Flashbacks to the 2004 debates?
The debate in Chicago yesterday seemed to open up a new faultline in the presidential race between the candidates.
On the one side, you have Edwards and Obama, both candidates of a newly resurgent, newly confident left, both relatively young and having risen quickly due to charisma, speaking ability, and sheer talent.
And on the other side, you have the establishment candidates of Dodd and Biden, both who have served long careers in the Senate, often making arguments about the wisdom that comes with the years --- Biden recently called Obama a "Johnny-come-lately" and scorned Edwards yesterday as a late-comer on union issues.
Chris Cillizza made an interesting observation:
Expect the spin out of the debate to center on these two groups. The Obama/Edwards allies will paint it as a choice between change and more of the same. Supporters of Clinton/Dodd/Biden will cast it as experience versus inexperience.
What's interesting to me is that this dynamic isn't particularly new. Is anyone else getting flashbacks to the 2004 debates?
In the 2004 debates, Gephardt and Kerry would tag-team their attacks on Dean and even defend one another, and after Gephardt left the race there was never really any question of who he would endorse. And there was the often-heard complaint from elder senators that Edwards was too young and hadn't put in his time in Washington; he hadn't "earned" a run for the presidency.
It was the 'dinosaurs' vs. the young 'whipper-snappers'. Most interestingly of all, in 2004 as well, the main faultline centered on the Iraq war, with the 'elder statesmen' in the race having voted for it, and the rebellious, younger, more forthright generation of Dean having opposed the war.
Especially senators, who have put in their years in Washington and risen slowly up the ranks, always seem to have a sense of entitlement towards the nomination. Lieberman especially had this sense that he "deserved" the nomination as a kind of reward for loyal service, after waiting patiently for Gore not to get in the race.
Irritatingly, these elder statesmen in the primary never seem to really attempt to distinguish their candidacies through much else than their sum of experience. They don't tend to rock the boat with new policy positions or new ideas. And no one is really sure about their motivation for running. For this reason, these kinds of generational divides between candidates usually have little to do with substance or actual policy --- just like the debates yesterday actually revealed very few actual substantive differences between the candidates. That's not what it was about.
So why does this dynamic always form in Democratic presidential debates?
For one thing, I think it has a lot to do with the culture of the Senate. It's doesn't matter if you're a national figure, successful governor, or political celebrity like Hillary Clinton (in '00), Obama, or Mark Warner (hopefully in '09) --- in the Senate, you always start at the bottom of the pack. From seating arrangements to choice committee assignments, seniority is constantly reinforced.
New senators are the last to have a chance to speak at hearings, usually asking their questions and saying a few words after everyone else has left. They rarely have a chance to put their name on major legislation. And they seem to be resented more than anything else for all the media attention they receive. If, just if, by some miracle of nature, you end up spending thirty or forty years in the Senate, you might finally have the chance to be wheeled in, at eighty or ninety years old, on a respirator, to chair an Appropriations Committee hearing --- and we end up with people like Ted Stevens with their hand on the gavel.
My question is: Is this really any way to choose a presidential candidate?
Should we choose as the spokesman for our party the person with the greatest ability to articulate forcefully the values of our party and can best make the case to a new generation of voters, or should we choose the person who has been around the longest, bears the scars of previous fights, and carries the burden of experience?
No one, no one, is ever fully prepared to be president. Every president has taken some time to test out the limits of their power, experiment, test Congress' level of cooperation, float new ideas. All of the candidates on the stage yesterday are qualified, none is "ready." It's just a question of who is the best one for the job.
I keep coming back to Andrew Sullivan's column a couple weeks ago, posted on MyDD here by Lassallean, which I think has it right:
One difference between Obama and Clinton does not seem to me to have been stressed enough. They are of different Democratic generations. Clinton is from the traumatized generation; Obama isn't. Clinton has internalized to her bones the 1990s sense that conservatism is ascendant, that what she really believes is unpopular, that the Republicans have structural, latent power of having a majority of Americans on their side. Hence the fact that she reeks of fear, of calculation, of focus groups, of triangulation. She might once have had ideals keenly felt; she might once have actually relished fighting for them and arguing in thier defense. But she has not been like that for a very long time. She has political post-traumatic stress disorder. She saw her view of feminism gutted in the 1992 campaign; she saw her healthcare plan destroyed by what she saw as a VRWC; she remains among the most risk-averse of Democrats on foreign policy and in the culture wars. Here's a simple current example: her position on needle exchanges to reduce HIV transmission among IV drug users. Ben Smith recounts the tale here. The last Clinton administration refused to prevent HIV transmission this way, regardless of the science and epidemiology, because they were terrified of being labeled "liberal" by the GOP machine. Clinton still hasn't out-grown that (which is why I confidently predict that if she becomes president, progress toward gay equality will slow, because a leading Democrat will impede it in a long slog of triangulation and risk-aversion). Her classic formulation today is what it was before: We'll have as much spine as we possibly can, under the circumstances. Obama is different. He wasn't mugged by the 1980s and 1990s as Clinton was. He doesn't carry within him the liberal self-hatred and self-doubt that Clinton does. The traumatized Democrats fear the majority of Americans are bigoted, know-nothing, racist rubes from whom they need to conceal their true feelings and views. The non-traumatized Democrats are able to say what they think, make their case to potential supporters and act, well, like Republicans acted in the 1980s and 1990s. The choice between Clinton and Obama is the choice between a defensive crouch and a confident engagement. It is the choice between someone who lost their beliefs in a welter of fear; and someone who has faith that his worldview can persuade a majority. In my view, the call is not a close one.
Clinton has internalized to her bones the 1990s sense that conservatism is ascendant, that what she really believes is unpopular, that the Republicans have structural, latent power of having a majority of Americans on their side. Hence the fact that she reeks of fear, of calculation, of focus groups, of triangulation.
She might once have had ideals keenly felt; she might once have actually relished fighting for them and arguing in thier defense. But she has not been like that for a very long time. She has political post-traumatic stress disorder. She saw her view of feminism gutted in the 1992 campaign; she saw her healthcare plan destroyed by what she saw as a VRWC; she remains among the most risk-averse of Democrats on foreign policy and in the culture wars.
Here's a simple current example: her position on needle exchanges to reduce HIV transmission among IV drug users. Ben Smith recounts the tale here. The last Clinton administration refused to prevent HIV transmission this way, regardless of the science and epidemiology, because they were terrified of being labeled "liberal" by the GOP machine.
Clinton still hasn't out-grown that (which is why I confidently predict that if she becomes president, progress toward gay equality will slow, because a leading Democrat will impede it in a long slog of triangulation and risk-aversion). Her classic formulation today is what it was before:
We'll have as much spine as we possibly can, under the circumstances.
The choice between Clinton and Obama is the choice between a defensive crouch and a confident engagement. It is the choice between someone who lost their beliefs in a welter of fear; and someone who has faith that his worldview can persuade a majority.
In my view, the call is not a close one.
Arguably, in 2004, Gephardt and Kerry were on the right side of the argument. Democrats were looking for someone who wouldn't rock the boat, who was the most electable, who had a background as a veteran, who would be moderate and tough. The question is whether the electorate has now changed.
Certainly in 2006, we saw countless incumbents turned out, but we also saw the same mood for change in countless Democratic primaries, not just in Lieberman vs. Lamont but also in races like Tester vs. Morrison or Webb vs. Miller, Democrats have shown they're feeling a little more frisky, a little more willing to go with the newcomer with netroots or grassroots support.
Comments are closed for this post.
