Some Interesting Ideas
The Washington Post has an article that is directly on point to my earlier post about the problem the Democrats will have if they veer left. There are some people in the party who actually appear to be able to see that there is a problem.
Though you'd never know it from surfing the Internet, there exists in the Democratic Party a substantial body of politicians and policymakers who believe the U.S. mission in Iraq must be sustained until it succeeds; who want to intensify American attempts to spread democracy in the greater Middle East; and who think that the Army needs to be expanded to fight a long war against Islamic extremism.
Their problem isn't only that some people (mostly Republicans and independents) don't believe they exist. Or that the flamers at MoveOn.org would expel them from the party if that were possible. They also face the formidable task of rescuing what they believe is a quintessentially Democratic policy agenda from the wreckage of the Bush administration, so that a future president can do it right.
Now, just the information in the article that provides a thumbnail sketch of the group's proposals isn't a lot to go on, but there are a few things these folks are proposing that actually make sense. Some others I disagree with.
This month they published a fascinating book that lays out what the foreign policy of a winning campaign by one of those Democrats — or perhaps Hillary Clinton — could look like. Sponsored by the Progressive Policy Institute, which is an outgrowth of the Clinton-friendly Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), it's called "With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty."
Like most of its authors, editor Will Marshall, a DLC founder who now heads the policy institute, sees himself as reviving the foreign policy of Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy, who formulated the Democratic response to the totalitarian menace of communism. Jihadism, Marshall says, requires a similar exercise of intellectual muscle. "Democrats have always been at our best when we have defended democratic values against illiberal ideologies," Marshall told me last week. "When we do that we can appeal to a broader public, not only at home but globally."
The article says many of these people are former mid-level functionaries from the Clinton administration. So I have no idea how much of this is real, as opposed to just talk, but it does show that someone is thinking beyond knee-jerk attacks on all things Bush. That's a good sign one way or the other for the Democrats.
By Black Jack, Monday, 22 May , 2006 @ 9:51 am
Marshall says, “Democrats have always been at our best when we have defended democratic values against illiberal ideologies,”
Far from being at their best now, a good case can be made Democrats are at their worst because they’ve strayed so far from their liberal foundations. Just as there’s nothing stock about a stock car, there’s nothing liberal about the Democrat Party.
It has become just another tool of the Left, not unlike the UN, the ACLU, NOW, the Sierra Club, PETA, and most other tax exempt “progressive” front organizations, pretending to be one thing, but in reality all marching to the same collectivist drumbeat.
By Gaius, Monday, 22 May , 2006 @ 10:10 am
If they actually went back to being liberal, they’d be better off. You’re quite right, they are not in any way liberal at the moment.
By jpe, Monday, 22 May , 2006 @ 11:18 am
They’re quite Liberal; the influence of PETA and the Sierra Club is pretty minimal; and NOW and the ACLU are classically Liberal orgs.
By Gaius, Monday, 22 May , 2006 @ 11:33 am
Not by a long shot, jpe