The Things They Carry (the balancing act of the Democratic Party)

[Dover]

January 4, 2004
NYTimes Magazine

The Things They Carry
By JAMES TRAUB

Excerpt:

....But Kagan is wrong to think that only ends, not means, amount to fundamental, or at least essential, principles. The difference between the idea that international law, multilateral institutions and formal alliances enhance our power -- the Wilson-F.D.R.-Truman-Kennedy idea -- and the view that they needlessly constrain our power, is a very important difference indeed. In an article last spring in World Policy Journal, Dana H. Allin, Philip H. Gordon and Michael E. O'Hanlon, foreign-policy thinkers from the conservative side of the Democratic spectrum, proposed a doctrine of ''nationalist liberalism,'' which would ''consciously accept the critical importance of power, including military power, in promoting American security, interests and values,'' as the neoconservatives had in the 1970's. But the doctrine would also recognize that America's great power ''will create resistance and resentment if it is exercised arrogantly and unilaterally, making it harder for the United States to achieve its goals.'' The authors laid out a ''generous and compelling vision of global society,'' which would include ''humanitarian intervention against genocidal violence; family planning; effective cooperation against global warming and other environmental scourges''; foreign aid; free trade; and large investments to combat AIDS.

All the major Democratic candidates could be considered nationalist liberals. And it's no surprise: since this is more or less the consensual view of the foreign-policy establishment, practically everybody the candidates have been consulting takes this view. With the very important exception of Iraq, the major candidates hold essentially the same views. Hawkishness or dovishness on Iraq thus does not correlate with some larger difference in worldview, as, for example, the left and right views on Vietnam once did.

O.K., then, it doesn't. And yet it sure feels as if it does. Iraq has, in fact, become the Democratic manhood test. One of Howard Dean's 30-second ads in Iowa showed Gephardt standing next to President Bush in the Rose Garden while an announcer said, ''October 2002: Dick Gephardt agrees to co-author the Iraq war resolution, giving George Bush the authority to go to war.'' Dean is running as the candidate who stood up to the president and his own party on Iraq, just as Wesley Clark is running as the candidate whose whole experience demonstrates the madness of Iraq. Dean may well be a nationalist liberal, but his audience members -- the activists, the students -- often are not; he is exploiting that deep discomfort with the exercise of power, the skepticism about American legitimacy that Condoleezza Rice was writing about. (A candidate who says, as Dean does, ''We're all just cogs in a big machine someplace,'' is not catering to the middle.) This is the cliff that Democratic thinkers fear the party is heading over. As one Senate aide tells me, ''I don't see how a Democrat who is easy to stereotype as soft, even if it's unfair, is going to win.''

The Democrats seem trapped between two irreconcilable impulses, or litmus tests. This is especially obvious, and painful, with figures like John Kerry, who has tried to have it both ways. In the run-up to the war, Kerry harshly criticized President Bush for alienating our allies and then voted for the resolution authorizing war. Then he voted against the $87 billion appropriation, complaining that the president lacked a clear postwar plan. As Baghdad plunged into chaos and Dean worked his magic, Kerry began to sound more and more like an antiwar candidate. And then when Saddam Hussein was captured, Kerry criticized Dean for failing to acknowledge the full magnitude of the achievement. It's no wonder that Chris Matthews tied Kerry into a pretzel when he pressed him on ''Hardball'' to supply a ''yes or no answer'' on Iraq.....cont'd

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/magazine/04DEMOCRATS.html?pagewanted=1

[La_Serpiente]

1. this is one fricking long article

thanks for the good read. :-)

[Dover]

2. Are you a speed reader?!

Done already?

[La_Serpiente]

5. I am done right.....

now. Thanks :-)

[emanymton]

3. Good Read !

Does help explain the challenges facing those who do not _belong_ to the GOP.

Q1. Who we are?
Q2. Where do we want to go?
Q3. How to get there?

A1. Of course we are not one, nor do _we_ want to be one.
A2. Everywhere and nowhere.
A3. Can anyone tell me?

Laugh half the fun is getting there!

[BeyondGeography]

4. More Dean disaster fodder

In the post 9/11 War on Terror environment, can we possibly be on the verge of nominating a verbosely antiwar ex-Governor of Vermont with no foreign policy experience, who spent a year skiing in Colorado after getting a medical deferment from Vietnam?

Nah.

[La_Serpiente]

6. Speaking of Dr. O'Hanlon from the article

look at his letter to the editor to the New York Times in response to Krugman's column yesterday.

To the Editor:

Paul Krugman (column, Jan. 2) thinks that Karl Rove and the Republican National Committee could attack a centrist Democrat just as easily as they could attack Howard Dean in this fall's presidential race. That makes no sense.

Dr. Dean is a Northeasterner from a small liberal state who avoided the draft; who wavers in his commitment to win the peace in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq; who continues to stand by the absurdity that we are no safer with Saddam Hussein in custody; and who wants to offer North Korea a sweeter, softer deal to come back into compliance with its denuclearization commitments.

Mr. Krugman is letting his disdain for President Bush cloud his political judgment.

MICHAEL O'HANLON
Washington, Jan. 2, 2004
The writer is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/03/opinion/L03KRUG.html

[BeyondGeography]

7. O'Hanlon is absolutely correct

but he is from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.

Sigh.

Thanks for the post, LS.

[La_Serpiente]

9. For those interested

this is who Dr. O'Hanlon is.

http://www.brook.edu/scholars/mohanlon.htm

He also wrote an editorial to the Wall Street Journal

here

http://www.brook.edu/views/op-ed/ohanlon/20031203.htm

I thought it was somewhat vague in certain areas. But you decide what you feel about it.

[Dover]

8. Where is the evidence that the majority of the PEOPLE buy

into conservative Democrat "nationalist liberal" policies?

The article suggests that Dean is in this camp and is giving lip service to the more progressive and dovish aspirations of some of his constituency, which seems to imply that there are a LOT of people out there who would disagree with the more conservative hardline belief that the Dems not only need to look tough but they have to embrace military power. So all the frontrunner "nationalist liberals" are basically trying to appease this sizable group with lip service and lies.

[Jerseycoa]

10. Recommended Reading

There is a whole lot to think about in this article. Thanks, I hadn't seen it here before I posted in GD2004.

[NV1962]

11. So good, I duped the topic...

Carried away there!

Loooong, but very good stuff in that article.

[markses]

12. Very obviously citing Tim O'Brien's short story collection

titled "The Things They Carried."

It's about soldiers in Vietnam, and the effect of the war on veterans. Seems like a strange allusion given the subject matter. Or perhaps not....

[maha]

13. A couple of commentaries on this article.

Mine here, and Stirling Newberry's, BOP News, here.

I sat down and read the article closely today. Traub quotes a lot of people who say very wise things. Traub himself, however, is fairly clueless. He conflates anti-Iraq War with antiwar with peacenik, and asks why it really matters if a Dem candidate is hawkish or dovish on Iraq. Hello?