans read too much into the results. There was not a major ideological shift. The electorate was just fed up with the Clinton Administration’s first two years. Republicans started talking about a new American Revolution, large reductions in the size of government, and started portraying themselves as radicals. Americans are too sated to be radicals and re-elected Clinton in 1996.

No matter how unprecedented and successful for Republicans, last Tuesday did not represent a sea change in ideology. It was the country saying that in times of war, it does not want divided ineffectual government. The country simply gave Bush a tentative free hand to see what he could accomplish.

To his credit, Bush sent out a memorandum to Republicans not to gloat. Bush has accumulated substantial political capital. He must be willing to use it, but use it wisely. Importantly he can get his judicial nominees to the floor of the Senate, but he would be wise to avoid ideological lightening rods, and push through a series of solidly Conservative nominees. He can push through tax cuts, but would be wise to do so in the context of fiscal spending discipline.

In some ways, the Democrats lost seats in the House and lost the Senate altogether, less because of ideology and more because they didn’t seem serious. Democrats managed to make a last minute substitution of Frank Lautenberg for the politically flagging Senator Robert Torricelli in apparent violation of the letter of election law in New Jersey. Democrats won the Senate seat handily, but for much of the country Democrats seem more interested in retaining power than playing by the rules. This view of Democrats was reinforced in Minnesota, when a memorial service for Senator Wellstone, who had died tragically in a plane crash, turned into a highly partisan political rally. Finally, Democratic Chairman Terry McAuliffe’s Ahab-like puerile efforts to unseat Jeb Bush in Florida diverted necessary resources from races that Democrats had a better chance of winning. The potential embarrassment of President George Bush was more important than helping other Democratic candidates in other states.

The Republican and Democratic Party web sites on November 9, 2002 provide a metaphor for the seriousness of the parties. The lead story at the Republican site was “Bush Hails Unanimous Passage of Security Council Resolution on Iraq.” The Democratic site’s lead story is that “SEC Chair Harvey Pitt Resigns in Wake of Scandals.” While the Republicans are concerned about war and peace, Democrats are worried about the chairmanship of the Securities and Exchange Commission. That issue surely has its place, but it seems rather anemic as a rallying cry.

When the Republicans faired poorly in the 1998 elections, I wrote:

“If anything, Republicans should learn that rather than just trying to slide to an election victory, they must articulate their vision. Sometimes, such forthrightness will lose, sometimes it will win, but half-hearted, timid Republicans will inevitably lose.”

The same advice applies to Democrats. They must have a vision beyond mere political victory. Democrats can now decide if they wish to tact to the Left, to be a “choice not an echo.” They will likely do so with Representative Nancy Pelosi as the House Minority Leader. If Pelosi leads the Democratic Party to the Left, particularly with regard to national security issues, they may be true to their principles, but the Democrats will spend some time in the political wilderness. That is not necessarilly a bad thing for Democrats in the long run.

Or Democrats could choose to follow the moderate Democratic route, the route outlined by the Democratic Leadership Council. After all, when Democrats Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton ran as moderates they won the presidency. Liberal candidates, George McGovern, Walter Mondale, and Michael Dukakis lost. Moderate Democrats are closer to sharing the mood and tempermant of the country.

Either choice is possible and defensible. The Democrats must decide who they are and what they stand for. Whatever they decide, Democrats need to be serious.

Ours is sometimes an age that seeks to avoid honest confrontations. Edges are blurred, fine distinctions overlooked, and disagreements avoided. Bi-partisanship has come to mean pleasant accommodation, rather then unprincipled compromise. Principles have sharp, honed edges, they incorporate important distinctions, and they compel us, at times, to disagree noisily. There are times for compromises and splitting differences, but on important issues a healthy polity requires principled, forceful, and joyful partisanship. It is, therefore, with great sadness that we mark the untimely passing of the Senate’s most statistically partisan member, Paul Wellstone, of Minnesota.

