Are many analysts missing the true political story unfolding before our eyes? Is what we’re really seeing the exit of the Kennedy and Clinton dynasties and the entrance on the national stage of Senator Barack Obama as the first “true post-Reagan Democrat?”
Salon’s Walter Shapiro (one of the country’s best political columnists) thinks so – and he makes a good case that as the old media and new media cover the ongoing political horse-race, we’re focused on where the horses are in the race, and perhaps missing the true nature of the race.
It’s best to start with Shapiro’s final paragraph which clinches his argument:
But beyond uneasy personal relationships, Obama may regard the Clintons as an historical artifact of the 1990s. True, Obama has managed to survive primaries and caucuses in 48 states without ever revealing how much of his political philosophy is Clintonian moderation and how much is Kennedyesque liberalism. When it comes to middle-class tax cuts and a no-mandates healthcare plan, Obama cleaves to safe centrism. On Iraq and other foreign-policy issues, Obama is bolder and more inspirational. But maybe the real Obama difference is that — unlike Ted Kennedy and both the Clintons — the 46-year-old all-but-certain nominee is the first true post-Reagan Democrat.
What does he mean by that?
Shapiro convincingly argues that the guy who politically shook things up at the end of the 20th century was one Ronald Reagan. And, using that as a fact, Bill Clinton’s terms was essentially a reaction against Reaganism, an effort to reduce some of what Reagan did and a kind of Democratic party holding pattern — but a defense move against Reagan nonethless:
Actually, the leader most responsible for reshaping Democratic politics after Vietnam may well have been Ronald Reagan. Clinton’s entire presidency can be seen as an effort to take off the table most of the issues that Reagan used as cudgels against the Democrats — welfare, crime, permissiveness, budget deficits and big government. Once the healthcare reform debacle and the 1994 elections prompted Clinton to stop thinking about tomorrow and start brooding about yesterday, his cautious centrist approach to governing was mostly about building a bridge to the next election. Hillary Clinton (aside from her poll-propelled pander on the gasoline tax) has pointedly rejected triangulation on domestic issues during this campaign, more than matching Obama on any liberal policy grid.
Shapiro also notes the evolution of the Kennedys’ and Clintons’ political roles, which Americans are now watching as this political drama plays out. This includes a now-dismayed Bill Clinton (who as we’ve noted here seems to be increasingly red faced with anger and lashing out, periodically pitchforking himself into the headlines with some new controversy-sparking statement related to the Obama campaign):
Each day brings Hillary Clinton closer to publicly acknowledging that her own presidential ambitions are over or, at least, redeposited in a safe-deposit box with a long lease. Certainly, her maladroit comment last week about Bobby Kennedy’s assassination — even if it was wrenched out of context in a take-no-prisoners media environment — may well have been her presidential swan song. At the same time, her husband, the baffled 42nd president, is struggling with his new role as “Over-the-Hill Bill.” In an interview with People magazine, Bill Clinton admitted that he can no longer be trusted to speak “late at night” when he is “tired or angry” without issuing himself “Miranda warnings.
The Kennedys are still on the scene, but Senator Ted Kennedy is now starting what’s probably a long public goodbye. Was Bill Clinton the late 20th century Kennedy? Shapiro notes that the Clintons and Kennedys were not always on the same track:
Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton (more than Hillary) represent the two ends of the Democratic practical-politics spectrum. When Kennedy, unbowed in defeat, spoke to the 1980 Democratic Convention, he boldly declared, “I will continue to stand for a national health insurance … Let us resolve that the state of a family’s health shall never depend on the size of the nation’s wealth.” At the height of his greatest triumph, his smashing 1996 reelection victory over Bob Dole by 8 million votes, Bill Clinton devoted exactly two words to “health care” in his second inaugural address. With Newt Gingrich neutered and Monica Lewinsky still unknown, Clinton instead opted for poll-tested banalities like prattling about “personal responsibility” and proclaiming, “Government is not the problem and government is not the solution.”
Shapiro reminds us of something else as well: Teddy Kennedy for years had once been considered the Kennedy brother who didn’t quite make make it — who didn’t quite measure up to his two ill-fated brothers. BUT the youngest Kennedy since carved out solid reputation for himself to the extent that his name will come up when students take their political science courses in the future:
For more than three decades, Ted Kennedy has been a living refutation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s maxim about “no second acts in American life.” Ridiculed as the president’s dim-bulb youngest brother when he was handed a gift-wrapped Senate seat for his 30th birthday in 1962, and then reviled for his conduct on a tragic night at Chappaquiddick, Kennedy took an idiosyncratic path to becoming a senator worthy of a Capitol Hill legislative office building someday being named in his honor.
Rush and Sean and others who hate Kennedy due to his ideology never miss a chance to throw in a Chappaquiddick joke or reference, but, in fact Kennedy, evolved into a partisan Senator who has shown great bipartisan legislative flair and a Senator who is known as a solid legislative workhorse.
Shapiro raises then question about Hillary Clinton:
Hillary Clinton will probably not take her defiance-of-reality fight all the way to the Democratic Convention, as Kennedy did in his scorched-earth struggle against Jimmy Carter in 1980. But she will soon face a similar second-act career dilemma. Will the next four or eight years merely be a holding action as she plots a final assault on the White House? Will she stalk a would-be President Obama much as Kennedy shadowed Carter? Or will she follow Kennedy’s later and wiser example by deciding that her ambitions can be sated by waging the good fight in the Senate — a body where the current majority leader, Harry Reid, is not exactly the stuff of Statuary Hall.
Both the Clintons and the Kennedys are influenced by a certain era in politics.
Even in political style: Kennedy remained the modern Happy Warrior who could move partisan crowds, and in the same appearance quickly turn and smile and wink at an associate on the podium as if to say “Isn’t this really fun? Isn’t this what it’s all about?” The issues and process of politics seemed to amaze and delight him. It’s the old Bostonian politics.
The Clintons talk more in the political idiom of late 20th century politics. When Bill Clinton first ran, he had the “Happy Warrior” aura about him. But of late he is the angry — can we use the word “bitter?” — Combatant. And Hillary Clinton has been more scrappy than Happy most of the time. Hillary Clintlon’s present campaign is a late 20th century campaign within the context of influences such as the late Republican strategist Lee Atwater, John McCain’s informal political advisor and Bush guru Karl Rove, and Democratic strategists Paul Begala and James Carville.
This year has felt truly different in politics and if there is one factor that screams out it has been this: the conventional wisdom has not been as trustworthy this year.
If, as Shapiro says, Obama is the first “true” Post-Reagan Democrat who has the luxury of having been handed the Kennedy family torch, then many of the conventional wisdoms that are being applied and will be applied could be less trustworthy than ever. Trusting the new and old media conventional wisdom too much could be akin to trying to listen to AM radio on an FM station.
None of this is to say that Obama — if he gets the nomination — will win. Presumptive GOP nominee Senator John McCain is appealing to independent voters — and his win could hinge on whether he can convince voters he is a post-Bush Republican or a Bush Republican trying to put distance between himself and the President so he won’t lose the election.
But Shapiro is correct: if we’re not seeing the actual exit of the Kennedys and Clintons, we’re seeing them leave center stage as new scenery is being put in place for a new act. With some new actors.
Will the new show be a big hit? Or will it bomb?
We can all read the many reviews on election day.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.