The Cheating Heart of the Democratic Party
jose soplar
By Paul Mirengoff
FrontPageMagazine.com | November 26, 2002
In 1991, candidate Bill Clinton was asked how he would have voted on
the resolution to go to war with Iraq. He replied that he would have
voted for the resolution if the vote was going to be close, but
thought that the opposition had the better arguments. This remarkable
pronouncement set the stage for more than a decade of Democratic
cynicism that culminated this year when Senate Democrats (with the
exception of Paul Wellstone) decided to vote for another Gulf War
resolution only if the vote in their Senate race was going to be
close. In between these defining votes, we witnessed Al Gore changing
his public position on whether we should go to war with Iraq, and
whether regime change in 1991 would have been a good thing, on what at
times seemed like a monthly basis.
To those of us who remember the bipartisan foreign policy of the first
half of the Cold War and the passionate positions taken by Reaganites
and McGovernites during the second half, this lack of seriousness over
issues of war and peace seems like something new. It is as if the
traditional rule for determining whether to send American troops into
harm's way – whether the national interest in doing so outweighs the
cost in blood and treasure – no longer applies to Democratic
politicians. Nor is this the only traditional rule that contemporary
Democratic politicians feel entitled to abrogate. One could also cite
immigration rules, the rules against perjury, the rules governing
elections, and, in light of the Wellstone memorial rally, the rules of
decorum.
In short, key Democratic leaders now regard issues and rules not as
serious things in themselves, but as playthings to be manipulated
almost without limit for political purposes. It is not so much that
the Democrats try to hide the ball; most politicians do that. Rather,
for the likes of Clinton and Gore, it is not clear that there is any
ball to hide.
But why should this new form of cynicism appear just now, and why
primarily among Democrats? I believe the answer to the first
question lies in the modern (or actually the post-modern) intellectual
climate. The essentially frivolous manner in which Clinton and Gore
approach vital issues has clear parallels in current intellectual and
academic thought. In the post-modern intellectual climate, "texts"
(e.g., great literature, philosophy, and even laws and judicial
opinions) are not valued in their own right, but rather exist to be
appropriated by creative "scholars" for whatever purposes they see
fit. Everything is up for grabs. The only limit on valid
interpretation is the imagination, and political correctness quotient,
of the interpreter. In this world, it becomes possible for
politicians to ask what "the meaning of ‘is' is." And once that point
is reached, it becomes possible to suggest that whether one should
vote to go to war does not necessarily depend on who has the better
arguments.
Why has this tendency surfaced largely among Democrats? One plausible
answer is that Democrats are more closely linked than Republicans with
academia, the true home of post-modernism. However, while Clinton and
Gore undoubtedly have "breathed the air" of post-modernism, so too
have many Republican politicians–it is all around us.
A better explanation is that necessity is the mother of invention.
After 1964 and before 1992, the Democrats lost five of six
presidential elections, including three landslides. Their positions
had become so unpopular that the term "liberal" became an epithet of
derision. The party's options were to change its core beliefs or to
disguise them. Opting largely for the latter alternative, it needed
and found leaders who were particularly skillful in the art of
deception.
But this deception could only be tried if the Democrats were confident
of getting away with it. And only the Democrats could have that
confidence. First, only Democrats could be confident that the
overwhelmingly liberal media would, by-and-large, give them a pass.
More fundamentally, only Democrats could be confident that their core
constituencies would do so too.
The Democratic Party contains at least two core constituencies –
African-Americans and feminists – whose leaders view rules as
instruments of their oppression and barriers to their advancement. In
fact, the centerpiece of much modern civil rights employment
litigation is the attack on neutral rules that disproportionately
exclude African Americans from a particular job. Examples include
tests, educational requirements, and even the requirement that an
employee not have been convicted of a crime. Similarly, what is the
demand for affirmative action other than a demand that the normal
rules for selecting employees based on merit be ignored to the extent
that they interfere with desired outcomes? And the disregard of
leading feminists for the basic rules of scholarship is apparent in
the notoriously shoddy "feminist scholarship" that has been exposed by
Christina Hoff Sommers and others.
The common thread here is something akin to cheating. No wonder these
core groups, and the sophisticates who believe that rules exist only
to be deconstructed, admired Clinton's intellectual gyrations on key
issues and now tolerate Gore's less supple efforts.
By contrast, the Republican party is a "values" party, a party of
churchgoers. While these constituents can be hypocrites in individual
cases (as Hollywood endlessly reminds us), collectively the Republican
constituencies are far less likely to tolerate cheating and dishonesty
among their leaders. This, more than a lack of fortitude, may explain
why a Gingrich, a Livingston, and even a Nixon will step aside,
whereas a Clinton will hang tough. Fortunately, though, the Democrats
may finally be paying a price for their "post-modernism." If so, this
may prove to be the most enduring benefit conferred by this year's
election.
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