Diatribune

Labor Day is approaching and George Bush and Dick Cheney are now almost certainly the least popular President and Vice President team in American History. John McCain, the G.O.P. pretender to the thrown who once was feared as the only man with sufficient stature and integrity to convince the American public to renew the Republican lease on the White House, has departed center stage after a war vote malfunction stripped bare his passion for the Iraq surge, exposing him as unelectable in the Super Bowl of politics. So the Democrats, with a seemingly strong field of candidates, seem poised to win in 2008. Given the quagmire the G.O.P. now seems stuck in, it’s hard to argue otherwise. Few Democrats do, it’s easier to go with the giddy prevailing wisdom, but cracks that can fracture the veneer of Democratic complacency are hiding in plain sight, where many refuse to see.

The Democratic Party’s Achilles Heel hasn’t moved, it’s still on its foot, which it continues to regularly insert in its collective mouth when it comes to National Security. Democrats still have not shaken their inferiority complex relative to Republicans on matters of security. If you doubt that look no further for evidence than the August 4th vote by 16 Democratic Senators and 41 Democratic House members to support Republican written legislation giving George Bush’s near laughing stock of an Attorney General constitutionally unsupported authority to spy on the international telephone calls and e-mails of Americans, in the name of keeping America safe from terrorists.

Anyone who found that vote shocking simply has not been paying close enough attention to Democrats in Congress. Democrats may have found the courage to often unite against the Iraq War now that it is universally unpopular, but they still rattle sabers against Iran almost as well as the best Republican Chicken Hawks around. It is that knee jerk need to posture as tough as Republican that led a Democratic Senate to issue George Bush a blank check for war against Iraq in 2002. Very little has really changed.

No doubt most Democratic politicians truly embrace promoting Peace, a stance that they are quick to remind their Party’s anti-war leaning activist base of. But then comes the overwhelming political urge to compensate for any expression of “softness” with hard edged rhetoric about protecting America from its enemies. Most elected Democrats believe they still have to prove to most American voters that they are tough enough to keep them safe. Why do they feel that need?

Partly it’s sensible enough; Americans want to feel safe in a world that they believe poses real dangers to them. Democrats who ignore that sentiment do so at their own political risk when they run for national rather than state or local office. The Republican brand name is identified with National Security, the military, and a strong defense. The Democratic brand name isn’t. So Republicans, perceiving a political advantage, do what they can to pump up the public fear factor. Today’s National Republican Party has evolved into a political machine that runs well when it runs against a threat posed by enemies, domestic or foreign, but especially foreign. It hardly matters who their candidate is, they get brand name marketed, and too few voters really question what’s actually inside that box.

Democrats running for national office (Congress included) know the dynamic well and must each settle on a personal approach for dealing with it. If blessed with a progressive constituency the task isn’t daunting, but few actually are. It’s a rare year when National Democrats can afford to openly down play security concerns. Democratic Presidential candidates during the Cold War never could, nor can they now post 9/11. The need for Democrats to answer to the public on security is not imaginary. To remain competitive in national elections they repeatedly turn to one of two deeply flawed options.

Option A is to essentially cede Republicans the National Security advantage, while trying to still beat them by outscoring the G.O.P. on issues that play better to Democratic strengths. No candidate would publicly admit to that, just like none would admit that they plan to virtually write off any region of the nation when it comes to allocating sufficient campaign resources at the beginning of a campaign, but it still happens.

Option B is a variant that depends on mimicking Republicans (Democrats doing this often are confused with a small group of hawkish Democratic who hold views on National Security virtually identical with most of today’s National Republicans. That confusion is understandable since “option B” Democrats go out of their way to sow it). Most of the “sound tough” crowd I referred to above are “option B” Democrats. They use camouflage hoping to look and sound similar enough to Republicans on National Security to fudge any real distinctions, leaving domestic issue differences as the only ones that stand out when it comes time to vote.

