July 10, 2007
Party Like It’s 1999 Posted by Alexander Burns at 05:05 PM EST Joshua Zeitz’s post, “The Second Party System,” reviews some of the domestic political debates of the first half of the nineteenth century and provides a useful reminder, along with John Steele Gordon’s front-page piece, that slavery was not the only subject that interested America’s early generations of legislators. Mr. Zeitz invites his fellow blog contributors to respond to the following question: Will “the Iraq War, the big-spending conservatism of the Bush administration, the utopian ideology of the neoconservatives (utopianism being more often associated with the left), and the debates over abortion, gay rights, and immigration . . . bring about a realignment” in the American party system? This is an enormous question, so I’ll get right down to it, and I hope I won’t be the only blogger to do so. If I were a betting man, I’d bet that the party system won’t realign under the next President, but that it will change substantially within familiar parameters. At the risk of sounding like Pat Buchanan, I think Bush-style “compassionate conservatism” will be out, and the 1990s Republicanism of men like South Carolina’s Jim DeMint and Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan will be back in style. If you block out the static of the presidential race for a minute and focus instead on Congress, it’s clear that the Republican Party’s young leaders are, for the most part, uninterested in big-government conservatism. Their agenda emphasizes spending reductions, border security, and judicial appointments. As the war in Iraq continues to fail, Senate Republicans are less determined than ever to maintain America’s force deployment abroad. George Will, on “This Week,” recently observed that the Senate GOP seems scheduled to bolt the President’s foreign policy in September. Though the Weekly Standard crowd might not like to admit it, there’d be very little appetite among Republicans in Congress for any additional nation-building. Democrats don’t seem poised for an ideological transformation either. Watching Democratic presidential debates and observing the day-to-day operations of their legislative majorities, their big issues seem to be energy, healthcare, and ending the war. Some of their interests–chiefly, energy–are relatively newfound, but they aren’t inconsistent with the party’s more established issue positions on subjects such as the environment. Hot-button social issues are slyly sidelined with moderate-sounding policy proposals: proposing civil unions to avoid debate on gay marriage, proposing legislation to reduce unwanted pregnancies to dodge confrontation on Roe. Some of the actors, like Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama, are new, but the script is pretty familiar. The party is notably more unified than it was just a few years ago, and its political leaders are obviously more competent. Democrats also seem poised to make big inroads with Latino voters, which will strengthen their hand as they try to implement their agenda. But while some unpredictable legislators, like Virginia’s Jim Webb and Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, may mix things up a bit, nobody’s about to alter the basic framework of that agenda. So are we headed for a reprise of the 1990s, full of gridlock on budgeting and social policy and opportunistic posturing in foreign affairs? Maybe, and if Hillary Clinton or Rudy Giuliani is elected President, I’d wager that we are. 9/11 would add an additional political football, but, on the whole, I guess we’d see a lot of the same debates we’ve already seen on “Crossfire.” Alternatively, though, I think it’s possible that a comparatively untarnished, fair-minded, and prudent President, maybe Obama or Mitt Romney, might approach old political conflicts with the lessons of the ‘90s in mind, and produce different results. Maybe Republican leaders less cynical than Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole would acknowledge that healthcare and climate change present real problems, and enter into good-faith negotiations with Democratic legislators on a market-based compromise. Or maybe Democrats with more humility and self-control than Bill Clinton could reach out to ostracized big-government Republicans, like Michael Gerson, and partner with socially conscious evangelicals to revive and revise the welfare state. These kinds of reforms might really upset the political status quo. And slow generational change will incrementally alter the public debate on issues like gay marriage, which young people just don’t care about. I’ll wait eagerly for the day when big legislation or demographic change produces new partisan battle lines. Until then, as Donald Rumsfeld might say, you approach reforms with the parties you have.
|
