Trey Ellis: Who will lead the Democrats?
Trey Ellis, novelist, screenwriter and essayist, wants to know who will lead the Democrats out of the wilderness.... Everyone these days has a theory as to why the Democratic Party refuses to actually stand for anything anymore. New York Times columnist David Brooks recently asserted that there are two camps of Dems: the virulent Bush bashers (see John Kerry) and the more-forward-thinking populists (see John Edwards). Conversely Matt Bai in his recent Sunday New York Times Magazine profile of Hilary sees the Democratic rift as between “insiders” and “outsiders.” Outsiders, he explains, are the perpetually angry “netroots” liberal bloggers who froth at the mouth every time the inside-the-beltway “appeasers” make nice with the evil Republican monolith. Senator Obama recently weighed in on the Daily Kos defending the insiders and, as Hilary did before him when she addressed the DLC, asked the hotheaded outsiders to please stop attacking every Democrat who does anything more than lament and obstruct. For my money Salon’s Daou report has done the best job giving color commentary on the struggle for the soul of this Party.I don’t believe that the dichotomy is so simple. To me, the real problem with the Democratic Party today is that it is a body politic without a head. We have several prospective Presidential candidates for ’08 all acting like NASCAR drivers: nobody wants to be in the lead early, instead they all prefer to draft off the bumper of somebody else. The problem is they’re not just racing each other. The more important race is for the future direction of this country and even though many top Republicans these days are scraping paint off the walls, in perilous danger of crashing, the Democrats aren’t even in the race. ...
posted by Paul Wilczynski @ 1:42 PM
2 Comments:
Robert Reich has made the point that the Bush White House is more interested in politics than goverance. Is it possible that our problem is that the Democrats are not essentially different.
Perhaps they are more interested in political positioning, and less interested in giving leadership. Giving leadership is becoming an rare characteristic of our body politic, do we breed it out of our politicians in Washington, or does it happen in grade school.
Personally, I think that Democratic politicians believe that their positions should be so obvious to everyone that they don't have to explain them. A long time ago, they let the Republicans usurp phrases like "family values" and "pro-life" without a wimper. The Republicans have been brilliant at "framing" their message, and the Democrats have been abysmally bad at it.
I believe some people are natural leaders, no matter which party. I think Bill Clinton was one, as was Ronald Reagan. We currently have very few Democrats who come across as natural leaders. Al Gore doesn't ... Howard Dean certainly doesn't. To my mind, the closest person we have that comes across as a natural leader is Hillary.
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