By Edwin Cooney
As Democrats gather in Philadelphia for their 47th quadrennial National Convention, like their Republican cousins, they face a daunting question. While the Republican Party is the victim of an outside hostile takeover, Donald Trump by name, Democrats are about to nominate one of their very own: “Lady” Hillary Clinton.
If the GOP’s cranky negativity, panicky nativism, homophobia, racism, and unprincipled ambition are the major forces behind the capture of their party by the self-absorbed Donald Trump, what forces must energize the Democratic party in 2016? Even more, what can they do about it?
As I see it, the Democratic party hasn’t been a powerfully potent political force since Lyndon B. Johnson began running out of gas in 1966. By 1968, its ability to govern was shattered over the war in Vietnam. Domestically, it was pretty much intact, but so split and guilt-ridden by “LBJ’s war,” and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s “police riot” during the 1968 Convention, that the party lost its political nerve. Thus, it crumbled under Hubert Humphrey, who deserved much better, and has never been the same since! Gone is the Democratic Party structure that once drafted progressive legislation in Congress. Although barely defeated by Richard Nixon in 1968, the party’s zest for passing or even sustaining social legislation seemed to evaporate almost the instant Richard Nixon lowered his right hand after taking the oath of office from retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren that historic Monday, January 20th in 1969.
Over the next two years, conservative Republicans and key Southern Democrats slowly but surely began dismantling LBJ’s Great Society beginning with the Office of Economic Opportunity and cutbacks for LBJ “Model Cities” expenditures. Sure, Democrats mightily resisted administration Supreme Court nominees Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell, the Nixon administration’s healthcare proposal, which they saw as meager in comparison to that of Senator Ted Kennedy’s, and Nixon’s Vietnamization policy. However, the party’s ability to advocate, pass and sustain progressive legislation was permanently stymied. By the 1972 presidential campaign, the Democratic Party had instituted reforms that prevented party leaders from setting party strategies and policies. State presidential preference primaries had stripped the big city and state bosses of their once unchallenged authority to assess the qualifications and likely vote-getting abilities of potential presidential candidates and, on that assessment, to nominate a successful presidential candidate. By 1975, the immediate post Watergate era, the congressional seniority system, a historic congressional institution, was history. While not all of these reforms were bad, they limited the traditional authority of experienced congressional leaders of both parties. However, Republicans, with the increasing popularity of their conservative doctrine, were more successful in passing their party’s agenda due to party discipline.
Thus, as they enter the 2016 presidential campaign, Democrats have little to brag about when it comes to social legislation. Additionally, healthcare or if you prefer “Obamacare,” successful and historic as it is, remains controversial. Hence, rather than a solid record of progressive achievement to point to, Mrs. Clinton is in a position where her major challenge over the next three months appears to have more to do with who she is rather than anything she or her party stands for or has accomplished!
In his 1981 Inaugural Address, President Reagan asserted that government doesn’t solve problems; government is the problem. The popularity of that presidential declaration was such that Democrats, instead of challenging the new president’s proclamation, surrendered to it. That surrender, of course, didn’t save them from being bombarded with anti-big-government slogans. Hence, Democrats, especially those in the northeast, midwest and far west, have been permanently on the defensive for nearly fifty years. Many Southern Democrats, on the other hand, vulnerable to the popular mores of the Bible Belt, oil magnates and the military industrial establishment have dragged their feet thus abetting at crucial points the national conservative movement which they used to back New Deal, Fair Deal, and Great Society proposals and projects. That’s why I insist that the modern Democratic party appears to have lost its heart and perhaps its soul.
As to the significance of Hillary Clinton’s integrity, as I see it, many of those questioning her trustworthiness, if they are honest with themselves, have supported other presidential candidates whose promises and assertions have been far from candid. For example, there are still a lot of voters, Republicans who are enraged over Hillary’s “lack of integrity,” who still excuse the antics of Richard M. Nixon who was forced to insist, during a November 1973 news conference in Florida: “I am not a crook!” Nor did Ronald Reagan ever redeem his promise to balance the national budget! George H. W. Bush, as I recall, never did adequately distribute those “thousand points of light” he once so eloquently promised. We have yet to discover the weapons of mass destruction that threatened our national security and led us to the second Iraqi War under President George W. Bush.
Policymaking is the responsibility of strong leadership. Mrs. Clinton, even with all her knowledge and experience, has yet to demonstrate her capacity to prepare, present, and sell a national agenda. Between now and November 8th, it is essential that she get across the following points:
(1.) The 2016 presidential election is about people not politics;
(2.) A specific agenda rather than a mere recital of our fears, foreign and domestic, is what will strengthen our prospects for peace and plenty;
(3.) Our prosperity, safety and peace matter more, much more, than the personal liabilities, assets or fates of either presidential candidate.
Hillary Clinton is a well-meaning politician who has demonstrated a commitment to progressive thought and policymaking. Before her unsuccessful attempt to lead her husband’s first administration’s effort to pass single payer healthcare in 1994, no First Lady actually led an effort on behalf of a major domestic policy issue before the Congress. That historic fact is to her everlasting credit!
Despite all the breast-beating as to Hillary Clinton’s character, when all is said and done (someone once observed that in most instances more is said than done), this election is unequivocally about us.
Character does matter, but character comparison has seldom if ever mattered when comparing presidential candidates. How many Republicans have you heard admit that Nixon and Agnew were “SOB’s, but at least they were our SOBs!” Even more to the point, if character is what really matters, Jimmy Carter should definitely have had a second term as President of the United States.
Hillary Clinton is not my favorite possible Democratic party candidate. I would have preferred Senator Sanders, but she is “the candidate.” Her intellect is keen, she treats political opponents within the traditional rules of political competition and she is in the tradition of progressive or forward-looking responsible policy changes.
Hence, I urge Hillary to: fight fiercely but fairly! Passionately advocate and explain your proposals. Avoid being defensive. Let the country observe your capacity to listen and learn and, be seen doing both. Finally, vigorously defend your party’s modern progressive liberal heritage. An excellent way to do that would be by publicly echoing some of FDR’s most powerful words from his 1936 acceptance speech in Philadelphia: “Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in the spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference!”
To the extent that Hillary Clinton follows the above admonition, she can recapture the heart and soul of the Democratic party and thus deserve victory on November eighth!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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