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Isn't it odd, says Jon Chait, that every individual the Democrats ever nominate for president turns out to be an untrustworthy flip-flopper? "Either this is because the Democratic Party keeps nominating weasels for president, time and time again, or else there's something systemic that makes Republicans (and the press) portray them as such." Chait thinks the latter:
Here's my systemic explanation. In the late 1980s, the popular revolt against government that had bubbled up in the mid-'60s began to peter out, sapping the power of straightforward anti-government appeals. And, starting in 1992, Democrats ruthlessly purged nearly all their political liabilities by embracing anti-crime measures, welfare reform, and middle-class tax cuts, and, more recently, by abandoning gun control. What's left is a political terrain generally favorable to Democrats, which has, in turn, forced Republicans to emphasize the personal virtue of their nominees.And so, every four years, we have a Democratic candidate campaigning on health care, the minimum wage, education, Medicare, or Social Security, and a Republican candidate campaigning on themes like Trust, Courage, and so forth. President Bush in 2004 was explicit about his elevation of character over issues: "Even when we don't agree," he would say, "at least you know what I believe and where I stand."I agree with a lot of that, but those grafs need a nod to the role of foreign policy in recent elections. Bush didn't simply run on "trust": He ran on war.The crude way to look at the last few years of presidential elections is that, in general, Republicans win when foreign threats are most salient, and Democrats win when the focus is on domestic issues. Of the last four presidential elections, Republicans have won the popular vote exactly one time: The election that came three years after 9/11, one year after the invasion of Iraq, and a few days after bin Laden released another taped threat. Democrats won the other three. All of which is to say, flip-flopping may have helped explain why Kerry lost, but it's just not that powerful a charge. People give too much credit to the campaigns politicians run and not enough credit to the conditions in which they run. If Bush had called Kerry a flip-flopper exactly as many times, but there was no bin-Laden tape, or economic growth was a half point worse, Kerry would have won, and the charges he levied -- that Bush was out of touch and dim -- would've been considered brilliantly effective political attacks.
