Coherence

Ed Kilgore, in the course of a long discussion, refers rather derisively to the idea that "some Democrats sincerely believe that their party's acceptance of, say, a private-sector role in health care or a legitimate U.S. national security role in the Middle East, leaves voters with no real choice and no real excitement over the outcome." Since that somewhat resembles a straw man version of one thing I argue in my book, I thought I might as well put forward a non-straw version of it.

The argument I would make on this score is simply that your policies need to bear some relationship in scale to your message. If you want to go to the voters with the idea that George W. Bush's plan for endless war in Iraq is a disaster, then your Iraq policy shouldn't involve the war in Iraq continuing endlessly on a slightly smaller scale. That's not to say that the parties need to articulate Big Differences on all the issues -- the current iteration of Bush's North Korea policy is pretty sound, and I saw Ed Schultz on TV the other day getting into trouble precisely because he wanted to pretend he had some big disagreement with it when really it would be smarter to just admit that Bush belatedly came around to the right idea and argue about something else.

But when you do want to articulate Big Differences, you need to spell that out. In particular, I take it that the Democratic nominee in 2008 is going to want to argue that she or he would rectify the disastrous state of America's foreign policy whereas the Republican nominee would not. But given that George W. Bush won't actually be running for office, to make that argument plausible you need to argue that there is some broad, systematic, ideological disagreement between the parties on foreign policy. The emphasis on incompetence made sense as a 2004 election message, but Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani both have much stronger claims to managerial expertise than do Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. If you want to argue for Clinton or Obama, you need to argue on the basis of their ideas and that means you need to articulate what the difference is in a reasonably clear way.

Comments

It's a mistake to say that systemic differences can be resolved to simply differences in ideas. Frankly, if there's a more amorphous, useless word in political discussions than "ideas," I'm not sure what it is. For a sufficient level of abstraction--"protect American interests"--all the candidates agree on the motivating idea.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | October 18, 2007 2:28 PM

Brilliant as usual, Matt.

If you want to argue for Clinton or Obama, you need to argue on the basis of their ideas and that means you need to articulate what the difference is in a reasonably clear way.

I would argue that ideology is the main reason to vote for Edwards--he seems to understand this point, whereas Clinton and Obama don't view it as politically necessary to stake a position that has the required magnitude of opposition to the Giuliani/Romney position in order for their critique of Giuliani/Romney to be coherent.

I guess you're just writing off Edwards.

Posted by Marshall | October 18, 2007 2:29 PM

For the record, I was not addressing MY's specific argument (with which I largely agree), much less creating a straw-man version of it. The point I was making in the quote (and as Matt indicated, it's part of a much larger discussion of partisanship and ideology) was simply that ideological differentiation is not the only source of partisan differentiation, and that the reflexive belief of some Democrats that moving as far away from Republican positions as possible is the key to winning elections is flawed.

I couldn't agree more with Matt's basic point that partisan differentiation on the basis of big, broad, understandable goals, rather than narrow policy positions, or soon-to-be-irrelevant arguments about "competence," is essential politically, and more importantly, in terms of governance once you win.

Ed Kilgore

Posted by Ed Kilgore | October 18, 2007 2:38 PM

I think Matt is right, but I would go further. You have to start by figuring out what the ideal policy is, and then figure out how to get us closest to that ideal.

The ideal policy in Iraq is to get every American servicemember out of there so that we are no longer a target for insurgents and terrorists. The ideal policy in health care is to cover everyone without spending the additional money to pay middlemen, who add nothing constructive.

So you start there. Now, is it possible that you end up somewhere short of your goal? Sure. But the problem with the DLC types, fundamentally, is that they either just like imperialism and giving taxpayer money to big business interests, or they at least think that those things makes one more electable. So for them, the ideal is continued deaths of American servicemembers and continued funneling of billions of dollars of our money to corporate interests. So they want to set those things as the goal, and then the compromise will be that we give up any pullout of Iraq or universal coverage at all.

Posted by Dilan Esper | October 18, 2007 2:40 PM

Matt basically gets this right, but the problem is deeper than that.

Kilgore also gets it wrong because he doesn't address the underlying problem either.

The underlying problem is that the people running this country - Democrat and Republican - both basically adhere to the same underlying notions about the state, and especially foreign policy expressions of the state.

They may differ on things like health care, government intervention (minimally), labor and the like, but in matters of the state and state power both domestically and internationally, there is VERY little difference between the parties.

Because the underlying issue is: politicians vs the people. And politicians of both parties - or ANY party - will ALWAYS come down in favor of power for politicians vs power to the people.

And this has obvious consequences: political influence by special interest groups like the military-industrial complex or the oil companies or the Israel Lobby, bribes masquerading as campaign contributions, corruption in general.

The basic notion of democracy in the West is that an informed and motivated population can keep such things in check via educating themselves on how things work, assessing the quality of state representatives, and voting.

Well - it doesn't work. And the US is a prime, textbook example of how and why it doesn't work.

And the current US Congress and Administration couldn't be a more practical, clear example of this.

And it's not going to get better until the US population gets better - and I don't see any signs that is happening or in fact ever will happen (short of some massive AI discovery replacing the current educational system).

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 18, 2007 6:40 PM

This wouldn't be the same Ed Kilgore who repeatedly decries the characterization of DLC'ers carrying the water for their corporate masters and neocon leaders?

Posted by della Rovere | October 18, 2007 6:46 PM

I think Matt is implying that we may not hear Hillary and (quite possibly) Obama articulating broad, systematic, ideological disagreements with the Republican presidential candidate on issues such as the War on Iraq. One reason we won't hear these ideological distinctions is the influence of groups such as the DLC, which emphasizes "triangulation" over partisan, ideological disputes. The ideology of the DLC, such as it is, involves avoiding broad, systematic, ideological disagreements with Republicans. This might as well be part of the DLC creedo.

I am perfectly willing to entertain the notion that triangulation was a useful governing philosophy in the early-90's, when the country was arguably tired of 40 years of Democratic Congressional rule and Gingrich-style conservatism was ascendent. In the wake of Bushism, of course, triangulation is suicide. Unlike the 90's, there isn't a single Republican policy worth stealing. The country hates this president, hates Republicans, and hates Republican ideology and policies. Therefore, "Republican Lite" is a bad idea on its face. And yet triangulation is exactly what Ed Kilgore's organization advocates.

Don't get me wrong, I like Ed. I think he's a good debater and reasonable guy on a personal level. But that doesn't change the fact that his organization is a toxic presence in Democratic politics.

Posted by owenz | October 18, 2007 9:54 PM