In 2003, a lot of us were saying, where is the link between Saddam and bin Laden? What does Iraq have to do with 9/11? We knew it was bullshit. Which is why it drives me crazy to hear all these Democrats saying, "We were misled." It makes me want to shout, "Fuck you, you weren't misled. You were afraid of being called unpatriotic."One can, I suppose, make the argument that it wouldn't have mattered anyway whether Dems opposed the war vehemently or no—the neocons wanted it and they weren't going to have any two ways about it. And I'm not sure, "I told you so" is a much better political position than, "you lied to us!" Both are marks of ineptitude.
I think Clooney and others who pound on about this idea that what the Democratic Party needs is simply more backbone—one could practically call it the Russ Feingold school of liberalism—are misdirected.
I've spent the past three and a half months or so in Indiana, and I've talked a fair amount of politics with friends and adults who are mostly moderate or conservative. The thing that these people fault in the Democratic leadership is not their lack of spirit or fight or even coherence, but that they can't get anything done. This may seem like the same thing, but you really don't need to be feisty to be successful; you don't have to be a maverick to get results.
American politics has only rarely had a place for valiant but futile opposition, and those times have mainly been instances of demagoguery and were shortlived. America does not care about combative losers.
Housekeeping: I will be gone for the next week in Austin, TX for the South by Southwest Music and Film Festival(s). For Dartmouth students, I hope you will have as good a break as I will.
Update: Clooney claims that this post was not of his doing. Huffington claims he ok'd it but didn't write it. Clooney's publicist replied, "George Clooney does not make statements. He answers questions."
Now that I think a little bit more, this seems like a chicken or the egg problem--which must Dems show first--their willingness to stand up publicly even if they're going to lose or their ability to get things done. I personally think that they can get things done by pushing for issues that draw bipartisan support but have actual meaning (unlike Hillary's attempt to crack down on videogame violence, for example). They can look like effective leaders without opposing the Republicans; they just have to be creative. But I'm sorry, failed efforts at standing up to the big, bad conservative stranglehold are still failures, and middle America sees them as such.
ReplyDeleteThe Huffington Post is kind of an interesting collection of stuff.
ReplyDeleteClooney more or less proclaims in the first 2 paragraphs that he's going to spend the rest of the piece beating a strawman. It's hard to take him seriously after that. I don't know anyone who "run[s] away" from being called a liberal. I imagine it's even harder to find such people in Hollywood, unless they just have a general aversion to labels. And then there are such gems as "one of the things we absolutely need to agree on is the idea that we're all allowed to question authority." Good job, George. Way to "speak truth to power," "take a stand against the lies," or whatever the current catch phrase is.
The current criticism of liberals isn't that they're unpatriotic, it's that they're vacuous, lack ideas or a plan, and do nothing but criticize without offering solutions. Based on the content of Clooney's piece, that's the label he seems to be embracing.
I think that the Democrats probably have people in their party who are willing to stand up publicly, be creative, fight for what they think is "right" without worrying too much about whether they'll win, etc. With roughly half the country in their corner as a talent pool, I'd be surprised if they had no one like that. They need to push those people forward. Stop marginalizing the Bill Bradleys and Barack Obamas and promoting the John Kerrys and Michael Dukakises, and I think that'll be a step in the right direction.