Let the Big Dog Out

I’ve been circling around my next political post for a while now, since before I wrote about Lieberman. To be plain, I want to say some stuff. I read a lot of other blogs and news sites; I am a member of the vast left wing blogging conspiracy. I’m one of those “folks” who thinks Iraq was a colossal act of hubris and folly. I think September 11th was the hardest single blow this country has taken since the Civil War. And I think its aftermath has been bungled obscenely by nearly every public figure who has come near it save Ted Koppel, Jon Stewart and maybe George Clooney and the Hollywood types. I think we are, to quote the old curse, living in interesting times. And I think, for the first time in quite a while, we are starting to peek our heads out from under our desks and realize that duck and cover was a ridiculous strategy in the Atomic Age and isn’t much better in the Internet Age. I think we are finally ready to have a real conversation on things, to stop listening to the fear-mongers and the purity policemen, to truly take stock of the crazy places our grief has lead us. We re-elected that moron! Will there ever be any sense to that? But, I digress. I have hope today. And it’s not just because Lieberman lost the primary. It’s not because George Allen has hung himself with his own white supremacist noose. It’s not because The Democrats are polling greatly on the generic ballots. It’s all of those things, but it’s something else: Bill Clinton now has a 70% approval rating. Thought it would be bigger? Well, to me, that’s huge. The best kept secret in the media is that Bill Clinton ended his presidency as a popular guy. In fact, his ratings went up during the entire impeachment saga. And, hell, he wasn’t a bad President. He presided over a vast technological boom (not his doing, but he didn’t fuck it up). Crime rates went down, teen pregnancies went down. Interest rates went down. A lot of things went down during the Clinton years. And yet we were all yanked by the collars and placed in front of only one. It was atrocious. It was a criminal waste of resources and time. It was salacious and gross and un-Democratic (and un-Christian). Bill Clinton committed an offense: he lied under oath about a sexual liaison. It was wrong. It’s a crime. But it is not an impeachable offense. You know what is an impeachable offense? Lying to Congress. Having your agents lie to Congress. Disclosing classified identities to the public and endangering field agents. Setting up what amounts to a front company for cronyism in the gutted remains of the organization intended to help the most helpless in times of greatest crisis. Oh, and the war thing. And the thing where they set up what are basically internment camps for an entire group of citizens, then proceeded to piss on their faith and subject them to torture and completely strip them of first their humanity and then their will to live. And I’m speaking, of course, about the plight of Congressional Democrats. The secret prison thing is much, much worse. But this is supposed to be about Bill Clinton. This is supposed to be about hope, not just a simple recounting of the various types and quantity of shit we find ourselves in. It’s just, it’s some funky ass shit. Five more years of this crap and the only way out will be a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Things are bad. But not so long ago, things were much, much better. Remember at the end of Clinton’s Presidency where he made that last, hubristic attempt to really affect a change in Palestine? Remember how there was a humanitarian crisis in Kosovo and we bombed a bit and restored order and had no combat fatalities? Remember how we had so much money the driving question of the 2000 campaign was what, exactly to do with it. And Gore was the ant, who wanted to store it away and protect our future and Bush was the grasshopper who just wanted to let everyone have an extra slice of pie? Except for those making more than 1,000,000 a year, who were to be given entire bakeries? Remember how even though Bush was promising lollipops and rainbows (which are a symbol of God’s covenant) Gore still won the damn election? Well, he did. (And I think he will again, but that’s another entry.) So, right away, Bush set about piddling away the surplus. And fucking up a tense situation with China. And that thing where he was so uncompromising that a member of his own party quit and joined the other side. And then It happened. And instead of grieving with us, instead of searching ourselves and making any attempt to figure out why someone could be so mad at us, without even bothering to take a moment to figure out how it happened or talk about how best to stop it, we just ran over to the Middle East and started shooting at folks. I’m not saying we didn’t have a right to be angry, I’m not saying that we should not have gone to Afghanistan. I’m not saying, in any way, shape, or form that we should have apologized to the terrorists or pitied them. There were evil, they acted with evil intent and therefore forfeit any right to negotiate terms with anyone, anywhere. But, maybe, we could have talked about finding ways to reach out to the Islamic world, to take away the policies that were allowing terrorists to recruit more people? To maybe not give the