dangerous thoughts

In case you missed it on Wednesday, the New York Times ran a front page article exploring the question that has been on the mind of many, many Democrats lately -- why is our party so uncontrollably lame?

Fittingly, the story did not show anything close to a consensus within our ranks, underscoring the disarray that is behind Democrats' discontent. It really just exhibited more of the whining and weakness that has done us wonders in the political marketplace.

Consider this especially revealing passage:

...Among more establishment Democrats, there is concern that many of the party's most visible leaders — among them, Howard Dean, the Democratic chairman; Senator John Kerry, the party's 2004 presidential candidate; Mr. Kennedy; Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader; and Al Gore, who has assumed a higher profile as the party heads toward the 2008 presidential primaries — may be flawed messengers.

In this view, the most visible Democrats are vulnerable to Republican attacks portraying them as out of the mainstream on issues including security and budget-cutting. . .

. . .Mr. Kerry said the party's authority had been diluted because of the absence of one or two obvious leaders, though he expressed confidence that would change.

"We are fighting to find a voice under difficult circumstances, and I'm confident, over the next few months, you are going to see that happen," Mr. Kerry said in an interview. "Our megaphone is just not as large as their megaphone, and we have a harder time getting that message out, even when people are on the same page."

If you read between those lines, you can get a pretty good sense of precisely what is wrong with the Democratic Party right now.

What the subtext says is that; A) we have put in place chronically unpersuasive and ineffectual leaders to try to bring the party together, articulate a common vision and set a common strategy for realizing it; B) many of us have come to realize the error of these leadership choices; and C) yet despite this recognition, we sit on our collective hands, say nothing about the fact that the emperor(s) has no clue, and idly listen to them make excuses about why we can't gain the upper hand on a Republican President with approval numbers hovering in the low-to-mid 40's and a Republican Congress that is badly scarred by scandal.

Moreover, what it ultimately says is that we are simply not prepared to do what is necessary to win -- which is to get rid of leaders who have shown they are not capable of making us a majority party again.

Let me be clear: this is not about the people themselves. I consider Howard Dean, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry and the rest to be honorable public servants. This is about their performance. And by every relevant measure, they are failing -- to inspire public confidence, to address our party's glaring electoral deficiencies, to clearly and convincingly spell out an alternative agenda that shows we can govern better than the other side (N.B. I'll elaborate about this in my next post).

The fact is that if these folks were CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, they would have been fired long ago. Or think about it in the bottom line terms of professional sports. If Ted Kennedy, whom I greatly admire, pitched for the Red Sox and had lost his fastball to the extent he demonstrated in the Alito hearings, the Boston management, no matter the nostalgia, would suck it up and let him go. Yet no one in the Senate Democratic caucus, and certainly not Harry Reid, had the temerity to move Kennedy aside and allow Chuck Schumer to take the lead (which is further proof of Reid's unfitness for the job).

Perhaps the most instructive comparison in this case is to our opponents. When the Republicans get saddled with leaders who are ineffective or become liabilities, they do not wring their hands about them -- they ruthlessly and efficiently defenstrate them. Trent Lott dredges up bad memories of the party's racist past? Gone. Tom Delay becomes a popular poster child for the culture of corruption? Gone. Heck, they even took out the guy who more than any other single figure in the party helped give them control of the House after 50 years, Newt Gingrich, after he appeared to get too big for his britches.

Thus, they will do anything to win, while we will do anything to avoid confrontation. Which is to say that Senator Kerry, with all due respect, is once again dead wrong -- we are losing not because they have a much bigger megaphone, but mostly because they have a much bigger set of cojones. Worst of all, the public knows it. They get that the Republicans understand how to wield power more effectively than the Democrats, and that I believe is one of the big reasons why in the post-9/11 era they continue to entrust power to a party they disagree with on many of the issues.

So as my fellow Democrats continue to grumble about the party's continued lameness, I would bluntly suggest that if we are seriously looking for the source of the problem, we all should look in the mirror. We may not be the ones who chose our leaders at the DNC and in the House and Senate, but it is our ambivalence and passivity that is keeping them there.

Want to change the party's direction? Change the people leading it.