My office is next to the office of a Very Senior partner who is important in the firm's admninistration -- a heavy, in short. A BSD -- though as far as I can tell a nice guy. He is not a long-haired Birkenstock-wearing granola crunching tree hugger living in the 60's, not a member of a radical group (I'd bet not), he's a very senior corporate lawyer. A pillar of the establishment.
We spoke briefly yesterday; asked each other how things were, I said, too much work, too little time; he said he was dealing with problems but there were always solutions. So, I said (though normally I don't talk politics at the office), "What's the solution to the Iraq War?" "Withdraw," he said.
Now, if the disaffection has spread that far and high, then the Democratic Party is unwise to hate its base (I don't know if the partner is a Democrat, although I kind od of suspect he is but in some ways it's worse for them to hate their base if he's not), much less to regard them as barking mad. If these are the people the Democratic leadership regards as barking mad, they're the ones who need to be confined for observation, not the base.
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
<http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110008547>
>
> PEGGY NOONAN
>
> Off Base
> Washington Democrats think their core voters are
> barking mad.
>
> Thursday, June 22, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
>
> It has occurred to me that both parties increasingly
> dislike their
> bases, but for different reasons and to different
> degrees. By both
> parties I mean the leaders and representatives of
> the Democrats and
> Republicans in Washington. I believe I correctly
> observe that they
> feel an increasing intellectual estrangement from
> and impatience with
> the activists who people their base of support.
>
> And this is something new.
>
> In the past, Republican leaders in Washington bowed
> either
> symbolically or practically to the presumed moral
> leadership and
> cleanness of vision of the people back home. They
> understood the base
> wanted tax cuts and spending cuts, and for serious
> reasons. The base
> had deep qualms about abortion. The base intuitively
> recoiled from
> big government: They knew the best arrangement was
> maximum possible
> power to the individual and limited, policed,
> heavily checked power
> to the state. Or, as some back home might have put
> it, Don't put your
> faith in governments, which are made by men; put
> your faith in
> individuals, who are made by God.
>
> Republican leaders in the capital bowed to this
> wisdom--if not in
> their actions, at least quite often in their hearts.
>
> Now they seem to bow less. They know the higher
> wisdom on such issues
> as immigration. They feel less fealty to the
> insights of the base.
> They know more than the base, are more experienced
> than the base,
> have a more nuanced sense of reality. And as for
> conservative social
> issues groups, the politicians resent those nagging,
> whining pushers-
> for-the-impossible who are always threatening to
> stay home or go
> elsewhere. (Where?)
>
> Some Washington Republicans have been in leadership
> so long they've
> learned--they've learned too well!--that politics is
> the art of the
> possible. It is. But this is not an excuse to be
> weak, or ambivalent,
> or passive, or superior.
>
> On the Democratic side, it is not just as bad but
> worse. They don't
> only think they're more sophisticated than their
> base, more informed
> and aware of the complexities. I believe they think
> their base is mad.
>
> You can see their problem in their inability to get
> a slogan. Which,
> believe me, is how they think of it: a slogan.
> "Together for a Better
> Future." "A Future With Better Togetherness." Today
> for a better
> tomorrow, tomorrow for a better today.
>
> A party has a hard time saying what it stands for
> only when it
> doesn't know what it stands for. It has trouble
> getting a compelling
> slogan only when it has no idea what compels its
> base. Or when it
> fears what compels it.
>
> I got a sense of the distance between Democratic
> leaders and the base
> a few years ago when I met up with a Democrat who
> was weighing a run
> for the party's 2004 nomination. He hadn't announced
> but was starting
> to test the waters, campaigning out of state.
>
> I mentioned to him that the press gives a great deal
> of attention to
> the problems of Republican leaders and their
> putative supporters on
> the ground in America, but I was interested in the
> particular
> problems a D.C. Democrat has with his party's base.
>
> His eyebrows went up in the way people's eyebrows go
> up when they're
> interested in what they're about to say. He said--I
> write from
> memory; it was not an interview but a
> conversation--that he was
> getting an education in that area. He said when he
> spoke before local
> Democratic groups they were wildly against the war
> in Iraq and
> sometimes booed him when he spoke of it. It left him
> startled. He had
> supported the president for serious reasons: He
> thought Saddam a bad
> actor who likely had weapons of mass destruction. He
> wanted to talk
> about it, but they didn't want to hear him. They
> were immovable.
>
> But there was something else. He didn't say it, but
> something in his
> manner suggested he thought they were . . . just a
> little crazy.
>
> I thought of him the other day when I saw Howard
> Dean say something
> intemperate on TV. I actually can't remember what it
> was, one
> intemperate Dean statement blending into another as
> they do. I was
> standing near a small screen with recent
> acquaintances, all of them
> relatively nonpolitical, and as I watched Mr. Dean
> speak I blurted,
> "Why does he say things like that?" A middle-aged
> woman--intelligent,
> professional--answered, "Because he thinks they're
> stupid."
>
> He thinks who's stupid? I asked. The press? "His
> party," she said. We
> both laughed because it sounded true.
>
> But today I'm thinking that's not quite it. Howard
> Dean is actually
> the most in touch with his base of all D.C.
> Democrats because he
> speaks to them the secret language of Madman
> Boogabooga. Republicans
> are racist/ignorant/evil. This is actually not
> ineffective. It's a
> language that quells the base and would scare the
> center if they
> followed it more closely, but they can't because
> it's not heavily
> reported because "Dean Says Something Crazy" is no
> longer news.
>
>
>
>
>
> I watched the Senate debate on Iraq yesterday. I
> happen to respect
> the Democrats' attempts to debate the war, argue it
> out, bring it
> again to the floor of Congress. I am impressed that
> the majority of
> them seem to oppose calling for a date-certain
> pullout. There was a
> lot of administration-bashing, some strange
> rhetorical sallies. But
> bottom line they seemed to be saying that while new
> management for
> the war is desirable, declaring "it's over, we're
> tired, we're gone"
> is not.
>
> This struck me as essentially sane, and as I watched
> I wondered if
> these Democrats would take major hits from the base
> because of it. Or
> if John Kerry, who is pushing for a declared date
> certain for
> withdrawal, would greatly benefit.
>
> Here is my read on a lot of Democratic senators:
> They think they know
> more than their base and they think they're
> more--how to put it?--
> stable in their view of the world than their base.
> In their hearts,
>
=== message truncated ===
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