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"The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration. . .Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against the stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion. "
- Anna Comnena (1083-1153), The Alexiad
"I have taken all knowledge to be my province."
- Francis Bacon, 1592
Wednesday, November 8, 2006
Renewal & Reaction
"Stolen Election!" - That would be the title of countless of Left/Liberal blog posts right now, had the results gone the other way. Well, I'm sure there were "election irregularities", as they say, in the usual number.
But we, the conservatives, the Right, did not lose this election because of shenanegans. We lost it for a number of reasons. Valid reasons. Number one, the Republican Congressional majority came to have a sense of entitlement, not that different from the Democratic majority that was thrown out in '94. Hopefully, they will learn the right lessons and not the wrong ones.
Hopefully also we will be mature about defeat. We will not become virulent obsessives, pointing fingers and wallowing in conspiracy theories. Such behavior is not the sole provenance of the Left: All humans are prone to such rationalizations of disappointment. Yes, the mainstream media was blatantly against us and twisted the presentation of things to cast "our side" in the most unfavorable light, and "theirs" in the most favorable.
But what's new about that? We faced that in elections before, and won anyhow. We have more megaphones than we had before. The Republican's, and conservative's, failure was in communicating things properly ourselves. In being constant in explaining what we believe, and primarily constant in emphasizing why the Iraq war, for all its disappointments, is a necessary battle in the overall war (see also here, as well as the Orson Scott Card link, in the post below).
"Communication" makes it sound similar to what the Dems say when they lose: "there's no problem with our policies, just in selling them to the people. The Republicans distort it." But that's not what I mean.
I mean communication in deed as well as rhetoric. Republicans, and conservatives in general, should have behaved in office as if they meant what they said about the importance of this moment in time, and of the importance of their leadership. But too often they did not. Just often enough to cause the American people to rebuke them.
Electoral spankings are a necessary component of a Democracy. The last thing we need is a party which believes they cannot lose, that they are the majority for the foreseeable future. Republicans, because of past victories and the number of "safe" Congressional districts, came to believe that. They behaved as if they believed that the only way they could lose is if they didn't roll out the pork barrel enough (thus "earmarking" on a grand scale). Buying the your vote with your own money is what caused a lot of people to sour on the Democratic leadership: Should the Republicans be surprised it caused people to be cynical about them?
Let me go back to rhetoric, though. The term itself, "rhetoric", has taken on negative connotations in our society. But rhetoric is important: Properly communicating an important message, convincingly doing so, with conviction, is vital to any democratic politics. Here is where the current political leadership on the Right - not just Bush, but certainly from him on down - has failed. It is a not unimportant failure. For that reason, we lost an opportunity in the wake of 9/11 to decisively communicate not just the war we're in, but the fallacy of certain visions that make the war we are fighting as problematic as it is.
We should look at this electorpal defeat not with disappointment or bitterness and recrimination, but as a chance for renewal. In democratic politics, no defeat need be permanent. There will be another election. What will count is what lessons we take away from this one, and how we respond to it. Let us re-forge our positive vision: Renew our emphasis on the policies we favor and would enact, rather than just what we'd prevent the other side from doing.
One thing to keep in mind. If one looks seat by seat, it's clear that the Republicans lost their majority on the basis of things other than the war itself. There were enough Foleys and Delay's to make the margin of difference. The Republicans also did enough wrong as a majority that, even in the absence of the war, they would have likely lost as many seats.
But those of us who are pro-war should take little consolation in that. Saying that does not mean the war had nothing to do with it. It only means that the voters had plenty of other reasons to vote against the Republicans, in addition to their disillusionment over Iraq. But we need to face candidly the fact that we have lost the support of a majority of Americans for the war. The only reason our losses were not greater is the American's also are not exactly thrilled with the Democrats, either, whose flaws are also manifest to them (oh, that and gerrymandering, which makes the vast majority of districts, for both parties, deplorably safe. But more on that subject, another time).
Admitting to ourselves that the war cost us in this election does not mean it was wrong. Nor does it mean that the war should be fought with an eye on its electorial consequences. But it does mean we need to do a lot more to convince our fellow citizens of the rightness of persevering than we have been able to manage to. We should not tell ourselves that it doesn't matter, as long as Bush is in office things will carry on regardless. That reflects a certain amount of indifference to the opinions of one's fellow citizens.
Nor does it mean, of course, that we must accept that they are right. We must respect their opinions enough to try to persuade them otherwise, and, if we should fail, then understand the ramifications that will have in the next election. Because even if we are not convinced that their doubts about the war are right, we shall have to accept the outcome of that election, and its policy consequences, regardless.
On the election. It's an excellent, thoughtful essay.
I have to say I pretty much agree with an earlier Glenn Reynolds quote, that the Republicans deserve to lose but the Democrats don't deserve to win.
Ultimately I think the later outweighs the former: The Democrats don't deserve to win a bit more than the Republicans don't deserve to lose. But it sickens me that the Republicans are in a position of rallying the country in their nation-wide election campaign, behind what amounts to "don't like us? Look at the alternative, it's worse!". This may work, but they use it as an excuse to be unrepentant for their "unforced errors" (to borrow again from Reynolds' pre-mortem).
Both parties have been using a version of that campaign strategy for a long time with their base: "Sure, you don't like us, but look at who will be in power if you don't keep supporting us anyhow!" In most elections, the Republicans have used it less (at least within recent memory), emphasizing what their goals are. This led to a different but important emphasis: "We have these goals. You share them. If the other guys win, we won't be able to achieve them."
You should be able to spot the difference. The difference may be subtle, but it's vital. It's the difference between having an agenda, and just being in power. The current campaign has slid over the thin line, and is now almost entirely: "vote for us, or you'll get them". It's a campaign of exhaustion that resembles, if anything, John Major's campaign against Neil Kinnock. Remember what happened to the British Conservative Party in the next election. They have yet to recover.
They say "the stakes are too high for you to stay home," but the stakes are also too high for our elected officials (to call them "leaders" would be, in most cases, to degrade the word) to behave as they have been. No, I don't mean (primarily) the Foley thing and other distractions. But the general frivolity, negligence, loggrolling, irresponsible spendthrift budgets, lack of real seriousness when it comes to budgeting for the forces we need to confront the challenges we face, and so on. Not to mention trade and immigration, among other issues.
I originally intended this to be a short post - mainly the Orson Scott Card link. What we really need is an entirely new generation of political leaders. Ones that fit the term "political leaders" in a way that the current group does not.
Everything that made "Boomers" so insufferable (on the whole) throughout their lives, they've brought with them into politics, not least of which their narcissism. Indeed, they illustrate why narcissism is such a dangerous vice, in that it causes them to inflate the importance of petty issues (at the expense of more significant ones) and lose all sense of proportionality. Apparently this causes all too many to lack the judgment necessary to differentiate between the vital (American success in war, for example) and the less-vital (whether Nancy Pelosi gets to be Speaker or not). Thus too many see the larger issue simply as a means to advance their cause in the smaller. I get the sense from too many that they view the war (or whatever issue) primarily as a tool to gain power. This is the reverse of how it should be: Being in office primarily as a means to win the war, or achieve other policy goals. But for the "me" generation, everything, in war and peace, is really all about them.
But, to paraphrase Rumsfeld, I suppose we're stuck fighting this war with the political class we have, rather than the political class we might wish we had. Help us, Oh God.
Aside: I've always said that one of the features about democracy is that it means a nation gets the leadership it deserves. If that is true, what that says about us I do not know.
