Quiet Declarations

In my mind, Howard Dean’s ascendency to the role of DNC chairman represents intriguing possibilities for the Democratic Party. And by intriguing, I mean I have no idea what’s going on, but in advance of attending his upcoming lecture at Vanderbilt I thought I might try and figure it out.

It seems to me that Dean’s strength in — or I should say prior to — last year’s primary campaign had a great deal to do with a grassroots desire for passionate and unrelenting opposition to the current administration. Judging by his stated policy positions Dean is actually far more moderate than he is often portrayed, but he did a fantastic job positioning himself to fill a party void and is widely credited (and saddled) with forcing the entire pool of candidates leftward. Well, last winter Dean galvanized Democrats with a very different message than other party leaders, and now he’ll attempt to galvanize those same voters with a message that echoes the party leaders.

So what now? On the plus side, Dr. Dean has a wide base of support and a lengthy mailing list. He generates both energy and headlines. On the other hand, Dr. Dean is believed by many to be hopelessly radical, and some have even argued that a direct response to Deaniacs by infuriated conservatives played a significant role in shaping the November outcome. E.J. Dionne analyzes Dean’s chances for relevant success in an absolute home-run column. Of particular interest is Dean’s “must-do list” as Dionne understands it:

(1) Defeating the Bush Social Security plan;

(2) Establishing the Democrats as strong, tough and trustworthy in fighting terrorism and pursuing a responsible foreign policy;

(3) Asserting the party’s identification with moral values and religion;

(4) Holding fast to the party’s commitment to abortion rights and tolerance;

(5) Crafting an economic message to bring back socially conservative but financially pressed voters;

(6) Reinvigorating the party’s organization to match Karl Rove’s Republican machine, state by state, precinct by precinct;

(7) Building on the work in 2004 of outside groups such as MoveOn.Org and Americans Coming Together, because the old party politics are irrelevant to the future;

(8) Standing for something even if it’s unfashionable — such as the eradication of poverty — because voters are looking for strength and commitment, and don’t like candidates who speak Focusgroupese;

(9) Understanding the views of NASCAR dads, security moms, country-western music fans, gun owners, Southerners, country people and others who regard the Democrats as the party of overeducated, arrogant, Volvo-driving elitists.

Is enthusiasm for Dean representative of his ability to build grassroots support, or is it a vindication of take-no-prisoners opposition to all things Republican? It’s a legitimate question with broad implications for party direction. “Democrats run for your lives!” Screams the headline on Ted Van Dyk’s WSJ column that makes his opinion on the matter crystal clear:

If they cannot break free of Deanism–i.e., strident opposition to all things Bush–Democrats could find themselves by 2008 the party of Hollywood, Manhattan, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, Al Sharpton, Michael Moore, George Soros and high-culture media–but not of most Americans….

It is time to return to the old-fashioned way. Ask the questions: What are the needs of our country? What are our constructive proposals to meet them? How can we best push those proposals forward? If Democratic leaders and candidates ask those questions, and try seriously to answer them, voters may once again be prepared to let them govern.

But not all the evidence supports Mr. Van Dyk’s position. Take David Kirkpatrick’s recent piece on a possible retooling of the Democratic strategy on abortion issues, for example. He notes that party leaders such as Senator Clinton and Dr. Dean “have repeatedy signaled an effort to recalibrate the party’s thinking about new restrictions on abortion.” He also points to support for pro-lifers such as Minority Leader Harry Reid and DNC chairman contender Tim Roemer, in spite of opposition from single issue pro-choice groups, as a sign that the party may be searching for middle ground on at least one significant divisive issue.

Dr. Dean was just elected, so I suppose the jury is still out on the merits of his eventual strategy. I’ll be eagerly awaiting his visit to Nashville next month where I hope he’ll tell us more about how he plans to address these directional challenges.

