A Huge Wake For The Democratic Party
If Democrats feel so confident these days, why are they spending so much time hedging their bets? This week’s Democratic National Convention should have celebrated a reigning king. Instead, it has degenerated into an encounter session for his vassals.
The Democrats greeted one another Monday in Chicago not with cheers, but tears. They watched a video about the fallen Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown, heard actor Christopher Reeve gasp out a tale of his incapacity, watched Sarah Brady promote the Brady gun-control bill and then let her maimed husband croak out a greeting, like a hospice-ridden child begging for deliverance.
The crowd luxuriated in the misery of others, as if vicarious agony were an ablution that washed away the delegates’ own failings and freed them to concentrate on curing the sins of others.
As if to intensify the orgy of empathy, they lured victims onstage for inspection like circus midway freaks or grime-smeared kids who pose for Save the Children crusades. The initial revelry lacked only Jerry Lewis stumbling across the stage, bow-tie unfurled and tuxedo creased with sweat, barking out a weepy rendition of “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
Democrats like to talk of their new sense of vision - their sudden realization that the sweeping social experiments of the past 40 years have produced the monstrous triplets of illiteracy, illegitimacy and immorality - but they don’t mean it. They rely as heavily upon their sense of messianism as Republicans do upon their starchy personal rectitude.
Everywhere in Chicago, speakers demanded miracles. Christopher Reeve begged for the right to become a modern man-on-the-pallet: Spend more money, he said, and I will rise from this wheelchair and walk again! Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo in effect said: Let us all tithe to the caregiving state so we may clothe the naked, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless and comfort the lonely! Bill Clinton, in stop after stop on his railway express through the Midwest, invoked biblical images of good and evil without ever managing to say just what he wants to do.
Thus, the Democratic Party has completed an eight-year trek into frivolity. The party decided in 1988 to dispense with platform hearings because it didn’t want to risk messy fights over principle. This year, it has jettisoned ideas altogether, choosing to put on a pageant of symbols and songs more reminiscent of the Grammy Awards.
So, Tipper Gore, the vice president’s wife, delivered a lecture on civil society which would have provided brisk competition for entrants in almost any eighth-grade speech contest. Mario Cuomo tried unsuccessfully to sing a song of a man other than himself. Most orators struggled to avoid controversy.
The most ingenious verbal turn came, naturally, from the president himself. He urged fellow Democrats not to fret too much about the welfare reform legislation he had just signed - and which now serves as the grist for dozens of self-congratulatory campaign commercials. Behind the scenes, his folks promised he will renege on the deal before the measure is supposed to take effect. This makes for a peculiar sort of slogan: “Trust me - I’m a liar.”
Democrats aren’t behaving like a party triumphant. They look like folks hooked on nostalgia. They want opponents who are evil, issues that are clear-cut and problems whose solution is to spend more money. When the world refuses their command for simplicity, they pepper the public with platitudes.
Imagine: First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered a long oration about the virtues of children and families. She spoke at length of sickness and homework, of the little travails that make parenthood trying and rewarding. She rattled off simple suggestions for a better future - longer maternity stays, paid leave for parent-teacher conferences, in-home nurses for first-time parents. She set out to abolish every nuisance except overzealous traffic cops. And she concluded it takes Bill Clinton to raise a child - any child.
Yet, in this dazzling recital about the chief ingredients in nurturing a youngster, she left one topic unexplored. The subject she never discussed at length was love.
Politicians always strive to touch the mystic chords of hope and memory, to stir passions in the hearts of those eager to chase their yearnings. But Democrats are making their case this week more out of fear than defiance. They have adopted a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach toward policy. They refuse to say what they intend to do or what principles will guide them when things go wrong.
As delegates danced the Macarena - or, in some cases, the Hokey Pokey - they celebrated the kinship of friends, not the solidarity of a great cause - joy without purpose. So, as the faithful prepare to depart Chicago, one cannot help but feel that organizers uncovered a wounding truth on the convention’s first night.
Whether they know it or not, these folks came to Chicago not to praise the old Democratic Party. They came to bury it.
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