[Mb-civic] Vision Check for the Democrats - E. J. Dionne - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Vision Check for the Democrats

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, November 8, 2005; Page A19

Democrats are obsessed with visions, messages, programs and narratives. 
The party's leaders, thinkers and consultants have held a slew of 
meetings and are said to be close to a statement of hopes and 
principles. They are determined to apply the tactical lessons Newt 
Gingrich taught when he offered a Contract With America in 1994. There 
is a collective rush to the nearest thesaurus as Democrats consider a 
Compact With America and a Covenant With America. A Bargain or even a 
Concordat can't be far behind. Personally, I'm still fond of the word 
Deal (as in "Square," "New" and "Fair"), but I guess that word is just 
too 20th century.

Journalists, of course, are the last people who have any right to poke 
fun at this Democratic endeavor. Indulging the desire to appear 
nonpartisan, most news stories regularly balance reports about actual 
Republican disasters and cratering poll numbers with assertions that 
voters have no idea what Democrats stand for. In going Big Picture, the 
Democrats are simply responding to critics and the relentless pressure 
of the Conventional Wisdom.

The Conventional Wisdom that Republicans are clear about what they 
believe deserves to be challenged. Yes, Republicans are consistent in 
their slogans -- low taxes, small government, personal freedom, 
traditional values. Yet except for their obsession with tax cuts, 
Republicans are certainly not consistent in their opposition to big 
government (witness government spending levels during the Bush years) 
and their commitment to personal freedom is expressed far more in an 
opposition to the regulation of corporate than of personal behavior.

But the Democrats will never fully expose the Republicans' 
contradictions without a clear -- forgive me -- vision of their own, and 
that's why this business about compacts and covenants could yet be 
constructive.

Consider this vision statement: "The issue of government has always been 
whether individual men and women will have to serve some system of 
government of economics -- or whether a system of government and 
economics exists to serve individual men and women."

The words are Franklin D. Roosevelt's from his 1932 speech to the 
Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, FDR's boldest statement of purpose 
before he was elected. Roosevelt's point was that while powerful groups 
often claim to oppose a strong government role in the nation's economic 
life, they almost always seek government's protection for their own 
interests. Government's task, Roosevelt argued, was to intervene "not to 
hamper individualism but to protect it" by helping the less powerful 
confront economic difficulties and abuses of the system by the powerful.

Whatever message Democrats come up with, they will continue to lose 
ground and be untrue to what's best in their tradition if they fail to 
stand up for this affirmative government role in enhancing both 
individual liberty and self-sufficiency. The Democratic theme-meisters 
might usefully consult the just-published issue of the Washington 
Monthly, in which editor Paul Glastris and his colleagues show how 
active government can advance the causes of "choice and individual 
control" in a technological economy.

As the magazine argues, it takes a government to fight identity theft, 
to give parents more power over the television programming that comes 
into their homes, to protect individuals from hidden credit card 
charges, to offer employees more control over the balance between their 
work and family lives. The list is not exhaustive, but it is 
instructive. It shows that government rules and regulations, properly 
conceived, can tilt the scales within a competitive economy toward 
individual rights. Citizens should have rights within the political 
sphere, but consumers and employees should also have rights in the 
economic sphere.

The Democratic vision debate cannot be only about rights. The other 
great challenge to the conservative status quo must focus on the 
obligations of citizens to their communities and their country, and the 
unfair ways in which the burdens of service and citizenship are now 
being borne. It should be disturbing to liberals and Democrats that they 
have not only been losing arguments over who will stand up for liberty 
but also over which side will nurture the values of community and 
patriotism.

It would be a shame if the Democrats' quest for something to say 
produced only focus-group-driven sloganeering and mush. There is at 
least a chance that it could become a way for the party to connect its 
past with its present. And Democrats might figure out how to speak to 
the public's dawning sense that the ideas of those now in charge are so 
shot through with inconsistencies that our current leaders can neither 
govern effectively nor keep their promises.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/07/AR2005110701294.html
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