Yesterday, according to The Tennessean, has been dubbed “Blue Monday”. Why, you ask? Because the Titans announced the release of high profile starters Derrick Mason, Samari Rolle, Kevin Carter, Fred Miller, Robert Holcombe and Joe Nedney. The moves will release $28 million from their salary cap figure in advance of the March 2 deadline to get under the cap. The City Paper quotes General Manager Floyd Reese’s explanation:

You can continue to [restructure contracts], and we explored it. We have spent time on it. We’ve looked at it up, down, inside, outside. We’ve evaluated it…. We’ve tried to make all the moving parts work. The parts won’t work. We can’t get it there. The second thing you do, and the most severe way, you make significant cap adjustments now, which, in essence, is what we’re going to do….

We want to take all the cap hits, we want to take all the acceleration, we want to take all the dead money, we want to take all the financial hits that we’re going to take now.

In other words, following the blueprint set three years ago by the evil Baltimore Ravens, the Titans have elected to solve their salary cap woes by imploding the team. You may recall that most of the released evil Ravens were picked up by the evil Raiders, significantly enhancing Oakland’s evilness factor. (The impact of said release on the evilness factor of the Ravens proved insignificant, due largely to their retention of murderer Ray Lewis.) Experts suggest that some of the released Titans will be picked up by the Jets — who already have former Titan wide receiver Justin McCareins and offensive coordinator Mike Heimerdinger — and after some reflection I can certainly live with supporting a Jets team made more virtuous and good through the acquisition of former Titans. At least one Titan, defensive end (and three-time team Community Man of the Year) Kevin Carter, is expected to renegotiate to stay in Nashville where he is incredibly involved and popular.

As for the Titans? Well, Reese responds by noting that next year “we’ll probably be the youngest team in the league.” I noted in at least one previous entry that the one silver lining in having all their expensive starters injured was that the rookies were learning how to take over in preparation for when all the expensive starters would all have to be released. Didn’t know if it would be this year or not, but guess we know now. I’m not worried. We have probably the best drafting and internal development of young players of any team in the league. Free agency means next to nothing to us — our rate of return on our draft picks has been outstanding in the last decade. This next year might be rough, but where Jeff Fisher takes his team I will as a loyal fan follow and I doubt I’ll be the only one.

Isn’t it about information and choice, at heart?

I’ve been quite disturbed recently by the degree to which public proponents of diversity and openness, among the most vocal of the self-proclaimed defenders of freedom, have exibited an extreme selectivity in their vocalization of alleged crimes against tolerance. Doesn’t it seem like any advocate of engaged discussion on controversial issues would give an equal place at the table to all viewpoints? Why then are critics of the Harvard president, in the ongoing saga I’ve already addressed below, attempting to claim the moral high ground for arguing that certain topics are outside the realm of “enlightened” discussion?

It happens every day, but in my world the examples seem to be falling locally as well as nationally of late. Here at Vanderbilt, my alma mater and current place of employment, the academic departments of sociology, communications, theatre and women’s studies co-sponsored a lecture by “performance artist and sexuality educator” Annie Sprinkle last Thursday. Honestly, I couldn’t be more pleased that these departments invited Dr. Sprinkle, a graduate of the three-semester Ph.D. program in Human Sexuality at the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, to continue their mission of exposing students to a more diverse array of opinions and possibilities. Unfortunately, I find myself skeptical that the generosity of these departments extends to as wide a spectrum of ideas as the eccentricity of this sponsorship decision suggests. It seems to me that a group or groups committed to pushing the boundaries of exposure and expanding our notions of acceptablility would welcome more than just the most ecclectic of opportunities.

