Did you ever notice something about modern-day, 21st century politics?
Increasingly, BOTH political parties seem to think that THEY know what’s best to for you — and they’ll give it to you, even if they have to shove it down your throat.
Dick Meyer, the Editorial Director of CBSNews.com, notices it. And in a must-read column on CBSNews.com he explores this attitude — and why it may mean the Democratic party may not do as well as it hopes it will in the 2006 mid-term elections.
Here’s a small taste of it 4 U:
For several weeks in a row there have been headlines like “Bush Approval Rating Hits New Low.” This week, it was CNN’s turn to break the news, with a poll showing just 32 percent who like the president’s performance and 60 percent who do not.
Poll numbers like this give Democrats hope. In fact, most Democratic hopes lately have come from their opponents’ vices and not their own virtues.
November will be the last time that voters can punish George Bush and I expect they will. I think that, however, is close to the limit of Democratic hopes for the medium-term future. Their progress will be determined by Republican regress.
My hunch is that Democrats will capture House and Senate seats but not the House or Senate. And if they do, the victory will be fleeting and they will do poorly in 2008.
Read why Meyer feels that way — something he picked up in the Democrats’ attitude and why he thinks that “thinking that you know what is in other people’s best interests is perhaps the worst political impulse that good people commonly have.” He explains the concept of “negative” and “positive” liberty.
The American political temperament, I think, has been molded over the centuries to have an uncanny ability to sniff out and reject the personality, if not the precise policies, of positive liberty – and its voice, which says: “I know what’s best for you.”
Both political parties have impulses in both directions.
Republican policies that echo the voices of positive liberty include public religiosity, laws to have the state and not individuals control abortion, No Child Left Behind and the conquering of Iraq in the name of bringing Iraqis the freedom they didn’t know they wanted.
Democrats are more likely to want to regulate what you eat and drink, dismiss the property rights that are infringed by taxation, declare that economic goals are rights or entitlements, and try to legislate more economic equality.
Which party is most in danger of alienating voters and why? Read his post in its entirety.
A hint:
Nobody likes a know-it all elephant.
And nobody loves a smart ass.
UPDATE: Dave Schuler has another MUST READ POST — responding to this one. He looks at Meyer’s piece and shows you how the less elitist candidate has won in presidential elections. A tiny taste of his broad-brush comments first:
Let me be frank: I find the tendency to elitism an extremely unappealing trait regardless of which party expresses it. And, as both Meyer and Joe suggest, I think that, because of the prevailing beliefs in the United States, it will be self-defeating for any party that adopts it. I distrust elitism since I believe that its inevitable concommitant is the conflation of self-interest with the common good and, consequently, the pursuit of power for its own sake. It calls out “Trust me! Think of all the great things I can do!� (without being too specific about what those great things are).
Consider the biographies of the last several presidential candidates of both political parties.
Now read his findings. They’ll open your glittering eye.
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.