When Liberals Stop Being Wimps
ELON, N.C. — Conservatives are not accustomed to being on the defensive.
They have long experience with attacking the evils of the left and the abuses of activist judges. They love to assail “tax-and-spend liberals” without ever discussing who should be taxed or what government money is actually spent on. They expect their progressive opponents to be wimpy and apologetic.
So imagine the shock when President Obama decided last week to speak plainly about what a Supreme Court decision throwing out the health care law would mean, and then landed straight shots against the Mitt Romney-supported Paul Ryan budget as “a Trojan Horse,” “an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country,” and “thinly veiled social Darwinism.”
Obama specifically listed the programs the Ryan-Romney budget would cut back, including student loans, medical and scientific research grants, Head Start, feeding programs for the poor, and possibly even the weather service.
Romney pronounced himself appalled, accusing Obama of having “railed against arguments no one is making” and “criticized policies no one is proposing.” Yet Romney could neither defend the cuts nor deny the president’s list of particulars, based as they were on reasonable assumptions. When it came to the Ryan budget, Romney wanted to fuzz things up. But, as Obama likes to point out, math is math.
And when Obama went after the right’s willingness to use the power of the Supreme Court for ideological purposes, conservatives were aghast — and never mind that conservatives have been castigating activist judges since at least the 1968 presidential campaign.
Thus did a headline on a National Review article by John Fund read: “Obama makes Berkeley liberals look like statesmen.” My, my. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger argued that it appeared to be “unprecedented” for a U.S. president to have “attacked the Supreme Court before it handed down its decision.”
Perhaps conservative pundits couldn’t stand the fact that Obama called them out explicitly. “I’d just remind conservative commentators,” he said, “that for years what we’ve heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint — that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example.” Yes, it is.
Now it’s true that after Obama spoke, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney placed some limits on the president’s claim that knocking down the Affordable Care Act would be “an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”
Carney explained that Obama was “referring to the fact that it would be unprecedented in the modern era of the Supreme Court, since the New Deal era, for the Supreme Court to overturn legislation” on a “matter of national economic importance.”
And that is precisely the point. What’s lost in our discussions of judicial activism is that in the period from the Gilded Age after the Civil War to the middle of the New Deal, it was conservative Supreme Court majorities that nullified progressive laws aimed at regulating the economy and expanding the rights of workers and consumers. The threat now is a return to pre-New Deal conservative judicial activism.
In fact, Obama’s statements are moderate compared with those of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who unsuccessfully sought to add members to the court after it had voided one New Deal law after another.
The Constitution, Roosevelt insisted, is “a layman’s document, not a lawyer’s contract.” Its ambiguities had created “an unending struggle between those who would preserve this original broad concept of the Constitution” and those who “cry ‘unconstitutional’ at every effort to better the condition of our people.”
The United States, FDR insisted, could not afford “to sacrifice each generation in turn while the law catches up with life.” He spoke with a sense of urgency in the midst of the Great Depression. “The millions who are in want,” he said, “will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach.”
FDR lost the court-packing fight but won the larger battle over the right of the democratic branches of government to legislate on behalf of the common good.
Progressives would be wildly irresponsible if they sat by quietly while a conservative Supreme Court majority undid 80 years of jurisprudence. Roosevelt wasn’t a wimp, and Obama has decided that he won’t be one, either. Conservatives are unhappy because they prefer passive, intimidated liberals to the fighting kind.
E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne(at)washpost.com. (c) 2012, Washington Post Writers Group. His column is licensed to run on TMV in full.
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Oy. And. Vey.
This from a guy who took to the fainting couch over Pres. Obama’s contraceptive mandate?
Puh-leaze.
Op-ed columnist, heal thyself.
While I agree with the overall sentiments expressed, I must take issue with the idea that conservatives aren’t used to being on the defensive.
Whether it is railing against the liberal media, “castigating activist judges” (as you phrase it), or the ivory tower elite, conservatives can always fall back on claiming they’re the victims of some grand conspiracy. For example, Speaker Boehner is losing control (if he ever had it) of Majority Leader Cantor’s “young guns” and Tea Partiers, leaving congress paralyzed and unable to pass even essential legislation like budgets or transportation funding. However, when pressed on the lack of any congressional competency, Republicans divert to familiar territory; a contraception debate where they can cry Brave New World liberals want to destroy religious freedom. When pressed further, its President Obama’s fault for not reaching across the isle (though Republicans “left him at the alter” in debt ceiling deals and where allowed to whither the ACA).
I agree, conservatives prefer “passive, intimidated liberals.” But when conservatives are in power, they’ll claim whiny liberals are obstructing the will of the people. When conservatives are in the minority, it is a crushing liberal conspiracy. While Democrats play this game to an extent, conservatives have made constant victimization into a true art.
Liberals have never been wimps, where is Dionne getting this?
DG: I think he’s getting it from the Bush tax cuts and much of the 2000′s decade. Meanwhile, I will applaud Obama if he keeps up his newly-discovered back bone. It is long past the time when he should have told the R’s to take a flying leap off a short pier.
Btw, in case you guys missed it, the Freshman Republicans are taking credit for the economy have slow but steady gains.
Making it up, of course. I don’t think Dionne’s writing is meant to be taken literally. You’re supposed to suspend disbelief and not ask what his terms mean or how justified his generalizations are, and instead just let the emotion wash over you.
Sure they have. They allowed the Bush tax cuts to get an extension when clearly they should have been done away with. They sit there while the GOP makes outrageous and easily disprovable claims about the effects of the policies they propose and who’s doing the obstruction in DC. Mostly I chalk this up to really crappy leadership from Pelosi and Reid. Why oh why couldn’t the GOP have found someone other than Sharon Angle to run? They really need to take their party back from the Tea Party brigade.
I made the mistake of saying the liberals have never been wimps, when of course there have been times when some have. Overall though I don’t see liberals as being afraid to speak their mind or acting submissive.
Bill and Hillary Clinton are not wimps, Pelosi was not a wimp pushing through the ACA, Obama was not a wimp giving the OK to take out Bin Laden or escalating the war in Afghanistan. There would be numerous other examples and I disagree with Dionne’s blanket portrayal.
I don’t think Dionne is talking about the actions of liberals as much as he is talking about their tendency to hold back and let the right define the discussion.
A famous example of this is Kerry ignoring the Swift Boaters– another would be Obama ignoring the birthers- both clearly felt that responding was beneath them. These days you have to get down and dirty in the trenches and respond to the right wing– blow for blow
Excellent column EJ. Right smack on the money!
“Perhaps conservative pundits couldn’t stand the fact that Obama called them out explicitly.”
Of course they couldn’t, they aren’t used to having their BS thrown back in their faces. More of this please.