We also forget, as we lose ourselves in discussions about free expression and the availability of diverse views close to home, that our debates should also include the freedoms of those we impact globally. In another example from Vanderbilt, campus opinion writer Chad Burchard frequently laments, as in his most recent column, what he claims to be a forced cultural exportation imposed by the West on its unsuspecting global victims. I thoroughly enjoyed Jacob Grier’s spirited rebuttal and subsequent discussion in which he questions why members of “western” culture, in their overarching concern for excessive “western” influence, make the arrogant presupposition that other cultures are undeserving of the choices from which we may benefit or suffer. What is more important than the ability to make independent decisions given the maximum possible level of information, communication and options for choice? The average American, one might argue, is considerably more “western” than she was twenty years ago. Were we subjected to some sort of cultural imposition? Were we victimized? I couldn’t begin to answer. But does this make us more “westernized” or are we simply living out the consequences — positive and negative — of increased and more educated choice? Absolutely positively the latter, in my humble opinon.

Exposure, communication, and choice as tools to enhance our education and subsequent enlightenment — aren’t these central goals of proponents of diversity and tolerance? I believe they are, and it’s precisely because they are that I believe these movements have considerable work to do internally as well as externally.

If you’re into game theory and you don’t watch Survivor, you should consider it — particularly this season, which has promised some changes in the rules to add unpredictability.

Case Study #1: To start last night’s episode, 20 castaways are rowing in a boat a considerable distance from shore. Jeff, the show’s host, pulls up in a speedboat and gives the only instructions. Loose paraphrasing: “Shore is that way. On the shore are two immunities from the first vote, one for a man and one for a woman. The first players to reach them claim them. You can work together, swim, row, whatever. The game is on.” What would you do?

Case Study #2: To vote off the first two players, the two players with immunity became team captains. Each is instructed to pick a player for his or her team, alternating between men and women. Each player picked will then choose the subsequent player for his or her team, again alternating between men and women. The last two players not picked will be eliminated. What would you do?

The can of worms is opened by Kevin Drum and continued in an excellent strategy breakdown over at Crooked Timber — I’m just a messenger!

So, Harvard finally released the transcript of remarks by Larry Summers at the NBER Conference that earned him a month (and counting) of visceral hatred by everyone who would naturally exude a visceral hatred at having presuppositions contrary to his remarks challenged in an academic forum. Here’s the most oft-quoted excerpt of relevance:

So my best guess, to provoke you, of what’s behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people’s legitimate family desires and employers’ current desire for high power and high intensity, that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination. I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong, because I would like nothing better than for these problems to be addressable simply by everybody understanding what they are, and working very hard to address them.

Gee, sounds like an unrestrained, poorly contrived, chauvinistic, off-the-cuff critical blow to the women’s movement to me.

Having followed the firestorm only tangentially, I have very little to add. Time ran a nice article on the controversy, but it doesn’t appear that any nonsubscribers or article pirates were diligent enough to copy it before it reverted to subscriber-only access. Kansas State, for whatever reason, has collected a decent compilation of news articles related to the crisis. And yes, it is a crisis — I hope there are students in public relations courses selecting this as a case study, because it’s a fantastic one. The president of arguably the most revered university in the world is supposed to duck potentially fatal bullets, not take them directly in the chest in the spirit of academia. More importantly, the public relations department of arguably the most revered university in the world is supposed to be able to worm its way out of this sort of press.

I suppose it’s possible that Harvard’s big whigs are going for the home run by trying to syphon the media energy from this story into some sort of advancement of their prestige — stand firmly on the side of righteousness via an academic freedom argument, then hope to benefit from good publicity in the long run. However, you don’t have to oppose Harvard’s stance to be extremely skeptical that the spin will turn positive for them on this issue. In any case, even if it’s a slow death this kind of media coverage is supposed to die eventually, so I don’t see the advantage of Harvard enduring a month of misery and then releasing this transcript all of a sudden. Perhaps Harvard should consider withdrawing from the NCAA or discovering a second moon or something to divert media attention to a new story.

My favorite assessment of the Harvard saga has by far been that of George Will, who wrote immediately after the story broke asserting that the president’s remarks have been overblown from the beginning. Indeed — from what I’ve read the reaction to Summers’ comments has been nothing less than a cheap attempt for certain parties to stifle a controversial viewpoint in the name of discrimination, as if attempting to frame a pluralistic discussion meant having the freedom to discuss all points of view except the ones that certain groups just really don’t want in the room.

