Standing for Something
Chet Whye's column on Nov. 30 makes a big mistake in believing that the future viability of the Democratic party lies in merely resisting Republicans or waiting for Republicans to make more mistakes and overreach. Democrats have done that before, and over the long haul, have paid the price of continual decline.
Polls do show that the popularity of the Republican Congress is rapidly declining because voters are concerned that the GOP is moving too fast, too far, and in a too harsh and too intolerant way. However, at every opportunity, the electorate also demonstrates they do want to go back to a Jesse Jackson-like agenda.
Unfortunately, as best as I can tell, the Rainbow Coalition wants to repeat the failed formula tried by the Democratic Party in 1895: pull together a collection of groups and complaining constituencies with no clear ideology or unifying sense of purpose. Just as those of a century ago feared the transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy, many members of the Democratic base today cling to familiar Industrial Age institutions as we enter the uncharted territory of the Information Age.
How can Democrats hope to build a new progressive majority if so many voters cannot identify our agenda? We must stand for reforms carried by leaders - like Governor Roy Romer and House Minority Leader Peggy Kerns - who are unencumbered by the arrangements and orthodoxies of interest-group liberalism.
Democrats should stand for opportunity for all from economic growth generated in the private sector. We must advocate values like work, family, responsibility, individual liberty, faith, and something not heard much about from Republicans these days, tolerance.
Democrats must get behind a new ethic of politics. For most of the 1980s, the debate was between the conservative ethic of every man for himself and the failed liberal philosophy of "don't worry about it if you don't make it, the government will do it for you."
President Clinton articulately called that "something for nothing" in his 1992 campaign. The underlying ethic of the New Democrat movement is the ethic of mutual responsibility - government as society's agent has an obligation to organize public resources to create opportunities for ordinary citizens. At the same time, citizens have responsibilities - to take advantage of those opportunities, take care of their families, and give something back to their country and community.
We must not abdicate public responsibility as the Republicans would, but we cannot continue to have that big old bureaucratic government that tries to do everything for people. We need an enabling government, a government that equips citizens to solve their own problems.
To clear up any remaining confusion Whye may still have, the New Democratic way is not "Republican lite." The New Democratic way is grounded in basic values fundamentally different than those of the GOP.
New Democrats believe in the credo of equal opportunity for all, special privilege for none. Republicans fail on both.
They're unwilling, as we see in the current budget fight, to make the basic investments necessary to ensure equal opportunity. While quick to gut entitlements and efforts to aid the disadvantaged, like the Earned Income Tax Credit, the GOP is far too reticent to go after their own special interests - corporate subsidies that do not contribute to economic growth.
As conservatives talk about abandoning public responsibility and sending programs back to the states, they ignore the need for a compact rooted in shared responsibilities between the government and the people. Such reciprocal responsibility should be based on the idea, that government, while not doing everything for everybody, should organize resources so people have a chance to get ahead.
To rebuild a progressive coalition, Democrats must reach out to independents and Republicans. That can be done while fulfilling the historic mission of the Democratic party -- to unite the interests of those in the middle class and struggling to stay there with those aspiring to get there.
More than ever, that mission is critically important to the future of our country and to ensure the vitality of the American dream that says to every citizen - your life and your kids' life will be better than the lives of those who proceeded you.
Jim Gibson is President of the Colorado Democratic Leadership Council, a group of elected officials and activists interested in forging a new agenda for the Democratic Party based on its historic commitment to economic growth, personal responsibility, individual liberty and equal opportunity.