What this country needs is a great political party--one I propose to name the Democratic Party, after what used to be a great political party. And what, you might ask, do we do with the organization that currently represents itself as a party with the same name? Like movie cowboys who, with great reluctance, end the suffering of a faithful horse, we could pull a gun, avert our eyes, and put it out of its misery. Or we could take it to court on the grounds that it has been illegally impersonating an opposition party.
This may sound harsh for someone who has been a lifelong Democrat, as was my father, an immigrant from Lebanon who served as mayor of Wood, South Dakota, for 16 years. My first vote when I turned 21 went to Adlai Stevenson, and I ran in five elections as a Democrat in Republican South Dakota. The only Republican I've ever voted for, at least for high office, was Gerald R. Ford--his was the only name Richard Nixon offered to the Senate for vice president after Spiro Agnew resigned.
But I've gone from being a partisan zealot to a voter who today believes the only way to distinguish between Senators Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) and Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) is Thurmond's hair transplant.
With few exceptions--Howard Metzenbaum, Ted Kennedy, Nebraska's Bob Kerrey, George McGovern, Henry B. Gonzales, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower, and Mario Cuomo come to mind--the Democrats have lost their nerve, their ability to debate the issues, their desire to compete. Beyond that, they've lost touch with the old coalition of minorities and working people that made the Democrats the party that set the standard both for humanity and for knowing how to win elections.
Democrats are rapidly moving from the position of a proud majority to a whimpering minority, and with each year their slide accelerates more rapidly. I agree with those analysts who say that the Democratic Congress is now so comfortable with its near-perpetual majority that it has lost its will to oppose.
Congressional timidity, ineffectual imitation of the Right, and "me-too-ism" on the part of Democratic presidential candi-dates are some of the major reasons that only one Democrat has won the presidency since the 1964 election. Some have blamed it on the overpowering Reagan presence, but the cowardice of Democratic office seekers began long before Reagan. In 1968 Hubert Humphrey moved up in the polls from certain defeat to near victory only when he broke from Lyndon Johnson and began to denounce American involvement in the Vietnam War. Had he done so earlier, American political history would have been much different. In 1972 McGovern's brand of stand-up politics was overwhelmed by a combination of Nixon's incumbency and the participation of major portions of the national media in the anti-McGovern hyster-ia so cleverly created by Nixon and his hatchet men.
Even though Gerald Ford was a severely wounded incumbent when he ran in 1976, Jimmy Carter's victory came while he was advertising himself as a liberal. His defeat in 1980 was due, I believe, to a combination of the Iranian hostage crisis and his four years as a finger-to-the-wind president, during which his politics ultimately moved to the right.
Walter Mondale lost in 1984 against the mojo of Ronald Reagan's incumbency, a race which perhaps no other Democrat could have won; and Dukakis was defeated in 1988 in a race which perhaps no other Democrat could have lost. His effort to stake out the political Right against George Bush prompted comedian Jackie Mason to say that if he wanted to vote for a Republican, he didn't need Michael Dukakis to act as a middle-man.
WE NEED TO LOOK beyond the abilities--or the lack thereof-of the Democratic presidential candidates-- and examine the party's leadership as a whole. Economist Felix Rohaytn told The New York Times: "The Democrats share power; they do not seek it. Seeking power requires submitting alternatives to the voters and competing for their allegiance; sharing power is an entirely different role. The Democratic leaders...are part of an existing power structure, almost a coalition government with a Republican administration."
When there is no Democratic president in power, it is the Democrats in Congress who make up the most visible part of the party. It is crucial for a presidential candidate to have members of their own party in Congress set the stage for a campaign. What, then, has happened to the competitive urge of the Democrats in Congress? Why do they provide little or no opposition to the near-permanent Republican president? Why is there no debate on national issues? Quite simply, the influence of political action committee (PAC) money has dulled their edge, making them ineffective or removing them almost entirely as a factor from presidential elections.
