The 'Safety' Trap
Democrats followed the party's center-seeking presidential hopefuls into an ideological no-man's land.
By Rick Perlstein
November 11, 2002
Tuesday's loss gave Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt plenty to ponder.
Early last month, the man many have anointed as the frontrunner for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination gave the kind of speech liberals have long been waiting to hear from a presidential candidate. Speaking before an audience of defense intellectuals in Washington, North Carolina Senator John Edwards attacked President George W. Bush's foreign policy as a case study in "arrogance without purpose" and "gratuitous unilateralism."
What happened a few days later was enough to make anyone's head spin. Edwards joined 28 other Senate Democrats and voted to approve the resolution granting Bush license to go after Saddam Hussein with all the gratuitous unilateralism he cares to muster. It wasn't even surprising that Edwards voted yes. He was one of the measure's cosponsors.
For liberal observers, watching Edwards in action felt like a time-lapsed version of watching the entire 2002 campaign. Across the country, Democrats in tough reelection fights fell over themselves to appear as centrist as possible (the list of Iraq resolution cosponsors, noted The New Republic, "read like a who's who of vulnerable incumbents"). Moreover, Edwards was joined in his vote by every other Democratic presidential hopeful, although some had delivered pre-vote speeches even more war-shy than his. For the handful of Democrats in Congress with presidential ambitions, the obsessive desire to avoid offending the president's supporters simply proved too compelling -- even if, in their hearts, they clearly believed the president's course was foolish. Two of them, Tom Daschle and Hillary Clinton, even made the astonishing claim that passing Bush's resolution would help prevent war in Iraq. Apparently, a safe vote with the President was worth even the risk of non sequitor.
The Iraq vote was, of course, only the latest blush in a veritable Democratic love affair with "safety" this past year. From the administration's proposal to repeal the estate tax, and last year's fat-cat-fattening income tax cut, to this year's underwhelming White House response to the rash of corporate scandals, the reaction from the Democratic leadership has been the same: bold, bold, bold proposals for prescription drug coverage under Medicare a smidge more generous than the Republicans'. More:
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2002/46/we_192_01.htmlMore recommended reading - "Failed Midterms":
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021125&s=nichols
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