Faith in democracy, not government

[R.A. Hettinga]

<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/11/07/EDGQQ9M33Q1.DTL&type=printable>

The San Francisco Chronicle


Election Fallout
 Faith in democracy, not government
 - Victor Davis Hanson
 Sunday, November 7, 2004


Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were the only two Democrats to be elected
president since 1976. Both were Southerners. Apparently, the only assurance
that the electorate has had that a Democrat was serious about national
security or social sobriety was his drawl. More disturbing still for
liberal Democrats is that George W. Bush is the first Republican Southerner
ever elected to the presidency, another indicator that a majority of the
citizenry no longer finds conservatism and Texas such a scary mix.

 The fate of third-party candidates was also instructive in the election.
Left-wing alternatives like Ralph Nader go nowhere. Conservative populists,
on the other hand, can capture 10 percent or more of the electorate, as
Ross Perot did in 1992 and almost again in 1996. Indeed, Perot's initial
run probably accounts for Clinton's first election, and helped his second
as well. In short, Kerry's 3.5 million shortfall in the popular vote
underestimates the degree to which the country has drifted to the right.
Over a decade ago, it took a third-party candidate, political consultant
Dick Morris' savvy triangulation and Bill Clinton's masterful political
skills to stave off the complete loss of Democratic legislative, executive
and judicial power of the sort that we witnessed last week.

 Something else is going on in the country that has been little remarked
upon. It is not just that an endorsement of a Michael Moore does not
translate into votes or that Rathergate loses viewers for CBS. It has
become perhaps far worse: A Hollywood soiree with a foul-mouthed Whoopee
Goldberg or a Tim Robbins rant can turn toxic for liberal candidates. We
are nearly reaching the point where approval from the New York Times or a
CBS puff-piece hurts a candidate or cause, as do the billions in
contributions from a George Soros.

 Television commentators Walter Cronkite, Bill Moyers, Andy Rooney or Ted
Koppel have morphed from their once sober and judicious personas into
highly partisan figures that now carry political weight among most
Americans only to the degree that they harm any cause or candidate with
whom they are associated. Readers do not just disagree with spirited
columns by a Molly Ivins, Paul Krugman or Maureen Dowd, but rather are
turned off when they revert to hysterics and condescension. To the degree
that the messages, proposals or endorsements of a delinquent like Ben
Affleck, an incoherent Bruce Springsteen, or a reprobate like Eminem were
comprehensible, John Kerry should have run from them all.

 This election also involved perceived hypocrisy. No one in Bakersfield or
Fresno thinks that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld espouses
views at odds with the privileged lives that they live; they, of course,
unabashedly celebrate and benefit from free enterprise and corporate
capitalism. In contrast, Teresa Heinz Kerry and John Kerry, George Soros or
John Edwards even more so enjoy the fruits of the very system they at times
seem to question.

 Thus, concern for two Americas is not discernable in John Edwards'
multimillion-dollar legal fees, the Kerry jet, or Soros Inc.'s global
financial speculation. It is easy for a Noam Chomsky or Michael Moore to
trash Halliburton, but Red America wonders about the source of university
contracts that subsidize privileged professors' sermons or why corporate
recording, cinema and advertising conglomerates that enrich celebrities are
exempt from Hollywood's Pavlovian censure of big business. That the man who
nearly destroyed the small depositors of Great Britain also fueled
MoveOn.org seemed to say it all.

 Where does this leave us? After landmark legislation of the last 40 years
to ensure equality of opportunity, the public has reached its limit in
using government to press on to enforce an equality of result. In terms of
national security, the Republicans, more so than the Democrats after the
Cold War -- in Panama, Afghanistan and Iraq -- oddly are now the party of
democratic change, while liberals are more likely to shrug about the
disturbing status quo abroad. Conservatives have also made the argument
that poverty is evolving into a different phenomenon from what it was
decades ago when outhouses, cold showers and no breakfasts were commonplace
and we were all not awash in cheap Chinese-imported sneakers, cell phones
and televisions.

 Like it or not, the public believes that choices resulting in breaking of
the law, drug use, illegitimate births, illiteracy and victimhood can
induce poverty as much as exploitation, racism or sexism can. After
trillions of dollars of entitlement programs, most voters are unsure that
the answers lie with bureaucrats and social programs, especially when the
elite architects of such polices rarely experience firsthand the often
unintended, but catastrophic results of their own well-meant engineering.

 So we all know the cure for the Democratic Party: More moderate, populist
candidates who don't talk down to voters or live one life and profess
another; more explicit faith in American democracy and values; and a little
more humility in accepting the tragic limitations of human nature.

 Yet for many,that medicine of reappraisal will be far worse than the
disease of chronic defeat.

 Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.


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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
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"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
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experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'