Diversity, tolerance, free expression — all cliché buzzwords that make a lot of sense if they’re actually embraced by everyone, but “my best guess, to provoke you, of what’s behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is” that we sometimes view these words as cliché because they’re most often applied in specific situations in which they can be wielded as a weapon to achieve the motives of the user, and that in terms of practical application the actual selflessness or virtue of these concepts has been long forgotten. “I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong, because I would like nothing better than for these problems to be addressable simply by everybody understanding what they are, and working very hard to address them.”

[Update 2/19/05: Obviously links and comments on this subject are absolutely littering the web right now — but why let that stop me? Excellent analysis of Summers’ comments by Slate’s William Saletan, courtesy of Tyler Cowen.]

Like many, I’ve taken somewhat of a hiatus from politics in recent weeks but have recently become interested in returning to old habits. I�ll get my feet wet again by returning to a familiar theme and concluding several thoughts from a Part I that I so irresponsibly introduced only to leave uncompleted until now.

Watching the Democratic Party as it begins to mount its full-scale defense of social security in its present incarnation, I�m reminded of a recent David Brooks column comparing the party�s �Clintonites� to its �Gingrichians�. Brooks contends that the Clintonites are interested in proposing �third-way� solutions to prevalent issues in hope that they can win bipartisan support, while the Gingrichians are recycling the Republican Party�s 1995 playbook for healthcare and stonewalling all reform ideas as attempts to destroy an essential American entitlement. It seems clear, according to Howard Kurtz among others, that the Gingrichian strategy has been chosen. And while Josh Marshall may not have been in the room for the decision, his frequent updates on the �fainthearted faction� indicate that he and others are playing along.

Granted, I�m far more interested in a winning idea than winning party, but I�ve never been a big fan of the yield-no-ground strategy. Moreover, in this case it just seems like more of the same to me. After the election, some Democrats practically exploded from the woodwork with calls for a strategy to explain party values in a more inclusive manner. Take James Carville�s Christian Science Monitor breakfast remarks, for example:

“We have to treat the disease, not the symptom,” Carville said. “The purpose of a political party is to win elections, and we’re not doing that.” Carville said that the party’s concern about interest groups had resulted in “litanies, not a narrative.”

Even hard-liner Kos highlighted the importance of populism with liberalism by echoing this theme:

We need to develop a comprehensive philosophy — as a party, not a series of left-leaning groups — that naturally addresses whatever the issue of the day is as a function of Democratic values. I’m glad to see that Carville understands it — it’s up to us to ensure that his epiphany is shared by the rest of the Party’s leadership.

They weren�t the only ones trying to figure out how to inject a bit of realism into what in hindsight seemed to many an overconfident party idealism, but unfortunately (in my view) the message pushers were almost immediately shouted down by the muscle pundits. I agree with Kevin Drum that Democrats need to broaden their appeal �with a stronger vision and a stronger message, not by blindly nominating someone with the right accent.� (I might even further argue that to that extent John Edwards was somewhat exploited.) I can even express a rare show of support for Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) who rebuts the notion that Republicans can outmatch Democrats as the party of moral values � indeed I think the Democratic Party has an ample opportunity to paint itself as representing the practical interests of the people and to contend that doing so is essentially a moral mission.

I wonder, though� we know the public prefers a narrative to a litany, but does this imply that they prefer to hear ideology over practicality? Andrei Cherny thinks so, with respect to the Kerry campaign: �[I]t turned out that Americans weren’t very interested in Mr. Kerry’s campaign promises - perhaps because they no longer believe politicians will follow through on their commitments. They wanted to know instead how he saw the world. And we never told them.� But Barack Obama feels otherwise, as expressed on his post-election Meet the Press appearance:

The American people are a non-ideological people. They very much are looking for common-sense, practical solutions to the problems that they face. Oftentimes they’ve got contradictory senses of various issues and policy positions and I don’t think that either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party necessarily capture their deepest dreams when those parties are described in caricature or in policy terms.

