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Summer is rolling on and Labor Day is approaching. George Bush and Dick Cheney are now almost certainly the least popular President and Vice President team in American History. John McCain, the G.O.P. pretender to the thrown who once was feared as the only man with sufficient stature and integrity to convince the American public to renew the Republican lease on the White House, has departed center stage after a war vote malfunction stripped bare his passion for the Iraq surge, exposing him as unelectable in the Super Bowl of politics. Meanwhile the Democrats have a very strong field of presidential candidates. At least the media keeps telling us so, and given the quagmire the G.O.P. now seems stuck in, it’s hard to argue otherwise. That could be the reason why so few do argue otherwise, since conventional wisdom is much easier to repeat, but cracks that can fracture the veneer of Democratic complacency are hiding in plain sight, where many refuse to see.
For one thing, the Democratic Party still has not shaken its inferiority complex compared to the Republicans when it comes to National Security. If you doubt that you need look no further for evidence than the August 4th vote by 16 Democratic Senators and 41 Democratic House members to support Republican written legislation giving George Bush’s near laughing stock of an Attorney General constitutionally unsupported authority to spy on the international telephone calls and e-mails of Americans, in the name of keeping America safe from terrorists. Anyone who found that vote shocking simply has not been paying close enough attention to Democrats in Congress. Democrats may have found the courage to often unite against the Iraq War now that it is universally unpopular, but they still rattle sabers against Iran almost as well as the best Republican Chicken Hawks around. It is that knee jerk need to posture as tough as Republican that led a Democratic Senate to issue George Bush a blank check for war against Iraq in 2002. Very little has really changed.
Most of us indulge in speculative pop psychology from time to time, so this should be familiar terrain; how do most men who are insecure about their masculinity tend to act in public? Correct: with compensatory macho aggressiveness. Well it’s something like that with many of today’s Democratic politicians. They may truly believe in promoting Peace, and of course they are quick to let the Democratic Party’s anti-war leaning activist base know that about them, but then comes the overwhelming political urge to compensate for that expression of “softness “ with some hard edged rhetoric about protecting America from its enemies. Too many elected Democrats believe they still have to prove to many American voters that they are tough enough to keep them safe.
Why is that exactly? One part of the answer is sensible enough; Americans want to feel safe in a world that they believe poses real dangers to them. Democrats who ignore that sentiment do so at their own political risk when they run for national rather than state or local office. And of course Republicans, perceiving a likely political advantage, always do what they can to pump up the public fear factor. Today’s National Republican Party has evolved into a political machine that only runs well when it runs against a threat posed by enemies, both domestic and foreign but especially foreign. It almost doesn’t matter who the Republican candidate is, they get brand name marketed, and too few voters really question what’s actually inside that box.
The Republican brand name is identified with National Security, the military, and a strong defense. The Democratic brand name isn’t. So a Republican candidate for president who was an eager war evader, a man who had rarely even physically left this country let alone show any real grasp for understanding the world, managed to get enough votes (both real and imagined) to defeat two internationally seasoned Democratic Viet Nam veterans in back to back elections, the first in a time of relative peace, the second most definitely not.
Say whatever you will about them, but no man or woman who manages to get elected to Congress is truly objectively dumb. It takes some street smarts if nothing else to out maneuver other potential candidates from your own party to win the nomination to run for even the safest of seats, and no one wins a contested election without at least mastering the art of campaigning. Democrats running for national office (Congress included) know about the chinks in their Party’s brand name, and they always choose a plan to deal with it. If they are blessed with a progressive enough constituency that task is relatively straight forward and simple, but few have that luck, and no Democratic Presidential candidate either during the Cold War, or since 9/11, ever has had an easy ride in that regard. Time and time again they chose between one of two deeply flawed options to stay competitive.
Option A is to essentially cede Republicans the National Security advantage, while trying to still beat them by outscoring the G.O.P. on issues that play better to Democratic strengths. No candidate would publicly admit to that, just like none would admit that they plan to virtually write off any region of the nation when it comes to allocating sufficient campaign resources at the beginning of a campaign, but it still happens. Option B is a significantly different variant employed by other Democrats that essentially depends on a strategy of mimicking Republicans (Democrats using this option should not be confused with the small group of hard core Democratic hawks who really do have deeply engrained identical views on National Security issues as most of today’s National Republicans – though of course those using this option go out of their way to sow that very confusion). It covers most of the “sound tough” crowd I referred to above. At base it’s a form of camouflage. Democrats employing it hope that if they too use tough rhetoric that sounds similar enough to what voters expect to hear from Republicans, the perceived difference between the political parties on National Security can be fudged enough to make domestic issue differences the only ones that ultimately stand out when it comes time to actually choose who to vote for.