terrorists the exact stature and power they had been asking for? That would have been a good conversation to have. It’s one Al Gore would probably have had. Clinton, too. Hell, Bush I and Reagan would never simply attack a country adjacent to the source of the crime using phony charges and discredited intelligence. At least I don’t think any of them would have done that. They had too much respect for our troops. But then George W. Bush’s terms in office have given me a far too nostalgic and rosy view of previous administrations. How could it not? Bush is bad, Mark. We get it. I know. But Clinton was better. And now it really feels like people are getting that. The old Rovian tricks aren’t working as well as they were before (thank God for Jon Stewart). Gay Marriage doesn’t cause the panic in the streets it did two years ago. (Many people are waking up to the fact that whether or not gay people can marry has little to no effect on their own marriages for good or ill. And the ones who cry about the children are looking to more and more people like the intolerant ninnies they are. I’m looking at you, Hasselbeck.) The Clinton Era is starting to take on a bit of a glow. And even the blow job incident is seen as the petty, ridiculous Republican jerk-off session it was. (To the “Yeah, but…” people: Yeah, he lied under oath. Grow up. There are worse things in the world for a President to do than not tell a court during a specious case that he cheated on his wife. Rule of Law? Meet Warrantless Wiretaps.) It’s time for us to embrace Clinton. I don’t agree with the guy some of the time. He’s more moderate than I am and his electoral theories have had their day. But, as a symbol of a better time, a time with more prosperity, more peace and, let’s face it, more protection from terror, he works. Things were better then. And he was a Democrat. I long for a day when I can respect the Republican Party again. But not today. The stench of cynicism and corruption drifts off them like formaldehyde from a mortician. When there is more than one voice in the party, more than one sound byte, more than one idea, I will respect them again. When they emerge from the puritanical pit Karl Rove and Ralph Reed have mired them in, I will listen to them again. And when conservatives are allowed to actually be conservatives again AND have a progressive sense of civil rights I might consider voting for one again. But for now, the only hope we have is the Democrats. No third party will work. No quixotic quest to unite us under one moderate banner will lead us to victory. Now is the time for us to be ourselves. And that means saying what we think, disagreeing sometimes and agreeing others. It means reaching for compromise without sacrificing everything to win a vote or an election. It means we need to dream big and stop cowering from the specter of the idiot in the flight suit. And Clinton’s legacy is still under attack. Unlike most Democrats, the idiots in charge of the GOP are not ambivalent about Bill Clinton. They hate him. They hate him for trying to govern, for using republican ideas when he felt he should, for beating Bush Sr. even though they threw ever kind of mud they could find at him. And they hate him because in him they see themselves, all those pesky contradictions and failings that make us human. Even now Rush Limbaugh’s good friend was allowed to write and air on the ABC Network a miniseries advertised as the true story of the causes of 9/11. The various fallacies and slanders have been well-documented on other sites. But I was so proud of President Clinton and the other members of his administration for standing up to the slander and doing what they could to try and get the thing pulled. Ultimately, though, the thing got pretty crappy ratings. And people heard what a distortion it was. And a big part of that was because the Big Dog got involved. So, here’s what I think: let’s keep letting Bill get involved. We need an attack dog this cycle, someone to point out the myriad reasons the current administration and leadership in Congress is wrong and dangerous. But our candidates need to focus on selling themselves and talking about the future. Bill Clinton can talk about the past and remind people how much better things used to be. President Clinton should be doing (and be allowed to do) what John Kerry has been trying to do: be the Democrat-In-Chief, the one not facing an election who can really take it to Bushco. He may see for himself a Carter-like ex-Presidency, but the Bushies will never let him have it. He will not be given the statesman label he desires. So I say this to him: Stop trying for it, Mr. President. Get your hands dirty. Stand up to them. You alone have the stature at home and abroad to get the word out. Be visible, be vocal. And don’t worry how if affects Hilary’s chances in 2008. We are not going to nominate her. Even those of us who love her unconditionally think she is too political, too mannered and too calculating to be an effective campaigner or chief executive. (She would make a fantastic Majority Leader, though.) The best way to ensure your legacy and make the most of your ex-Presidency is to stop trying to stay above the fray. Get into it; it’s what you’re best at. The American people need Democratic leadership now, so bring your leadership to the