I left the Senate not so many years ago, in 1979, but I would never have imagined then, in the heady days of the 1970s, that there would have been so much congressional silence at the prospect of so juicy a scandal as the recent Savings and Loan robbery. But those members of Congress in the best position to excoriate the administration for its malfeasance with respect to Savings and Loan fraud have been themselves in the scandal up to their ears.
Who could have predicted that corruption in the Pentagon and at HUD (Housing and Urban Development) would have come in and out of the news without so much as a whimper of protest from the Democrats in Congress? I waited, in vain as it turned out, for a modern-day Frank Church, or a Bill Proxmire, to sink his teeth into that bit of grand, grand larceny; but nothing happened.
During the eight years of the Reagan presidency, the only real challenge from Congress came when old Ronbo and his gang were caught in what is known as the Iran-Contra affair. Congressional committees were formed to take on the president, but the inquiry sputtered to a frustrating end when the committee members were seen on national televi-sion quavering before a blustering Oliver North. Even had they not been frightened by North's bravado, many members of the committee lost their standing to criticize the act of sending arms to the contras, primarily because they sympathized to the point that they had consistently voted with Reagan on the issue.
What has happened to new ideas the Democrats have been so famous for ever since Franklin Roosevelt? In discussing the lack of policy innovation by Democrats, New York Senator Daniel Moynihan was recently quoted in The Washington Post as blaming it on the Reagan-Bush budget deficit. "The deficit was deliberately designed to create a protracted crisis, " Moynihan said, "to deprive the Democrats of the wherewithal to do anything. "
True, but what Moynihan doesn't say is that it was the Democrats in Congress--in particular the Democratically controlled House of Representatives--who gave Reagan every budget and program he asked for, and then some. Even when it was publicly confirmed by Reagan's former budget director David Stockman that Reaganomics was nothing more than a world-class scam, the Democrats were afraid to vote against Reagan's wishes. Of course they knew that his tax-cuts-for-the-rich were bad for the country. Certainly they knew that deficits would be damaging to the social programs they in-stinctively favored, but they voted Reagan's way despite that knowledge.
It was a perfect example of elected representatives voting against the country's interest to save themselves. They were, of course, convinced by Reagan and his public relations machine that his ability to communicate to the country would do them in at the polls if they voted against him.
Not only did the Democrats give Reagan all the money he wanted for his 600-ship Navy, but some members of Congress added more money than even the administration asked for to fund favorite projects of their own. It was, at times, even embarrassing--for the Pentagon, which was reluctant to say no to such boundless generosity. And in this time of the disappearing national security threat, I still wait for some Democrat--any Democrat--to lead the charge against George Bush's ongoing wartime defense budget. The liberal Democrats in Congress are so timorous that, until recently, when Ohio Senator Howard Metzenbaum decided to organize a small opposition group among Democratic members of Congress, it had been left to Sam Nunn, the conservative, pro-defense-spending Democrat from Georgia, to offer a mild alternative to Bush's spending plans.
THERE IS A NEW BREED of politician inhabiting the Democratic Party, a breed not much different from the kind being produced by the Republicans. They are overly ambitious, poll-reading technocrats--all of them apparently having had viscerectomies. Their creation is derived from the existence of the new method of financing elections--political action committees (a "reform" which I supported, regrettably, when I was in the Senate).
Because PAC contributions are so narrowly aimed, and because winning elections and staying in office have become more important than life itself, whoever can gather the most money for (or against) a candidate generally gets what he or she wants from the legislative branch. There are very few, if any, poor people's PACs, which severely limits the influence of the poor, which is why I'm amazed when Congress passes any legislation favoring them.
It should not surprise anyone, given our money-driven political system, that the Golden Rule--"them that's got the gold makes the rules"--applies more and more in American politics. Not only are Democratic members of Congress afraid of the communicating power of a Republican president, but they are afraid that challenging his positions might result in a shifting of PAC loyalties from them to their opponents. It's no surprise that California congressman Tony Coelho was revered by his Democratic colleagues, not for his stand on the issues, but for his considerable money-gathering talents. Neither Coelho (who resigned in 1989 amid questions about his financial ethics) nor the congressional recipients of his fund raising were concerned with the source of the money. What was important was the amount.
