BY DAN
KENNEDY
Serving the reality-based community since 2002.
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Wednesday, December 08, 2004
PETER BEINART'S '50S REVIVAL.
I'm not going to attempt a detailed response to Peter Beinart's
"argument for a new liberalism," the cover
story (sub. req.) in this
week's New Republic. But you should read it. I have some
fundamental disagreements with Beinart's analysis, but his essay is
subtle and complex, and he has answers for all of my disagreements,
even if I find those answers inadequate.
A bit of background: for TNR
to prescribe a new path for the Democratic Party is itself
significant. For many years the magazine, a longtime voice of
liberalism, railed against what editor-in-chief/part owner Marty
Peretz saw as the excesses of liberalism - especially affirmative
action, welfare, and a contemptible instinct for coddling Palestinian
terrorists. (I strongly disagree with TNR's stance on affirmative action, which I think is a vital tool for
building a decent society.)
TNR's vision was largely
fulfilled by the 1992 election of a centrist Democrat, Bill Clinton,
as president, but it faltered when Peretz's friend Al Gore lost
(well, not lost, but you know what I mean) to George W. Bush
in 2000. In a sense, Beinart's essay is a return to the New
Republic of the pre-Clinton years, in that he is attempting to
redefine liberalism as something less liberal than prevails in
Democratic circles today.
Beinart's main argument is that the
Democratic Party has to start taking totalitarian Islam seriously,
just as the Democratic Party of Harry Truman took communism seriously
in the late 1940s and '50s. And just as the Democrats of a half-century ago
cast out squishes like Henry Wallace, so should the Democrats of
today distance themselves from Michael
Moore and MoveOn.org,
which Beinart sees as profoundly unserious about terrorism - even to
the point of opposing our entirely justified war in
Afghanistan.
There are some problems with this.
For one thing, there is some internal incoherence to Beinart's
argument. At one point, for instance, Beinart writes, "The three
candidates who made winning the war on terrorism the centerpiece of
their campaigns - Joseph Lieberman, Bob Graham, and Wesley Clark -
each failed to capture the imagination of liberal activists eager for
a positive agenda only in the domestic sphere." Yet he fails to point
out that among Clark's most prominent backers was Moore - not to
mention the great political philosopher Madonna, whose politics, I
assume, spring from the Moore/MoveOn wing of the party.
For another, Beinart acknowledges,
yet gives insufficient emphasis to, the reality that the Bush
administration essentially hijacked the struggle against terrorism by
launching an unjustified war in Iraq. This tragic error is now the
overarching foreign-policy issue. And it does little good to argue
that Iraq is actually a diversion from the battle against
terrorism when Bush has done such a good job of convincing the public
that it is at the heart of the war on terrorism. In the past
election, it didn't help that John Kerry had voted in favor of the
war - even though Beinart thinks that was the right thing to
do.
So tied up is Beinart in visions of
Truman, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and John Kennedy that at one point he
actually argues that Democrats should blast Bush's deficit spending
because it's made it harder to increase military spending, rhetoric
that would echo Kennedy's 1960 campaign.
To be sure, there was a certain
muddled quality to Kerry's message. For the most part, though, I
think the Democrats are right where Beinart thinks they ought to be.
For the party to win, it needs to sharpen its message about why the
war in Iraq is wrong. For Democrats to argue that they would be tougher than the
Republicans but more competent calls to mind an
old Truman line: "If it's a
choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic
clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every
time."
JESUS CHRIST!
This
non-ecumenical message
is brought to you by the fine folks at Clear Channel, the Texas-based
chain that owns more than 1000 radio stations, that contributes
big-time to George W. Bush, and that yanked the Dixie Chicks off its
country stations after they had the gall to criticize the Great
Leader.
And, oh yeah, it's giving us
"progressive
radio" in
Boston.
posted at 8:50 AM |
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1 Comments:
Eeeeek! (Re last item.) Good God! (And I don't mean that in a religious way.)
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
