I WAS WRONG

After watching the Kerry speech last night, maybe I was wrong when I insisted that (contrary to popular belief) America is on the right track...

What the Democrats did this week, I think, is to position themselves as the proper heirs to the Bush legacy. At the heart of this strategy, I'm satisfied that they neutralized the war issue, thanks in particular to Edwards. Edwards spoke of "heroes," and made the analogy to WWII that neocons love but that anti-war pundits and protesters have fiercely scorned for a year and a half. Kerry's noises about getting more allies involved and "going to war only when we have to" are really just a continuation of Bush strategy, and his talk of expanding the military was hawkish enough that I think the impression from Edwards' speech will linger. There was a mention of "bringing the boys home," almost with the implication that getting the allies involved will enable us to do that... if so, that could be a foretaste of some very incompetent policy... We'll see how it plays out.

The Democrats are the compassionate conservatives now. There was strong emphasis on patriotism, "duty," "values," and lots of programs to help out seniors, favorable mention of Head Start and (federally funded?) after-school programs... Oddly, Kerry proved Clinton right that Bush ruined his legacy. Because the Democrats (unfortunately!) are not building on the Clinton legacy. They're building on the Bush legacy.

Another Bush legacy: Kerry gave prominent mention to God. He knows the secularists are securely in his camp. It's "people of faith" he's got to appeal to. Another step forward for pious politics.

The reason the Democrats were able to position themselves as heirs to the Bush legacy was that the claims that Bush was ultra-right-wing were always myth. In policy terms, Bush bears a strong resemblance to John Kennedy: tax cuts and Keynesianism, a bold, forward-pushing foreign policy, a few more hand-outs at home. As Andrew Sullivan once said, Bush re-invented Cold War liberalism and branded it Republicanism.

What the Republicans have to do now is difficult and a bit counter-intuitive. They have to campaign, in part, against their own legacy. Or at any rate, they have to campaign against carrying their own legacy and further. They have to say, "We've expanded government spending quite a bit, and that's enough; now don't expand it anymore! No extra perks to veterans, though we're very grateful to them. No new after-school programs, though we value education. Deficits are a problem in the long run. We want to get the government off people's backs..."

I'm afraid now. Till yesterday, I thought the Democrats might win, but I thought the Bush legacy had too much traction, and a Democratic president would mostly be helpless against a fait accompli. Now I realize that's not the biggest danger: the danger is that the Democrats will embrace the Bush legacy and then reshape it for their own purposes. They'll get in the driver's seat, and not turn around, but make a left turn and keep going forward.

I don't want America to be "safer." There's a trade-off between freedom and security, and I want the freedom more than the security. I don't want America (i.e. the American federal government) to be "stronger at home," but rather, weaker. I find myself wistfully wishing for the good old days of gridlock between Clinton and the Contract with America Congress!

All of this makes me feel a bit silly for being so supportive of Bush up till now-- I don't like Cold War liberalism, so why did I buy into it with a Republican label? The tragedy here is that Clinton's reinvention of the Democratic Party failed. Now we have the Old Democrats to contend with, and Bush has given them all too many hostages.