Are The Democrats Crazy - Road to the Middle Class

In the last week we’ve seen former Vice President Al Gore foam at the mouth for the benefit of the left-wing whackos at MoveOn.org. We’ve seen former President Bill Clinton gently tell the anti-war students of Kansas State University that “This is thinking time, not cheering time.” And we’ve seen candidate presumptive John Kerry unveil a four point Iraq plan that echoes President Bush’s strategy, but advertises itself as different because it is “strong without being stubborn.” What is going on here? I’m confused.

And that worries me. As a Boydian, I know that the whole point in any conflict is to get your enemy confused and demoralized and keep them there. If I’m confused, then maybe the Democrats are winning.

Then there’s the murky business of campaign financing reform. After all the sturm und drang of the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2001, the reform that was going to get big money and single-issue groups out of business and that was obviously going to hurt the Democrats and their reliance on big donors and “soft money,” we now have the reign of the “527s,” so-called independent entities that in fact are financed by big contributors like George Soros and run by Democrat campaign activists. They are even more obscure and unaccountable than the evil PACs and evil “soft money” raised and spent by the national party organizations that the noble Sir John McCain and his knight-errants had promised to vanquish.

If I were a conspiracist, I would think that this was all a Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy, a planned and cynical attempt organized from deep within the Clinton political machine to subvert the system and return the Democrats to power by any means possible. The ends justify the means, and all that stuff. It would be easy to succumb to the simple delights of conspiracy theory, but I just can’t do it.

That’s because I believe that politics is amateur hour. Anyone who has ever worked on a political campaign knows what I mean. Campaigns are a mess. Grand plans may be hatched by the big shots, but they are executed by twenty-something volunteers that haven’t a clue. And even when a campaign team really jells and achieves electoral success, like the famous Clinton team of 1992, it disperses and disappears within a year or two. You can get a glimpse of this in the headline characters of the campaign world. Dick Morris is brilliant, but erratic; he’s in touch with the zeitgeistÃ¢â‚¬â€every second! So he’s confidently predicting things that turn out to be nonsense by the end of the week. Then there’s Bob Shrum, Kerry’s senior campaign adviser who has run “people against the powerful” campaigns for assorted Democrats over the last twenty years and usually lost them. How “strong but stubborn” can you get?

A political campaign, after all, is like a business startup. There’s a grand vision, a so-so business plan and not enough capital. Most startups fail within a couple of years. Why should politics be any different?

So the chances are that Al Gore is spouting off his Blame America First speeches on his own account; Bill Clinton is carefully positioning Hillary for 2008; John Kerry hasn’t a clue. And probably the dreaded “527s” will turn out to be impossible to coordinate for the good of the party.

The question is: What are the Bushies up to? Who knows? We haven’t heard from Karl Rove recently, and the reason isn’t hard to figure out. The Bush team wants to keep the opposition guessing. If you roll Rove out in front of the media he might inadvertently spill the beans on something it was better that the Democrats not know about. You talk about election strategy after the election is won, not in the crucial months when you are assembling your forces for the decisive battle.

Of course, it is also possible that the Bush team is completely flummoxed by the Democrats’ Keystone Kops routine. And it’s possible that they are completely at sea on their Iraq policy just as the liberal media likes to advertise.

And it’s also possible that the Bushies made a terrible mistake in cutting income and capital tax rates in the spring of 2003.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned about politics, it is that the bien-pensant line out of The New York Times is probably pompously wrong. That rule applies in spades whenever the subject is economic policy, foreign policy, and the intelligence of Republican presidents. So the chances are that Bush & Co. know what they are doing, and the Democrats are running around in circles.

But I could be wrong.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at americanmanifestobook.blogspot.com.

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Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches... they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

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