Celebratory caution

Philister über dir, Simson!
—Pastor Götze (Jena, 1693)

Believe me, I am as glad as any yellow dog about the Democratic sweep of the House and their probable control of the Senate. Just a few years ago I heard William Galston mournfully predict that the Democrats were more likely to retake the Presidency than to win either chamber, mainly because the Democratic Party has historically been unable to articulate a coherent position on American military power. As long as there was a war going on, the Republicans had the advantage.

That assessment, I fear, hasn't changed with this election. It was not the Democratic ability to articulate an alternative to the Iraq morass that won them the election, but the spectabulous ability of the Republicans to botch the war and reconstruction. As far as I know, there is not Democratic plan to get the U.S. out, and people will eventually realize this. And when the next war comes, where will the Democratic Party stand?

So it's time to think of the future. Not the future in Iraq, which looks pretty grim in all possible worlds. I'm talking about the future of party alignment in the country. There are still issues to be fought over: abortion, gay rights, affirmative action, immigration, international trade. Some are suggesting a mixture of economic populism and "soft libertarianism" on social issues. Others take the opposite route, mixing social conservatism with economic liberalism. I have less anipathy for the former than the latter option.

¶ Russell Arben Fox is one of my favorite bloggers. As a DLC sympathizer, though, I stand at precisely the opposite corner from him on the section of the Nolan chart that could be claimed by the Democratic Party.

But even the first option doesn't seem especially attractive. I suspect that economic populism here means more than a reasonable safety net, retraining programs that allow workers in lagging industries to reenter the labor force, and school and health vouchers designed to have limited impact on market price-setting. No; I suspect that a populist platform tends towards restrictions on immigration, high tariffs and direct assistance. How this differs from current Democratic Party nostrums, I don't know.

I would offer a third suggestion, knowing that it is against the very nature of either national party to accept it. The Democratic victory is a quirk. It won't last long. Perhaps it will carry through the next Presidential election, perhaps through another mid-term, but it doesn't represent a realignment of political allegiance in the United States. If the Bush administration had handled the war more competently, we'd be looking at Republican gains instead of losses. Most Democratic gains seem dependent on Bush's appeal, or rather the lack of it, as much as Clinton's victories rested on his personal charm.

¶ Clinton's policies were right, most of the time. But I don't think this mattered so much. It was the hypnotic twang, the squint of the eye and the boyish overbite that won him two elections.

What to do, then? Use this brief but certain moment to strengthen the fort, circle the wagons around the two coasts and the Great Lakes. Devolve as much power to the states as possible, limit the ability of Congress and the President to screw things up again when the GOP regains them. Repeal the War Powers act. Keep the same taxation level, but shift it to state rather than federal taxes. Support state initiatives on stem-cell research in places like California, over federal programs.

This will certainly appeal to the mountain-state libertarians, and won't be coherently resisted by the conservatives—Republican or Democrat—in the South... for sentimental reasons, if anything. And it will give liberals in rich, commercial, cosmopolitan regions free rein to do whatever they want with their money. Everybody wins!

I have hope that Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership will keep humble for some time. They seem poised to propose only modest, uncontroversial measures in the House, and conduct extensive hearings on the handling of the war, but with no suggestion of impeachment. And that's good strategy. But it doesn't effect structural change. The structure now favors Republicans in the long run, and the only way to keep liberal civilization alive is to retreat and burn the ground behind us. Perversely taking a cue from Alasdair MacIntyre, we may be due to go into the abbeys, shut the doors, and wait this dark age out. But time is running out to repair the ramparts and start making the climb.