Democrats. We have always been the true Big Tent party. We are the party that welcomes people of all faiths and people of no faith. Over the last 25 years, the GOP has been increasingly hijacked by a small group of fundamentalist Christians who have used their power to attempt to legislate their own narrow view of morality. Their ultimate vision is a theocratic state built on the strict, fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible to which they ascribe. But the Bible is not a governing document. Nothing that contradicts itself so much can be used as law. And that’s not a dig on the Good Book. The spirit of Christianity, the very spirit of God, lies in those inconsistencies and parables. To say there is only one interpretation of God’s word is like saying you know the mind of God. Yet the entire thesis of the Book is that we can’t know. God is too big for us. To try and govern from scripture as if we know God’s plan is hubristic and, quite frankly, unchristian. The quickest way to protect religion, to allow people to live as they see fit, is to keep the Church and State wholly separate. It’s not so much for the State’s sake as it is for the Church’s. This continent was settled as a place free of religious tyranny, a place where people could practice religion as they saw fit. And it was settled by many sects and faiths, not just the Puritans. Yet the movement in fundamentalist circles seems to be toward a completely Puritanical existence, frozen in time against scientific advance and social change. And if that movement were to succeed, it would doom us as a society as the rest of the world went on improving and growing and advancing without us. But of course, the true vision of people like James Dobson of Focus on the Family can never come to pass. The rest of us outnumber them so greatly that all we really need to do is stand up, en masse, and they will crumble. Now is the time to stand up. We need change in this country. But in many cases, we need to return to where we were. There are things about the Clinton Era that we need to embrace. We need a renewed interest in technology and the environment and an understanding that the two need not be enemies to one another. We need a sensible foreign policy that focuses on diplomacy and understanding, not a will to remake the world by force. We need a government tolerant to diversity in all its forms, not one that pays lip service to culture to win votes and then legislates a myopic doctrine. We need programs that encourage educational innovation, not ones that focus solely on test scores as false idols of accountability. And we need leadership that can speak in complete sentences. I truly believe we are on the cusp of a great change in this country. The far Right have had their day and in nearly every instance they have failed. The Left is about to get a turn. Our moment is arriving and we need to prepare for it. And one of the things we need to do is finally reconcile with Bill Clinton. He disappointed us: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Health Care Reform, Lewinsky. But, you know what? He tried. And we need to give him more credit for that. His Third Way accomplished more than we’ve had since Johnson. Now, I do not advocate a return to his moderate policies; I think we can go further. But we shouldn’t vilify him for what he tried. He has a place in American History, one that will improve as time goes on. And he can mean something great if we let him. He was a Democrat and he did good. That should be the message: “Look what we can do when we have to deal with a hostile Congress and a manufactured scandal. Imagine what we could do if you really let us go.” The Democratic Party is never going to go insane with liberalism. We’re too disparate and contentious for that. But we always mean well. If we govern without cynicism, without worrying so much about electoral math and opinion polls and really focus on helping to make the country a better place for it’s citizens (private AND corporate), then we’ll win. It’s been a tough last few decades. We’ve been bullied and bruised and cowed and marginalized. But that’s about to change. The Republicans have bungled their every opportunity. It is incumbent upon us to recognize the moment, seize it, and make the best choices we can. We need to stop worrying about being called liberal or anti-religion. Liberal is not a bad word and separating church and state is the most pro-religion stance possible. But we won’t get there by continuing to apologize for our existence, by shaking our heads when Clinton is mentioned because we think that’s what America wants to hear. It doesn’t. It wants to hear: we’re working on making it better. Let’s stop being afraid to attack bad ideas AND offer better ones. If someone calls us liberal, say, “if liberal is the opposite of what you are, than a liberal is what I am”. But don’t get bogged down in semantics and labels. Get bogged down in ideas, in implementation, in healthy compromise. Stop trying to appear moderate and just do what you think is best. And let’s not be afraid to say that Bill Clinton was both a good President and a good Democrat. Most of the country is already there and they’ll appreciate it when we agree with them. It might go a long way to show them how many other things we agree upon.