Can Democrats win national elections using either Options A or B? Yes, if they run a very skilled campaign, or if the tide of public opinion for whatever reason is then running strongly enough against the Republican Party. But either the candidate’s skill or that public tide must truly be formidable, because the main stream media is not the Democrat’s friend when it comes to matters of National Security, as evidenced by the essentially cheer leading, white washing function it played in the run up to the invasion of Iraq then, and the similar role it is playing regarding Iran now. And even when the Democrats run and win with a candidate possessing formidable political skills, and a tide that is running against the Republicans, which was the case with Bill Clinton in 1992, something significant happens. We fail to ace the elections. We don’t put the Republicans down for the count. We govern with dangerously thin majorities, and/or by courting the votes of Congressional Democrats with a vested interest in sounding and acting like Republicans all too much of the time. And we suffer progressive setbacks like a Democratic Congress passing the FISA bill this month.
Right now this nation may be one major domestic terrorist attack away from ushering in a Rudy Giuliani presidency. Of course that attack may never happen, no matter how often the Department of Homeland Security fiddles with the color codes or issues terror attack advisories, but then again it just might. Lord knows the Bush Administration has been very busy over the last six years increasing America’s enemies and reducing America’s friends. There also is that unresolved matter of pending war with Iran, which George Bush is free to initiate at any time under his own authority, given that the current Democratic Congress is so loath to be seen tying the President’s hands in advance on that one. The Democratic Party’s two preferred strategies for dealing with the Republican Party’s current brand name advantage on National Security (with a partial exception for the war in Iraq hereby granted) is to focus their energies elsewhere or essentially mimic Republicans. Neither is a winning strategy if new security concerns come to capture the public’s attention in 2008.
And this is where General Wesley Clark has been offering the Democrats a way out of the current rigged box. Wes Clark offers Option C: Become the political party that effectively promotes America’s security. The answer is so simple as to be audacious; stop side stepping the challenge, and stop pretending to be something Democrats are not. Embrace the differences between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party on National Security and show the public that our way will keep them both safer and more prosperous; safer because America will have fewer enemies in the world, more prosperous because our treasury will not continually be drained by endless wars to the advantage of select war profiteers.
Rearranging the identities pegged to the brand names of the Democratic and Republican Parties concerning national security won’t be accomplished simply by hiring better PR firms to design more effective ad campaigns. Symbolism is part of it but it must be backed by substance. People are funny when it comes to matters of life and death; they take it seriously. General Clark has helped provide a historic opening to the National Democratic Party, a chance to redefine itself in the eyes of a critical swing slice of the public after 30 years of Republican battering in the wake of the Viet Nam War. Clark laid his four stars on the table for the Democrats, which in itself conveys important symbolism, but in Clark’s case he consistently backed that symbolism up with very real and ongoing substance.
Wes Clark is not a photo op politician; the uniform of his decades of service is never offered up by him as a political prop. Since entering politics in 2003, General Clark has been in constant meaningful dialogue with the American people regarding matters of national security. His PAC website is called “SecuringAmerica.com” and a quick browse of it offers a more meaningful overview of the challenges facing America in the 21st century than a typical Graduate level class in international relations. In redefining and then explaining the basic elements needed to guarantee America’s ongoing security in the coming decades, Wes Clark paints a very different picture than the one being sold by Republicans, and unlike some Democrat’s mimicry, Clark offers the depth found only in legitimate three dimensional vision. Look no further than Iran to see that difference.
Unlike the two dimensional posturing that most Democratic politicians engage in regarding Iran, which consists of mostly sounding tough while saying we should be willing to talk directly with Iran, General Clark is not afraid to admit to and explain at length how our government’s own behavior contributes to the dangerous current impasse between our nations. Not only is Clark fearless about advocating “Give Peace a Chance”, he describes what that peace could actually look like while detailing a series of specific steps that might take us from here to there. And he goes beyond that to positively reframe America’s ongoing position in the world community looking forward to the changes the 21st century will undoubtedly bring.
Democrats need to articulate a real strategy for furthering peace and prosperity in the world, one that goes beyond platitudes and actually rings true to American’s who believe there are those in this world, men like the frequently cited Osama Bin Ladin, Saddam Hussein, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, capable of harboring ill will and intent toward us and our nation. Wes Clark prominently states at the StopIranWar.com web site that he co-sponsors with VoteVets.org: “War is not the answer”. Democrats need to explain why that is so at time when real security threats confront us, while we still possess the most powerful military in the world.
It is not an easy task but it is one that General Clark thinks Democrats can and must be up to, both to secure significant victories as a political party, and to secure real peace for our nation. It is why Wes Clark is our longest and strongest member of the new “Fighting Dems”, working to recast the Democratic Party’s image, while broadening the Democratic Party’s message and base, so that we can recast our nation’s policies and govern with strong majorities committed to using our nation’s resources to help our nation’s people.
Wes Clark represents a bold and different approach that the Democratic Party now has an option to pursue. Whether it will or not is still uncertain.
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