Wimp Effect

Via Atrios, I discovered a Nation article that details the risk aversion and reflexive hawkishness of the Washington Democratic foreign policy establishment. It is both baffling and saddening.

One can't help but imagine that, at root, the reason behind this hawkishness is that both the left and right are trapped in worldviews informed by fundamental misconceptions of what constitutes strength, and how one comes to be regarded as strong. But while the Nation article is as close to a clear-eyed exploration of why Democrats like Biden and Hillary feel a need to back up Bush on the Iraq war, it seems to have internalized some of the habits of mind that are responsible for the Democrats' weakness.

Notice how the author, Ari Berman, describes Holbrooke's bizarre declaration that "anything less than an invasion of Iraq would undermine international law" as a tack to the right of Bush. It doesn't seem like much, but this little use of right represents assumptions about right and left that are a major part of why Democrats don't get elected president unless the economy is in the pooper and times are relatively peaceful. That little use of "right" represents the assumption, held instinctively by millions of Americans, that Democrats are a bunch of limpwristed sissies who run away from a punch.

There is nothing so dangerous for a presidential candidate to be seen as a wimp. It is a guarantee of failure.

Elected Democrats are becoming an endangered species because they take these received assumptions, that being strong means adopting a strong, or right-wing, or Republican position on foreign policy. It's clear that the American people don't want a pacifist as their Commander in Chief or head of State, but it's equally clear that holding positions that are both against one's conscience and mindlessly warlike is no kind of prescription for gaining the public's trust. Democrats need to stop assuming a Republican's views of strength.

Strength is not invading a country that isn't a threat to the US, getting embroiled in a guerilla war, spending billions of dollars, and inviting a civil war and/or the strengthening of a far more dangerous and powerful country next door. Moreover, strength is not agreeing with the parties that started this war at all costs because one is afraid of being called a chicken.

The position that the "Strategic Class", as Berman calls them, has staked out has not ensured that a single Democrat will be regarded with respect. It has ensured that the war begin just as planned, and that any attempt of establishment Democrats to reflect the will of the people, who are now largely in favor of a pull-out from Iraq and will continue to be so until it is done, will be seen as flip-flopping and pandering, those two being signs of weakness as well.

If I were king for a day, I'd call for a pullout of 80% or so of our soldiers over the next year. And I'd have a conversation with the American people about the Iraq War. The American people need to know that the Iraq War was a mistake, that it was good for the terrorists and bad for us, and that the Bush administration is to blame. They need to know that the way to defeat terrorists is rarely to invade states and never to invade states who had nothing to do with those terrorists. The American people need to know, and we need to persuade them, that the assumptions the Bush administration has made about the War on Terrorism and the actions that have flowed from those assumptions, have hurt America.

I'm not sure who I read this from, but one of the blogosphere's more astute writers (or perhaps Rick Perlstein) had a comment about the DLC. The DLC (in addition to advising that major democratic weakness of fighting not to lose rather than fighting to win) look at the political future and assume every Republican strength and weakness and every Democratic strength and weakness are going to be the same into the future.

Part of the reason the Democratic establishment seems (and is) so reactive is because it has given up trying to persuade people. One of the strengths that the Republican party and its various organs, including talk radio, the think tanks, and cable news, has is that it has institutionalized persuasion. Persuasion is a tricky business, and it should probably not be left up to people like myself.

But here's something: way too many Americans believe in creationism. Way too many Americans think America was founded a Christian nation in the sense that George Washington was Pat Robertson to Jefferson's Jerry Falwell. Way too many Americans think that gays are ruining marriage. People aren't ignorant by accident- something happened to make them like that. Instead of shrugging and saying, sure, lotsa people believe in intelligent design and wouldn't it be arrogant not to pretend this ignorance was embarrassing, as the otherwise sharp Matthew Yglesias has been known to do, how about somebody try to inform the public.

Before anyone begins to assume my recommendation to a politican running for office is to run as a full-throated secularist, I think the task of disabusing Americans of backward notions is the duty of people in think tanks, on blogs, on the radio, and on television. Politicians need to be courageous, but you rarely hear a conservative politician say something that hasn't been anticipated by conservative talk show hosts or writers. This is why a figure like Jon Stewart is so important. Like Bill O'Reilly, he gets to stand up there and speak for himself rather than a party or a movement as such. He gets to attack the idiocy of opposing gay marriage. He's funny, goofy, smart and decent. He has his own show.

People like hearing common sense. What people have been hearing for years, on radio and television etc., is that common sense is Republican common sense. I.e. The poor are poor because they're lazy failures; social programs = communism/welfare queens; the best way to respond to jihadist terrorism is to attack any available Muslim or Arab; treating people who aren't like us with respect is political correctness; feminists are out to cut off your dick.

What we need is Democratic common sense, like: We need universal health insurance- not only will it be fairer, but cheaper; If two dudes marrying eachother hundreds of miles away is enough to ruin your marriage, your marriage is already screwed; War ought to be a last resort- it wasn't with Iraq, and what happened- the guy didn't have any WMDs; The Republican party is the party of the rich and selfish; Equal rights are never special rights (corollary: hate crime laws will prosecute black guys who beat up white guys, gays who beat up heteros, and atheists who beat up Christians); Torture is immoral, indefensible, anathema to every major religion, and it doesn't work; "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

These aren't superjumbos as such, but Democrats remain, in the popular imagination, whackos and/or weak. Staking out distinctively non-Republican positions removes the perception of weakness, and expressing one's beliefs in a common-sense, non-ideological, non-wonky way makes one appear sane. The more Democrats can get their views out there like this, the more Democrats there will be. People change. Thank goodness.