Though I disagree with them, I should pay some lip service to the views of the defiant strategists who paint the election entirely as a function of poll responses to dominant issues. Kos, after two months to reflect, changed his tune to the broken record that national security and gay marriage drove too many persuadable voters to Bush and that the Democrats could combat this by �improving our national security brand and we must sharpen the differences on �values� to extract a price among social moderates from the GOP for their necessary courting of their �values� voters, lowering their pool of persuadables.� So, who else believes in making some minor repairs to the national security image, then darting leftward with a fistful of whatever �values� things nobody�s called dibs on yet? Paul Krugman, the accomplished economist who refuses to stick to his strength, as usual volunteers to be the most egregious offender. His column �No Surrender� appeared immediately after the election and struck a tone so unapologetic and beyond reality that it could almost be written off as entirely irrelevant were it not for the breadth of his readership:

One faction of the party is already calling for the Democrats to blur the differences between themselves and the Republicans. Or at least that’s what I think Al From of the Democratic Leadership Council means when he says, “We’ve got to close the cultural gap.” But that’s a losing proposition�. Democrats are not going to get the support of people whose votes are motivated, above all, by their opposition to abortion and gay rights (and, in the background, opposition to minority rights). All they will do if they try to cater to intolerance is alienate their own base�.

Rather than catering to voters who will never support them, the Democrats - who are doing pretty well at getting the votes of moderates and independents - need to become equally effective at mobilizing their own base. In fact, they have made good strides, showing much more unity and intensity than anyone thought possible a year ago. But for the lingering aura of 9/11, they would have won. What they need to do now is develop a political program aimed at maintaining and increasing the intensity. That means setting some realistic but critical goals for the next year.

Well, don�t let this surprise you, but I�m going to break ranks with these gentlemen and side with Thomas Frank of What�s the Matter with Kansas? fame as he completely laughs this notion off:

In nearly every election since [1972], liberalism has been vilified as a flag-burning, treason-coddling, upper-class affectation…. And yet, Democrats still have no coherent framework for confronting this chronic complaint, much less understanding it. Instead, they “triangulate,” they accommodate, they declare themselves converts to the Republican religion of the market, they sign off on Nafta and welfare reform, they try to be more hawkish than the Republican militarists. And they lose. And they lose again.

So what do we know about the Democratic Party�s potential to develop a winning strategy? In my opinion, we know first and foremost that a passionate coalition party didn�t beat a determined and well-oiled machine with a death-by-a-thousand-cuts strategy. Overall, its opponent was a reasonably effective wartime president presiding over an economy that wasn�t doing poorly enough to sufficiently legitimize the criticism levied against it and managing the power and organizational capacity of incumbency.

We also know that the party doesn�t have to write off its entire set of core beliefs to make winning changes. After all, the popular vote difference in the presidential election was only 3%, the Electoral College would have swung on a 75,000 vote shift, and House and Senate majorities are not insurmountably beyond reach.

But we know that something has to change. Consider what happened to Tim Roemer, who unsuccessfully rivaled Howard Dean for the DNC chairmanship. He astutely recognizes that Democrats lost 97 of the 100 fastest-growing counties in the U.S. and lost ground in demographic voting groups across the board. I don�t know whether he would have made a better chairman than Dean, but I do know that lessons aren�t being learned if groups like the National Organization of Women are willing to destroy his candidacy with an abortion litmus test, qualifications be damned. Believing oneself to be the �big tent� party is completely irrelevant if things are so raucous inside the tent that people prefer life outside.

We further know that defiance is destructive. A Democrat can believe she is right and have it mean absolutely nothing if she can�t win the debate � or worse, if she doesn�t believe she has to win it. James Carville is right on the money in asserting this point. �We lost because we didn�t say anything�. We�ve got to come to grips with the fact that we are an opposition party, and not a particularly effective one.� And the Democrats aren�t the opposition party because they don�t care about values, despite what exit polls may say. Democrats are the opposition party because they can�t seem to articulate a commonly identifiable set of values in a meaningful way, allowing the Republicans to wield values as a weapon against an adversary without a tactical defense.

