There's good news and bad news from this past Sunday morning. The good news is someone finally spoke up eloquently in defense of the Democratic Party's soul. "I think Al Gore was exactly right to go out and make a campaign in favor of people and against powerful interests who stood in their way . . . I think that strategy is not only right politically, I think that strategy is right in principle. What else is the Democratic Party supposed to be about?" The bad news is that this particular "someone" was Democratic political strategist Bob Shrum, not an elected official with a national reputation (though Gore deserves some credit for his Sunday op-ed). But hey, at least someone said it.
The tangy back-and-forth between Shrum and Republican strategist Ed Gillespie on Meet the Press was the most entertaining of the day's political jawboning. It made you wish our actual leaders were willing -- or able -- to talk with such smooth, informed assurance. Indeed, the typical hour of Meet the Press, in which host Tim Russert routinely emasculates proud white men, can be an emotionally exhausting experience. Watching their squirming, frightened images as they grope for phrases (even when the images are of irredeemable fat cats such as SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt or Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill), one's heart goes out to them almost despite oneself. (No one deserves this!) But with Shrum and Gillespie, at last you could relax: You were in confident hands. These guys know how to talk.
Take, for example, this piquant volley over Social Security privatization:
GILLESPIE: President Bush has talked about allowing younger workers coming into the work force to invest a portion, a percentage of their payroll tax into a government-approved common stock fund, common bond fund, much like federal employees do, Bob. And that's a good idea, because otherwise by 2018, by the time I, hopefully, get to retire the Social Security is going to run into the red. ... And by the time my niece ... gets out of the work force, it's just not going to be there at all. Now you're either going to raise taxes, you're going to let it go broke or you're going to modernize it somehow. And you are choosing to make it an issue rather than deal with the problem, and that's wrong.
SHRUM: No. No. I haven't ... .
GILLESPIE: What is the answer, Bob? What are you going to do?
SHRUM: Let's delay, postpone or abolish the part of the tax cut that goes to the wealthiest people in this society ... .
GILLESPIE: That has nothing to do with the Social Security trust fund.
SHRUM: It absolutely does. You can make Social Security sound for the next 50 years.
Touché, Bob! And hooray for real debate! (Tax cut rollback aside, read this simple explanation if Gillespie's privatization pitch sounded good to you.)
Earlier in the program, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden (D-Del.) talked some sense too. He urged the president to do a better job of persuading our allies to help us topple Saddam Hussein (if that's what we need to do). And for what may be the first time, someone raised the question of cost. "You're talking about $80 billion to $100 billion front end," Biden said. "Then the back end, the estimates range [from] a minimum of $16 billion to $18 billion a year because most of the experts believe you got to keep up to 75,000 forces in place to keep Iraq from breaking down, to keep the oil markets in place." That's a lot of money. (Maybe oil companies should pitch in. They benefit most from "stability in the region," right?)
Biden came the closest of anyone we've yet heard to pointing out the (you'd think) obvious when it comes to Iraq: Namely, that it's not just a matter of unilateralism versus multilateralism, or of cozying up to the Saudis just so that we can use their airbases, or of making NATO feel that we still respect it the morning after Afghanistan. The fact is, if we can't convince any other country in the world (not even Great Britain, for heaven's sake!) that Iraq is this great, implacable threat -- that Saddam will be lobbing nuclear missiles around the world within a year or so, that he's actually complicit in terrorism -- then maybe we're the ones who are overestimating him.
At times, Biden sounded like a voice in the wilderness. Speaking of our allies, he said at one point -- plaintively, almost apologetically -- "It matters what they think."
In the end, though, Shrum won the day with this bracing assessment of Republican governance, equivalent to acknowledging the great white elephant in the living room of American politics:
SHRUM: The fact of the matter is that right now what we have is a government of special interest, by special interest and for special interest. It's true in the tax cut. It's true in their energy policy, where they've basically rolled back the Superfund. It's true in their continued resistance to real pension reform, which is probably going to take another scandal, then the president will abdicate again and he'll say, "Send me a bill, I'll sign it."
There was something delightful about seeing Shrum and Gillespie go at it. Perhaps because their personal political aspirations weren't on the line, they could be fervent about issues without fighting dirty. At the end came a friendly wager:
GILLESPIE: I will bet Bob Shrum lunch that Republicans control both the House and Senate if he's willing to bet on his Democrats.
SHRUM: OK. OK. No, listen, I am [willing]. We'll see you at Galileo the day after the election.
Passion with integrity. Partisanship without personal destruction. It's possible. Who knew?
