11-7-02, Voice in the Crowd
The Me Too Party
By Pete Chaney
IPS Features
Not since Dwight Eisenhower invaded the Solid South 60 years ago and tore down that Democratic Party stronghold has the party of Jefferson and Jackson been demolished so pitifully. In fact, it would be hard to find the party under the stupid mistakes and miscalculations of the election of 2002.
The country has fared pretty well in the two-party
system, throwing in a few disgruntled detours from people like Pat Buchanan or
Ralph Nader. Turns at governing
have been fairly equal with each party having an opportunity to upset the
orderly function of government by shifting things to their way of thinking.
A hundred years ago the Republican Party, with the Civil
War still in memory, attracted the black voters. Beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 through Harry
Truman and later Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, great progress was made with
Civil Rights to attract minorities.
Many diehard southerners turned to the more conservative
Republican ideology and many minorities turned Democratic.
This came along despite the fact GOP President Eisenhower and the
Republican leaning Supreme Court struck down school desegregation.
As white conservatives in the South moved toward the Republican Party,
minorities found their voice with the Democrats who began to represent splinter
factions including a sympathetic ear toward homosexuals. With Ted Kennedy as the King of Capital Hill for liberals
But the conception lasted that the Democratic Party
represented the little man, the workingman and the GOP represented big business.
Riding the crest of popularity after the 100-day Gulf War, George Bush
didn’t read the barometer over the economy and was defeated by Bill Clinton
who went to Europe rather than serve during Vietnam.
One of the slickest politicians of the generation, Clinton out maneuvered
the Republican Congress by moving from the liberal left to the center, often
staking out conservative territory which had belonged to the GOP which
controlled Congress. His term,
despite efforts to prosecute and impeach him, turned out to be a landmark in
eliminating the deficit and building a surplus.
When George W. Bush defeated Al Bore Gore for the
presidency, he hardly had a mandate with the slim margin of victory.
It took a national catastrophe in the World Trade Center destruction to
bring him to the forefront. In the
aftermath, airlines closed with people afraid to fly, factories closed from a
depressed economy, thousands were out of work, freedom of travel and movement
was stifled as never before in America. It
was accepted as part of the fight on terrorism to find bin Laden and in rattling
sabers at the old enemy in Iraq. Any
criticism of the president was considered unpatriotic.
This was the scene coming into the president’s mid
term election for governors, senators and representatives. Not since Teddy Roosevelt a hundred years ago had a president
seen his party control Congress at med term.
And poor Teddy was always fighting with the conservatives of his own
party over the robber barons of big business and preservation of natural
resources. We have Grand Canyon and
the giant Sequoias, among many sites, to thank him for.
President Bush is unlikely to have any fights over big
business or preserving national resources from his own party.
For that matter, he hasn’t had any trouble from the Democratic Party
either.
When he first proposed a tax cut, the Democrats said it
favored the wealthy and they fought it. They
argued against cutting trees on federal reserves or drilling for oil in the
Alaskan wilderness.
The popularity of the president was so overwhelming for
the current election that his presence in any state electrified the voters.
It took a poor candidate not to benefit from it.
Democrats were so overwhelmed they dared not criticize the president for
any of his policies. For many
voters, it was hard to see what platform Democrats ran on.
Everyone was bragging about how he supported the Republican and his
agenda.
Even Sen. Max Cleland fell in line.
A Vietnam veteran who should have been unbeatable, he was attacked for
lack of patriotism. His crime? He
didn’t vote with President Bush on every item.
But Max had political ads boasting about how many times he voted with the
president. If Georgia wants a
senator who agrees with the president on everything, then they decided they may
as well have a Republican senator, and they do now.
Dissent is good. If
everybody is going the same way, something is wrong.
That’s why we have two parties, for healthy disagreement over policies
and principles. More recently it
seems whenever a Republican congressman or senator comes up with something, his
Democratic counterpart declares, “Me too.”
The whole Democratic Party in this election became the Me Too Party,
following along every issue offered by the GOP.
Hopefully, they will get their act together and we will have a two-party
system again.
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