Can National Democrats win using Options A or B? Yes, if they run a very skilled campaign, or if the tide of public opinion is already running strongly enough against the Republicans that year. But that skill and/or tide must be formidable, because the main stream media is not the Democrat’s friend when it comes to National Security, as shown by the cheer leading and white washing function it played prior to the invasion of Iraq, and the similar role it plays with Iran now. Even when Democrats win with a candidate with sufficient skills backed by a strong tide as in 1992, something significant happens. We fail to ace the elections. We don’t knock the G.O.P. out. We govern with dangerously thin majorities by courting on the votes of Congressional Democrats with a vested interest in sounding and acting like Republicans all too much of the time. And then we suffer setbacks like a Democratic Congress passing the FISA bill this month.

Our nation may be one major domestic terrorist attack away from ushering in a Rudy Giuliani presidency. Of course that attack may never come, no matter how often the Department of Homeland Security fiddles with the color codes or issues terror attack advisories, but then again it might. Lord knows Bush has been busy over the last six years increasing America’s enemies and reducing America’s friends. Then there’s the matter of pending war with Iran which George Bush can initiate at any time by his own authority, since our Democratic Congress is loath to tie his hands in advance on that one. The Democratic Party has two main strategies for dealing with the Republican Party’s current brand name advantage on National Security (granting a partial exception for the war in Iraq): focus energies elsewhere or essentially mimic Republicans. Neither is a winning strategy if new security concerns come to capture the public’s attention in 2008.

General Wesley Clark offers Democrats a way out of the current rigged box; Option C. Become the political party that effectively promotes America’s security. An answer so simple as to be audacious; stop side stepping the challenge and stop pretending to be something Democrats are not. Embrace the differences between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party on National Security and show the public that our way will keep them both safer and more prosperous; safer because America will have fewer enemies in the world, more prosperous because our treasury will not continually be drained by endless wars to the advantage of select war profiteers.

Changing the national security identities pegged to the Democratic and Republican brand names can’t be done by hiring better PR firms to design more effective ad campaigns. Symbolism matters but only if backed by substance. People take matters of life and death seriously. General Clark offers the National Democratic Party a historic opening, a chance to redefine itself in the eyes of critical swing voters after 30 years of Republican battering in the wake of the Viet Nam. Clark placed his four stars on the table for the Democrats, which in itself conveys important symbolism, but in Clark’s case he consistently backed that symbolism up with very real and ongoing substance.

Wes Clark is not a photo op politician and the uniform of his decades of service never becomes a political prop. Since 2003 General Clark has been in constant meaningful dialogue with the American people on matters of national security. His PAC website is called “SecuringAmerica.com” and a quick browse through it offers a better overview of the challenges facing America in the 21st century than a typical Graduate level course in international relations. By redefining and then explaining the basic elements needed to guarantee America’s ongoing security in the coming decades, Wes Clark paints a very different picture than the one being sold by Republicans, and unlike some Democrat’s mimicry, Clark offers the field depth found only in legitimate three dimensional vision. Look no further than Iran to see that difference.

Unlike the two dimensional posturing that most Democratic politicians engage in regarding Iran, which consists of mostly sounding tough while saying we should be willing to talk directly with Iran, General Clark readily admits to and explains at length how our government contributed to the dangerous current impasse between our nations. Not only is Clark fearless about advocating “Give Peace a Chance”, he details what actual peace realistically can look like while offering a series of specific steps to take us from here to there. All within a context of positively reframing America’s position in the world anticipating changes the 21st century undoubtedly will bring.

Democrats must articulate a real strategy for furthering peace and prosperity in the world, one that goes beyond platitudes and actually rings true to American’s who believe there are those in this world, men like the frequently cited Osama Bin Ladin, Saddam Hussein, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, capable of harboring ill will and intent toward us and our nation. Wes Clark prominently states at the StopIranWar.com web site that he co-sponsors with VoteVets.org: “War is not the answer”. Democrats need to explain why that is so at time when real security threats confront us, while we still possess the most powerful military in the world.

It is not an easy task but it is one that General Clark thinks Democrats can and must be up to, both to secure significant victories as a political party, and to secure real peace for our nation. It is why Wes Clark is our longest and strongest member of the new “Fighting Dems”, working to recast the Democratic Party’s image, while broadening the Democratic Party’s message and base, so that we can recast our nation’s policies and govern with strong majorities committed to using our nation’s resources to help our nation’s people.

Wes Clark represents a bold and different approach that the Democratic Party now has an option to pursue; “Option C”. Whether it will or not is still uncertain.

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