Saturday, November 20, 2004
Moderates in the news...
...and, of course, in the blogosphere.
Before getting into the bulk of this post, I need to get something off my chest about Colin Powell. Which is, first (and to reiterate what I said in an earlier post), Welcome aboard the good ship Moderation, Colin! We need all the instantly recognizable public faces we can get!
But second, man, I hate, hate, hate what happened to Powell as Secretary of State. More precisely, I am appalled not by what "happened to" him; I am appalled by what he did.
If you go back several Presidential election cycles, you'll find Powell's name cropping up on all kinds of lists of candidates-who-aren't-really-candidates. He encouraged this kind of talk, while at the same time playing coy with his actual political affiliation. To see him eventually throw in his lot with GWB's gang as Secretary of State was, well, grotesque. Why? Because in the analyses of the period, he was widely ballyhooed as a foreign-policy hawk but a domestic-policy dove. Installing him at State was a typically (as we've come to see) Rovian-genius ploy: seeming to bring him on board as a voice of moderation, but putting him in place exactly where he'd have no say or even influence on those issues on which he is (or was) moderate. What unspeakable crap.
Then we saw of course how he was further marginalized -- make that "gutted," since his performance can be characterized only as gutless -- by the whole "Here's why we need to war with Iraq" presentation at the UN. (To quote Firesign Theatre: "Oh Nick -- what a tool I was!")
So to reiterate: Yeah, welcome aboard, Colin. We've missed you. But if the you we've missed was never the real you in the first place, please -- go join the Reform Party or something.
Whew. And ahem, as I was saying...
A handful of pretty good recent discussions along the lines of "Where do we go from here" for you take a look at:
Before getting into the bulk of this post, I need to get something off my chest about Colin Powell. Which is, first (and to reiterate what I said in an earlier post), Welcome aboard the good ship Moderation, Colin! We need all the instantly recognizable public faces we can get!
But second, man, I hate, hate, hate what happened to Powell as Secretary of State. More precisely, I am appalled not by what "happened to" him; I am appalled by what he did.
If you go back several Presidential election cycles, you'll find Powell's name cropping up on all kinds of lists of candidates-who-aren't-really-candidates. He encouraged this kind of talk, while at the same time playing coy with his actual political affiliation. To see him eventually throw in his lot with GWB's gang as Secretary of State was, well, grotesque. Why? Because in the analyses of the period, he was widely ballyhooed as a foreign-policy hawk but a domestic-policy dove. Installing him at State was a typically (as we've come to see) Rovian-genius ploy: seeming to bring him on board as a voice of moderation, but putting him in place exactly where he'd have no say or even influence on those issues on which he is (or was) moderate. What unspeakable crap.
Then we saw of course how he was further marginalized -- make that "gutted," since his performance can be characterized only as gutless -- by the whole "Here's why we need to war with Iraq" presentation at the UN. (To quote Firesign Theatre: "Oh Nick -- what a tool I was!")
So to reiterate: Yeah, welcome aboard, Colin. We've missed you. But if the you we've missed was never the real you in the first place, please -- go join the Reform Party or something.
Whew. And ahem, as I was saying...
A handful of pretty good recent discussions along the lines of "Where do we go from here" for you take a look at:
- Diary (plus comments) over at the Daily Kos, headed "Democrats and Republican Moderates"
- At the Left Coaster, the diarist known as pessimist looks to Barbara Boxer as a template for electable moderates. (In the recent "election," she garnered more votes for her Senate seat than any candidate in the country, for any office.)
- In yet another excellent discussion on the Daily Kos, diarist MCinTX suggests a superb soundbite-sized slogan for Democrats: Democrats for Quality of Life.
- In The New Republic, Eliot Spitzer considers the evidence about the relevance of "values" in the recent election (and finds it wanting). [Note: Subscription required to read more than the teaser.]
- In Bill Clinton's speech at the dedication of his Presidential Library, he gives us some hard-to-ignore advice. (But gawd, Bill, did you have to fawn over the Bushes so much? Well, yes, of course -- I know that courtesy demanded something like it. It did clang off-tune in my ears, though.)