Ironically, beyond their fear of the president, it's this current system of private financing of elections which has contributed a great share of the cowardice of the Democrats in Congress. Why then, cannot a Democratically controlled Congress pass public financing over the objections of a Republican minority? As a freshman senator in 1973, I proposed in the caucus of Senate Democrats that we push through legislation calling for total public financing of elections. The idea was opposed both by old, northern liberals who were committee chairs and young, southern conservatives--all of whom agreed that in their states the Republican opposition could never raise enough money to run a successful race against them.
I know of no prescription that would restore political courage to Democrats in Congress when it comes to facing down a Republican president. But public financing would at least give them the freedom to oppose the influence of corporate and other special-interest PAC money which has dominated Congress since the late 1970s.
Public financing legislation will, however, be one of the most difficult of campaign reforms, since each member sees it as an eventual threat to terminate his or her congressional pension plan. After all, if you are a member of the House of Representatives, and under the present system you have a 98 percent chance of being re-elected, why would you vote to change it? As matters now stand, only death, retirement, or indictment will remove you from office--and even then, not all indictments. But they'll pass it if they're threatened with defeat if they don't.
WHAT IS CONTINUALLY AMAZING to me is that while the rank-and-file members of the national Democratic Party are to the left of their leadership--both members of Congress as well as their presidential candidates--those who rule the party are either too afraid or too conservative to carry out the party's mandate. They believe, wrongly as it turns out, that they must abandon the positions they've taken in the primaries in order to appeal to Independents and moderate Republicans. But as Reagan showed us, maintaining your principles as a presidential candidate more often than not is rewarded by enough votes to win.
Most federal officeholders are nominated by the party and run as liberals, but are soon brought into line by the monied interests and an aggressive president. They emulate Republicans without fear of losing their own party's backing because, as many of them reason, the Democrats have nowhere else to go. In a sense, that's an accurate assessment by Democratic candidates, mostly because rank-and-file Democrats find their Republican, opponents unpalatable. Will there come a time that the imitation of Republican conservatives by congressional Democrats becomes so odious that it really doesn't matter who is in office?
That's no real way to run a country. If Democratic candidates insist on imitating Republicans, I would recommend only one area where doing so might be beneficial for the country. Ronald Reagan and his right-wing allies stood on principle for years, no matter that their principles meant destroying America. They lost election after election, until finally they took power, their success coming largely because Reagan was perceived as standing for something--anything--even though few were particularly fond of what he stood for.
Even though Reagan himself moved to the left a bit after he discovered the realities by which the world is governed, he consistently came across to the public as decisive and righteous. Those qualities seemed to be more important to the voters than his positions, with which most of the public disagreed; in particular his war on Nicaragua and his tax cuts for the rich.
Interestingly, surveys taken by polling firms consistently show that the public, especially those who call themselves Democrats, favor what is called "liberal" legislation, but do not identify themselves as liberal. Even the president of the Heritage Foundation, that bastion of right-wing thinking, recently proposed a negative income tax similar to George McGovern's much-maligned thousand-dollar plan of 1972. Yet leaders in the Democratic Party fear to tread on what they consider to be dangerous ground.
Comedian Pat Paulsen used to say that he was running for president just to find out whose side the other candidates were on. He never reported his results, but he put his finger on how the public feels about national politicians. There are very few politicians working today who give me the feeling that any principle, no matter how high, takes priority over their own survival. It is this lack of commitment to the public interest that is causing the Democratic Party to crumble before our very eyes.
Yet such commitment is, I believe, the necessary prescription for its revival. The opposition the Democrats ought to provide, and the debate that would result from a strong Democratic Party, is essential for the political and economic health of our country.
In the words of Jim Hightower, before we organize a third party, maybe we should first have a second one.
James G. Abourezk is a former U. S. senator from South Dakota (1973-79). He is founder and chair of the Washington, D. C.-based Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, and his most recent book is Advise & Consent: Memoirs of South Dakota and the U. S. Senate (Lawrence Hill Books, New York).
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