The dictionary suggests that the defining quality of a partisan is that he is so biased that he cannot not weigh things equitably. This is far too narrow a definition. Partisanship can degenerate into blind allegiance, but in its highest form, partisanship implies fervently held beliefs and principles. Wellstone was one of the few true Liberals left in the Senate. He gladly advocated socialized health care, opposed President Bill Clinton’s welfare reform, avoided tax cuts he feared would hobble his vision of an energetic federal government, fought the moderating influences of the Democratic Leadership Council, voted against the Gulf War in 1991 and recently voted against authorizing President George W. Bush to use force against Saddam Hussein. While others hid behind labels of “moderate” or “progressive,” Wellstone was an unapologetic “Liberal” with a capital-L.

It is hard to know who will assume Wellstone’s place as the Liberal conscience for the Senate. Senator Edward Kennedy’s corpulence is too easy to use as metaphor for bloated government, Senator Jon Corzine of New Jersey is frankly too wealthy to possess the common populist touch, while Senator Hillary Clinton’s ambition is too unseemly. Perhaps, Tom Harkin of Iowa is the logical candidate; though he would be the first to concede that he lacks Wellstone’s cheerful energy.

Wellstone has often been called the first 1960’s radical in the US Senate. There is merit to this proposition, but he differed from many 1960s radicals in an important respect. He loved America and Americans. Wellstone sought to evoke the best in Americans. He did not become an angry scold. If America was not what he wanted it to be, Wellstone believed America was not living up to its ideals and its callings. It just needed to be nudged and cajoled into the right direction. Other radicals would see a problem like poverty in America and conclude that it was just one more piece of evidence that the United States was an irremediably despicable, racist, and evil country. Wellstone was so convinced of the goodness of average Americans, he believe they only needed to be introduced to a problem and their consciences would do the rest. He wanted a government as good as its people.

In a recent, television interview with Bill O’Reilly, Wellstone was asked about how much effort the United States should make in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. O’Reilly was concerned that the money would be squandered. Though Wellstone argued that it is in the US interest to provide economic aid to win the support of Afghani people, his first response was to remind us shamelessly that America was a great and “good” country. The United States should aid the Afghans, because it was simply the right thing to do. Geopolitics was important, but so is doing the right thing.

Like all people, Wellstone could not always live up to his highest aspirations. After promising constituents that he would only serve two terms, he was running for a third term in the Senate. The Left was upset with Wellstone because his stance against war with Iraq was not as outspoken in 2002 when running for re-election as it was in 1990 and for his vote for the “Defense of Marriage Act.” Jeff Taylor of the Left’s CounterPunch.com argued that Wellstone was “a case study to use when looking at the corrupting effects of hanging onto power for too long.” That’s far too harsh and reflects precisely the mean-spiritedness that gives partisanship a bad name.

It is only by disagreeing with intelligent and passionate adversaries that we can confidently hone our own arguments. For Conservatives, Paul Wellstone’s intelligent debates provided such an intellectual whetstone. Conservative arguments will be consequently duller. That’s not so bad for a PhD political scientist, who used to playfully point out that he scored less than 800 combined on his math and verbal SATs.

“Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.” — Baruch Spinoza.“Even peace can be purchased at too high a price.” —Benjamin Franklin.

Any president has an important advantage when he runs for re-election. He has the ability to use the trappings of office to lend prestige and credibility to his candidacy. No one in recent memory has squandered this advantage in such a spectacular way as Jimmy Carter. In 1980, he lost re-election in a landslide by 489 to 49 in the electoral vote and nearly 10 percentage points in the popular vote. Rarely has this country been so united than in its overwhelming and unequivocal rejection of Jimmy Carter’s presidential leadership.

Since then, Jimmy Carter has devoted his time to humanitarian efforts. Through the Carter Center, Carter pursues his vision of peace and health programs. Many believe that Carter is a model ex-president. A cynic might argue that the American people anticipated how good an ex-president Carter would become and in 1980 hastened him into that role.

