NYPress’ Matt Taibbi gets it just about right re: the “National Security Democrats”:
TheDemocratic party leadership’s persistent and bizarre campaign ofself-condemnation and Republican bootlicking is one of those thingsthat, on its face, makes very little logical sense. It makes culturalsense; we have come to expect that the cultural figures we call theDemocrats will respond to electoral failure first by sniveling andfinger-pointing, and then by puffing up their chests and telling theirdates they know how to handle themselves in a bar fight. From theRepublicans we expect just the opposite; beaten at the polls, theyimmediately start cozying up to snake-handlers and gun freaks anddenouncing school lunches as socialism. It is impossible to imagine aNewt Gingrich responding, say, to LBJ’sGreat Society by concocting its own expensive plan to feed the poorblack man—but we fully expect that a Democrat who loses an electionwill suddenly start to reconsider his opposition to preemtpive invasionand Reaganomics.
…Franklin Roosevelt never argued anything like that, and he fought aglobal world war against two mighty industrial powers. But now 4000retards in caves are going to close down the entire American schoolsystem. If that is the Democratic idea of looking “strong,” one hatesto imagine what weakness would look like.
He raises afine point: Even if Democrats can reposition themselves to look betteron security issues, isn’t the effect negated by the fact that we’re repositioningourselves? The public can smell a phony a mile away. John Kerry, whowas, granted, not the slickest politician in history, tried toreposition the party on a host of issues - and failed pretty utterly.What Democrats need to realize is that we don’t need to move closer toRepublicans. We need to find a hawkish Democrat, and move closer to them.
This is one of my favorite things about (braces for thrown tomatoes)Hillary Clinton. She’s probably not much less hawkish than Lieberman,Biden, or Bayh. But where Lieberbayhden spend their time going onRussert and lecturing Democrats about getting tough on this and that,Hillary just quietly votes for hawkish policies and spends her weekendsgiving speeches to NARAL and MoveOn. She has differences with most Democrats, but she never doesn’t seem proud to be one anyway.
She’s doing exactly what Bush did for the GOP in2000. He moderated the party, not by lecturing it on moderation, but byleading by example. What Hillary understands, that no one elseapparently does, is that a party’s repositioning only works if itappears to be a sincere move, motivated by succumbing to internalprinciples. It was the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, notRepublican pressure, that credibly transformed the whole party into abastion of civil rights. It was the hawkish wing of the DemocraticParty, not Republican pressure, that credibly transformed it into astrong anti-Communist party. Lecturing your party about being asmoderate as you are only pulls up the curtain on the whole trick. Whatour party desparately needs is a moderate candidate who will persuadeus to moderate our actual stances, not just the ones we take in public.
Update: Atrios says it better:
Idon’t actually disagree with the general proposition that the Democratsneed a bit of piss and vinegar in their foreign policy, but they haveto figure out where to aim that piss. Peter Beinart and Joe Biden andthe rest of the gang didn’t aim their piss, they let George Bush grabtheir dicks and point them towards Baghdad. And, now, two years later,they want to lecture the rest of us on how to be perceived as “strong.”
The way to be perceived as strong isn’t to let George W. Bush tell you where to point your dick.
Indeed.
