Stuck in the middle with you
While a voter may be of any stripe, a political career in this country isn’t really open to those who refuse to belong to a party. All my life I’ve been a Republican, and I am the most conservative one of all my friends. But lately, I’ve been reexamining my beliefs.
Certainly, being a Republican hasn’t actually meant voting Republican every time. While I have almost always voted in the Republican primary, I’ve had real trouble swallowing certain nominees – sometimes because of the anti-gay thing, sometimes just because the candidates are terrible. I’m thinking particularly of President Bush in 2004 and of Kenneth Blackwell last year. So often, the party lets me down by nominating the unacceptable.
Because I’m pragmatic, however, I never waste my vote. And because making a practical electoral difference in this country means voting for one of the two parties’ candidates, if I find a Republican repugnant, then I will vote for the Democratic dolt. (I hope that was fair and balanced.) Since I wouldn’t want to think of myself as hewing slavishly to any single party’s line anyway, political cross-dressing doesn’t really bother me once in a while.
But lately, I’ve been afflicted with certain strange thoughts. I voted for Clinton, Gore, Kerry, and Strickland. All of my pals are liberals or at least moderates. Even my family has drifted leftward. One day it hit me: am I a Democrat???
It sounds like a tragic mid-life coming out story, doesn’t it? I took the issue up with a centrist-thinking friend who told me, “The Democratic Party is the party of the future.” And he didn’t even laugh ironically afterward! He was thoughtful enough to arrange a lunch meeting for himself and me with a prominent local Republican leader. I came away grateful but generally unswayed in either direction.
To my mind, the Democratic Party is the party of unions, welfare largesse, isolationism through trade barriers, greedy Detroit autoworkers, and escalating the war in Vietnam. It is the party that benefits from and exploits the continuing racial divide in this country. It is the party of the past.
Of course, the Republican Party is the party of union-busters, giant deficits, isolationism through treaty withdrawals, greedy Detroit automakers, and escalating the war in Iraq. It is the party that benefits from and exploits the continuing racial divide in this country. It is also the party of the past.
Neither party has it quite right. The Democrats are an unruly coalition of minority groups and special interests, but so are the Republicans. Neither party has consistent principles – Republicans say they’re for free trade, but I still remember Bush’s illegal protectionist steel tariffs in 2002, which just happened to benefit industry in the swing states of Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Democrats say they stand for the little guy but their loudest demagogues oppose free trade even though the flood of cheaper goods into this country helps those with the least money the most. Republicans stand for personal freedom and liberty, but not in the bedroom and not within earshot of a wiretapping federal agent. Democrats support certain famous health-related “choices” and the legalization of marijuana, but then ban the smoking of tobacco. Both parties profess a belief in the market but perenially pass a farm bill that pays people to farm and not to farm. Who are all these people? Both parties are stuck with layer upon sedimentary layer of past compromise and always have to weigh each proposal’s effect on their precariously assembled electoral blocs. Ideological leadership is missing on both sides.
Enter Michael Bloomberg. Revisit: a vote for anyone other than a Republican or Democrat is a wasted vote. Exit Michael Bloomberg.
My problem is that I’d be a little uneasy swallowing whole-heartedly the platform of either party. (Both generally and specifically: if you look at the platforms that each party puts out in a presidential election year, nobody completely buys them or remembers them.) This would all be academic if I thought I wanted to remain on the sidelines of the process as a mere voter. Some day, though, I would like to be a candidate, and parties like candidates with a long track record. Remember, I’m a pragmatist, so I’d rather find myself on the inside of a party that needs changing, than to be standing outside both parties, proudly independent from both but powerless to influence neither.
Neither party has ever had a lock on our country’s future or direction. California elected Schwarzenegger and Massachusetts elected Weld. The funny thing about 20th century America is that the pendulum always swung fully in both directions, and in Ohio in 2006 that pattern certainly continued. (As pollster Charlie Cook told me during a presentation at Nationwide, “Sometimes people lose just because they’re wearing the wrong color jersey. This year, you don’t want to be wearing a red jersey.”) So the good news for the truly crass, which excludes me, is that it doesn’t really matter which party you choose in the long run – they come out about the same. But that doesn’t help when it comes to actually choosing.
What’s a considerate citizen to do? So far there are no good answers, and I’m still thinking.