Carter’s presence overseas has sometimes been salutary as he helped monitor multiparty elections, though sometimes he was disappointed as when his pal Sandinista Daniel Ortega lost in Nicaragua. Subsequent presidents have often been annoyed when Jimmy Carter self-righteously interjected himself into international affairs. Carter took it upon himself to urge the United Nations not to support the US efforts to expel Iraq from Kuwait. He once intervened on behalf of Yasser Arafat to persuade the Saudis to resume funding of Arafat after his ill-judgeded support of Hussein in the Gulf War. Even the Democratic Clinton Administration was so concerned about Carter’s undisciplined approach to Haiti that they sent Colin Powell with him, perhaps to act as adult supervision.

In something of a surprise decision, the Nobel Committee awarded the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize to Carter. In 1978, the Committee selected Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin for the peace prizes for the Camp David Accords that brought peace between Israel and Egypt. Carter helped broker the deal between the two leaders. That would have been a logical time to award Carter the peace prize.

This year, the prize had barely been awarded when the Nobel Committee Chairman Gunnar Berge explained that the selection of Carter “should be interpreted as a criticism of the line the current [Bush] administration has taken…” Like a petulant, ill-tempered child, Berge described the selection of Carter as “a kick in the leg to all that follow the same line as the United States.” A couple of committee members attempted to distance themselves from this interpretation, but according the BBC, Nobel Committee member, “Gunnar Staalsett said he fully supported the chairman’s remarks and agreed that the citation was indeed a criticism of Mr. Bush.”

By revealing the nature of the selection of Carter, members of the Nobel committee had incredibly devalued the peace prize and any indirect message they were trying to send. It was not what Carter had accomplished for peace that was being recognized, but rather Carter was being consciously exploited in a political disagreement with the policies of George Bush. If there were no George Bush, Jimmy Carter may very well have never won the peace prize.

The Nobel Committee has awarded the peace prize to a number of deserving individuals such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mother Therea. Nonetheless, the Nobel Committee over the last century has overlooked obvious candidates for the peace prize like Mahatma Gandhi, who expelled the British from India through non-violent civil disobedience, Alexander Solzhenitsyn who documented to the world the horror of Soviet prisons camps, or Armando Valladres, the Cuban poet who endured Cuban torture and imprisonment. While at the same time, the committee has made some rather conspicuously awful and immoral selections for the peace prize like Yasser Arafat, the Middle East’s enduring terrorist and Le Duc Tho. Tho was awarded a peace prize for the Paris Peace accords he violated at every opportunity. At least Tho refused the prize. There are some hypocrisies that are too large for even brutal communist leaders to swallow. Sometimes, awards are maliciously frivolous like the peace prize for United Nations Secretary Kofi Annan, who must have been Neville Chamberlain in a previous life.

The selection of Carter was not so much a mistake or error in judgment. He deserves recognition for sincere efforts at social justice. God knows he believes he deserves it. The decision was, however, a deliberate abuse of the award.

When President Jimmy Carter left office, the Cold War was still intense. The world had resolved itself to what John Kennedy had referred to as a “long twilight struggle” between the East and West. Nine years later, the Cold War ended with the economic collapse of the Soviet Union engineered by the relentless pressure of the next American president. This same American president demanded at the foot of the Berlin Wall of the Nobel peace prize winning Mikhail Gorbachev that he “tear down this wall.” However, the Nobel Prize Committee has its collective eyes too clouded with ideological cataracts to recognize that Ronald Reagan deserves the peace prize.

“Why was the U.S. Senate so fixated on protecting jobs instead of protecting lives? The U.S. Senate’s refusal to grant this president and future presidents the same power that four previous presidents have had will haunt the Democratic party worse than Marley’s ghost haunted Ebenezer Scrooge. Why did they put workers’ rights above American lives? Why did that 2002 U.S. Senate — on the one-year anniversary of 9/11 — with malice and forethought, deliberately weaken the powers of the president in time of war? And then why did this Senate — in all its puffed up vainglory — rear back and deliver the ultimate slap in the face of the president by not even having the decency to give him an up or down vote on his bill? This is unworthy of this great body. It is demeaning and ugly and over the top.” — Senator Zell Miller, Democrat Georgia, as cited by the Weekly Standard, October 7, 2002.

