From the WSJ Opinion Archives
THINKING THINGS OVER
The Left: 100 Days in the Wilderness
Will liberals ever find their way again?
Today George W. Bush has invited all 535 members of Congress down to the White House for lunch to celebrate the first 100 days of his presidency. It's rancher hospitality: Come on over, the fun's on me, but don't forget who lives in the big house.
The first 100 days have become a checkpoint for presidencies, though the only particular logic is that God gave us 10 fingers, and thus a numerical system based on 10. Also, of course, Franklin D. Roosevelt etched the phrase in our political history, though in fact it was not the first 100 days of his presidency but the 100 days of a special session of Congress that gave us farm subsidies, the Glass-Stegall Act, the TVA, and the precursors of Fannie Mae and Ginny Mae.
This is the first time since FDR's 100 days, after all, that liberals have been shut out of the government. If only by the smallest of margins, Republicans control the presidency, both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court. How are the Democrats, the liberal establishment and the intellectual left doing as underdogs?
The activist left naturally assumes its usual posture of outrage. "Nice Guys Finish Last" Barbra Streisand warned Democrats. Her well-publicized memo had hilarious points, such as her presuming to speak for "the working men and women of this country," and warning against the fate of "our fingers holding the dyke against the Republican revolution." (Most of us, Babs, would spell that dike.) But at times she speaks for more than Hollywood: "We have a president who stole the presidency through family ties, arrogance and intimidation," and "the public is being fooled by Bush. they are not sufficiently informed to protect their own self-interest."
You find Ms. Streisand echoed in The American Prospect, the liberal intellectual magazine with a masthead carrying names such as Robert Kuttner, Paul Starr and Robert Reich. It runs photos of "The Faithless Six," Democratic senators who voted with Republicans to repeal the Clinton administration "repetitive stress" regulations. Mr. Kuttner notes that in the 50-50 Senate, eight Democrats also voted to confirm John Ashcroft as attorney general and more than a dozen joined Republicans on bankruptcy reform. He concludes:
"Face it: If the Dems are going to lose every party-line vote anyway because of defections in their own ranks, the real Democrats might as well behave like a real opposition. Trimming their views to pander to the least loyal of their own troops is a losing game and a spurious unity. Instead, the 35 to 40 Democratic senators who are good liberals, and their 150 counterparts in the House, should fashion a true progressive opposition program and take it to the country in 2002 and 2004."
In their new role as an opposition, Democrats have reached a fork in the road. They can move toward the center with a smaller "me too" version of the Bush program, and hope to inch back into power with three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust politics. Or as Mr. Kuttner and Ms. Streisand urge, they can throw a Hail Mary, moving left as Barry Goldwater once moved right, sharpening their true principles, and hoping eventually to profit from a redefinition of political issues.
It's far from clear, for that matter, that the Democrats are any longer a natural majority. Their presidential candidate could not win on the wave of an economic boom; an American Prospect article remarks that a majority of white, working-class men voted Republican. The Democratic coalition consists of labor officials, losing membership but increasingly political; the tort lawyers, ripe as an electoral target; the blacks, tempted by Mr. Bush's faith-based initiatives; and the Streisand left in the academy and press, noisy but not numerous.
These blocs, however, hold a veto limiting the options of elected lawmakers. They finance the party, for one thing. They dominate primaries, for another. And they carry a big megaphone. Just now, for example, the left is refighting the Vietnam War to scuttle Bob Kerrey, the brightest hope for a moderate Democratic Party.
In the Congress, these cross-currents result in paralysis and obstructionism. The Democratic minority can't do open battle against the Bush program; it can only drag procedural heels. No conference committee has been appointed to reconcile House and Senate versions of the bankruptcy bill, for example. In most Cabinet departments the secretary sits alone; the second-level presidential appointees have not been confirmed. So far the major hold-up has been the bureaucratic bog, but now Democrats are deliberately delaying strong appointees they are afraid to confront on the merits.
The tactic of bringing the government to a standstill is likely to backfire at some point, especially if Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott forces Democrats to conduct a filibuster rather than threaten it. Are they really going to tie up the Senate on behalf of the snail darter or tort lawyers? Or even, for that matter, on drilling for oil in the Alaskan tundra while California and New York are in jeopardy of electricity shortages?
It's not easy to demonize someone, a genial host might say, who lives in the big house. So at the first-100-day mark, the left seems to be headed not out, but deeper into the wilderness.
Mr. Bartley is editor of The Wall Street Journal. His column appears Mondays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.
