[Vision2020] Disorganization Matches Diversity

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (November 25, 2006) Spokesman Review -

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Disorganization matches diversity
Steven Conn 
History News Service
November 25, 2006

It was during Franklin Roosevelt's first term that Will Rogers is said to
have joked: "I am a member of no organized political party - I am a
Democrat."

As the dust of this momentous midterm election settles, that joke has been
resurrected to describe the dilemma of the incoming Democratic majorities in
both congressional houses. After all, many of the new Democratic members of
Congress seem to sit to the right of the Democratic leadership on a whole
host of issues. How can these Democrats govern, puzzles the punditocracy,
since they are clearly so riven and disorganized?
 
The implicit answer, at least in much media analysis, is they can't. But
this consensus seems willfully to ignore the history of Congress across much
of the 20th century. Will Rogers said his party wasn't organized; he didn't
say it was ineffective.

Between 1932 and 1994, Congress was ruled by Democrats except for a few
years in the middle '40s, early '50s, and the Senate in the '80s, and the
Democrats who controlled those Congresses were always messy, unwieldy
coalitions. As president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt fashioned a Democratic
majority that included labor unions, the elderly, urban ethnics, blacks and
white Southern conservatives. Strange bedfellows indeed.

Far from being the bastion of liberal special interests groups, as the party
has been caricatured by so many commentators, the Democrats in Congress were
usually led by their conservatives and pragmatists. More often than not,
since 1932, the Democratic House speakers came from places like Alabama and
Texas, and the longest serving (1961-77) Democratic Senate majority leader
was Mike Mansfield from that hardly left-wing stronghold of Montana. In
other words, Democrats have always managed to balance their congressional
leadership ideologically.

Yet this motley assortment of Democratic politicians managed to work
together enough to create the New Deal, including the Social Security
program; fight and win World War II; pass the Civil Rights and Voting Rights
acts; and get man to the moon. While the Democratic big tent might often
have resembled a three-ring circus, those Congresses managed to advance the
nation's agenda in historic ways.

During the 20th century, congressional Democrats may have governed
effectively not despite, but precisely because of, their heterogeneity.
Democracy, after all, is a process whereby people with many agendas come
together to define a common good. It is a process that involves compromise,
deal-making and operating pragmatically rather than ideologically. Given
their intra-party experiences, Democrats simply have more practice doing all
this than Republicans do.

During their 12 years in power, on the other hand, congressional Republicans
could not play well with others. They governed only from their political
base, relying on the very wealthy and the evangelicals for their support.
They equated compromise with weakness, and set out to destroy personally
those who offered other ideas. Their legacy is a bitterly divided nation.
That bitterness came home to roost Nov. 7.

Congressional deadlock is certainly a real possibility for the incoming
Congress. If that's the case, however, I suspect it will be largely because
of Republican intransigence and not because of internal disagreements within
the Democratic Party. Democratic diversity - of ideas and experiences - has
been the party's great strength since 1932.

Will Rogers may have been right in saying Democrats didn't constitute an
organized party. But then, this is a messy, diverse nation, not a nation of
people who march neatly in rank and file. Who better than the Democratic
Party to represent that?

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"If I wanted to overhear every tedious scrap of brain static rattling around
in your head, I'd read your blog."

- Bill Maher