Paul Starr describes destructive defiance in real terms as winning cases but losing voters. A Democrat who believes the substance of her politics had nothing to do with electoral defeat is living in a righteous yet useless world. In elections, thinking one is right is irrelevant � to win an argument one must be able to convince others, but equally important is that one care to convince others rather then write them off as the selfish or weak-minded naysayers. Think about the battles, and don�t get lost in the big tent in the process. Or, as Daniel Gilbert puts it, channel unhappiness productively instead of living in virtuous denial:

Many of the heroes and redeemers we most admire were unhappy people who found it impossible to change how they felt about the world - which left them no choice but to change the world itself. Outrage, anger, fear and frustration are unpleasant emotions that most of us vanquish through artful reasoning; but unpleasant emotions can also be spurs to action - clamorous urges that we may silence at our peril.

Common sense policies described in terms of values? An excellent idea effectively championed by Clinton � and in the absence of a completely values-insensitive fatal flaw that caused forces to marshall against him, a message that probably could have endured. Social justice is a good start on a party message � hating the religious right is not. Suggesting that one party reengage the other with clarity and purpose does not mean attempting to nonstrategically browbeat a formidable opponent into submission.

I�m not the only person with these opinions, of course. A post-election dialogue at Slate describes this mental shift on message at length and I agree with nearly all of the contributors. Bruce Reed offers this detailed breakdown of credible strategies Democrats should pursue. The arguments are all different, but they all tease out one similar theme above all that I completely support: a change in the nature of the dialogue. I�m speaking in generalized terms, of course � there�s a time and place for any party to play hardball � but no party whose most vocal constituencies dismiss their detractors as intellectually (or, dare I say it, morally) inferior can gain any sort of enduring ground.

If the hard-line position on social security is an isolated play for the Democrats based on a series of strategy sessions in a conference room somewhere, then that�s their business as a party seeking to gain ground. But if this is their long-term strategy for increasing national support, I�ll be watching with a heavy degree of skepticism and I don�t think I�ll be the only one.

I’ve spent way too much time playing with the Baby Name Wizard’s NameVoyager (link via Hit and Run) but I’m not ashamed at all — this thing is awesome! It sits on a very fluid engine so once it’s loaded it responds instantly to every letter you key, telling you just how trendy and cool your parents were trying to be when they named you. And whether or not they succeeded.

As I expected, my name was cool for all of 6 1/2 seconds; if you’ve met a guy named Chad born after 1983 you’ve accomplished a rare feat. Fortunately the actual name on my birth certificate is Charles, which at least carries with it some historical credibility despite having been overtaken by trendsetters. Check it out — you won’t be disappointed!

Slate’s Robert Weintraub pretty much sums up my feelings about this year’s Super Bowl. In the absence of having a team to actually root for I consider myself an AFC guy, but it’s really hard for me to support the idea of a Patriots dynasty. Who makes it a dynasty? You could root for the Steel Curtain or Troy and Emmitt or the greatest quarterback ever (that would be JOE MONTANA) but who do the Pats have? I firmly believe Belichick is responsible for, oh, about 100% of the team’s success and that a trained monkey could win Super Bowl MVP in his system, so Brady gets no props from me.

I couldn’t bring myself to support the Eagles because I don’t want anything good to happen to a city that randomly riots and burns itself to the ground for the most ridiculous of reasons. (Are you hearing me Detroit? Screw the Red Wings, same reason.) Sidebar: did you know that the Eagles have a jail and a judge to issue sentences in the basement of their stadium? Anyway, I’m glad the AFC won and the city of Philadelphia lost, but what a boring experience. Boring teams, boring ads, boring game. Wait — there was one good commercial — the NFL’s “Tomorrow” for reasons which should be obvious to any returning reader. Bring on the 2005 Titans, baby!