The Third Way vs. Having It Both Ways
Afternoon, Brent,
Thanks for your message. First things first-please call me Tamar. After all,
we're having breakfast-and, effectively, lunch-together all week long. More
interesting still, on this at least, we don't seem to disagree all that much.
Maybe we should dine together more often? (As you can see, even though I write
about politics, I don't really relish or even like the battle part of it. It's
sappy, I know-and maybe because I'm a girl, or a rationalist-but I always want
people to find common ground and settle on some middling, "third-way"
solution.)
That's why I think of myself as a New Democrat (I've also been known to vote
liberal Republican)-which I gather you do not like. And as you suggest, it's
what New York's left-leaning political establishment-Congressmen Jose Serrano
and Charles Rangel and the rest-really don't like about Hillary. Sure, these
people are unhappy that she didn't come to them to kiss their rings and inquire
before she took a stand on any issues they claim to care about. But more than
that, what they really can't abide-and you don't like so much either, I
gather?-is that she isn't going to turn out to be the all-or-nothing,
never-compromise, hard-core leftist candidate many people have always expected
she would be.
So I should be pleased, right? Well, not so fast. Because I don't think
she's a New Democrat, either-she's certainly no credit to the New Democratic
movement I'm sometimes drawn to. New Democrat doesn't just mean political
opportunist. It doesn't mean tacking and trying to have it both ways-as Hillary
is indeed trying to do, and her husband has been doing for years now. Unlike
these two opportunists and others like them, politicians who truly occupy
what's sometimes called "the vital center" find a way to go beyond ideology
with practical, problem-solving positions that borrow from both sides and
appeal to voters across the spectrum. When it's done right, it's not about
hedging. It's about real political creativity and the much needed balancing of
conflicting political interests. (And it usually ends up alienating political
regulars on both sides of the aisle.) True enough (I concede in advance), there
aren't many pols out there who actually live up to this standard-but let's not
give the vital center a bad name by pretending that it's no more than dishonest
tacking.
As for Hillary, well, I'm not a big fan of those lefty ideological positions
that Rangel, Serrano, et al hoped she would champion, but in the end I would
have respected her more for that than for the unprincipled hedging that you so
rightly point out is apparently going to be her hallmark. All these years, I
thought she was urging Bill to stick to his left-wing guns. But now it turns
out she's the one who's been arguing all along that the administration should
trim and hedge and give voters whatever it is they seem to want. Nancy Reagan's
advice was "Just say no"; Hillary's is apparently "Just say anything-as long as
the public wants to hear it." It's going to be a great campaign to watch and
write about, but I agree with you-following her is going to make us all
dizzy.
Whoops! It's almost cocktail hour and I'm going on as if it were still
breakfast. Let's talk tomorrow about the two parties' appeal for minority
voters?
Looking forward to it, whatever it is.
All best,
Tamar