In Trenton, New Jersey, September 23, 2002, at a campaign stop, President George Bush urged the Senate to pass the Homeland Security Bill. Bush’s words:

“I asked the Congress to give me the flexibility necessary to be able to deal with the true threats of the 21st century by being able to move the right people to the right place at the right time, so we can better assure America were doing everything possible. The House has responded, but the Senate is more interested in special interests and not interested in the security of the American people. I will not accept a Department of Homeland Security that does not allow this president, and future presidents, to better keep the American people secure. And people are working hard in Washington to get it right in Washington, both Republicans and Democrats. See this isn’t a partisan issue. This is an American issue.”

Bush foolishly and unfairly used the phrase, “not interested in the security of the American people” which can legitimately be interpreted as suggesting that the Senate leadership does not care about security. However, the entire context of the speech also emphasizes bi-partisanship and that “both Republicans and Democrats” had been working together. The speech was certainly not has harsh as some have portrayed. Nonetheless, there was certainly enough ammunition for political hacks to venture onto the cable news programs to fret about Bush “politicizing” defense and security issues.

One would have expected that someone of the stature of Senate Leader Tom Daschle to have delegated this sort of rough-and-tumble argument to others. He could have at least expressed his dissatisfaction in his usual quiet manner. Perhaps it was so much more satisfying to delay Senate business and storm to the Senate floor to whine that Bush had politicized the debate. Rather than maintaining a detached dignity, Daschle exploded in am embarrassing fit of pique. The press painted a picture of the normally dormant Daschle erupting in a lava of complaint.

If this were not enough, Democratic, Senator Robert Byrd, who now that Senator Strom Thurmond is retiring is vying for the title of “Senator Who has Served Too Long,” rose to call Bush’s words “despicable.”

All of this, of course, occurred in a context when, former Vice-President Al Gore, who was perhaps setting himself up for a presidential bid in 2004, wondered out loud why Bush was asking for authorization to use military force “in high political season.” Are we to suppose that important issues should be dealt with only in odd-numbered years? Democratic Congressmen Jim McDermott, who recently visited Iraq, informed us that Bush would lie to get us into a war with Iraq. Others have suggested that Bush’s focus on Iraq it a cynical attempt to draw attention away from a weak economy. Or there are the old standby arguments that Bush wants to go to war with Iraq to help the oil industry or to complete in unfinished job of his father in the Persian Gulf War. The polarization of the debate occurred long ago.

Of course, politicians politicize. That is what they are supposed to do. That is what they should do. If Daschle did not want the Iraq issue to be politicized, why did he and others insist that the matter should be submitted to Congress for debate? You can only avoid politics if there is no room for disagreement.

The real problem is that the issues of attacking Iraq and going after Al Qaeda ought to be debated and argued about. It ought to be a political issue. Hashing out these decisions in public is what democracies are all about. There are principled reasons to question Bush’s approach to these issues. Perhaps we ought to resign ourselves to live with Saddam Hussein equipped with nuclear weapons and hope that our own weapons arsenal will act as a sufficient deterrent. Perhaps not. Let’s argue about it.

There are some Republicans who have misgivings, but Democrats appear to be burdened with the most doubts. Except for a few politicians like Senator Edward Kennedy and Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Democrats have been so worried about their prospects in the upcoming elections that their voices have been muted. Even formerly loud and articulate voices like Paul Wellstone’s have fallen almost silent. In 1990, he spoke out passionately against the Persian Gulf War. Now that he is involved in a tight election battle, his sense of moral indignation seems to have fled him.

Daschle is boxed in. The resulting sense of frustration is probably partially responsible for his eruption on the Senate floor. You can tell that like in 1990, in his heart of hearts, he wants to oppose Bush on Iraq, but he does not want to pay the political price, especially with control of the House and Senate in question. Daschle would rather change the argument to who is politicizing what. It is hard to understand why one would want to go into politics if not to debate the important issues of the day. What could be more important than the debate about war? For most Democrats, the Iraq issue is certainly not a “profile in courage.”