TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/040290/0402107.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.5 KB | 128 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 21

The Neoliberal Blues


Democrats look for a new theme song -- and for someone to sing
it

By MARGARET CARLSON/NEW ORLEANS


    Dynamic capitalism, flexible specialization, individual
development accounts, public investment strategies -- was a
meeting of accountants under way? No, it was a gathering of the
country's top Democrats trying to sound fiscally responsible,
tough-minded and pragmatic, to sound, in fact, a lot like
Republicans.

    The vision thing? The G.O.P. has the luxury of wondering out
loud about it. When Democrats search for an overarching
philosophy, they seem too dreamy-eyed. The last time liberals
had vision -- the Great Society, the War on Poverty -- things
didn't work out so well. Candidates like George McGovern,
Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis failed disastrously.
Harvard's Robert Reich, author of The Resurgent Liberal, says,
"I'm sure there are six liberals left in the country, but even
I don't know who they are."

    Those last six were hard to find in New Orleans last week
at a meeting of the Democratic Leadership Council, the
organization founded after Walter Mondale's 1984 defeat to make
sure that a liberal would never get another chance to blow 49
states in a presidential election. Guided by "neoliberals" like
Senators Sam Nunn and Chuck Robb, armed with a raft of fiscally
responsible Mr. Goodwrench programs, the D.L.C. is dedicated
to yanking the party back to the middle. But neo, the prefix
that was supposed to make liberalism safe for Democrats again,
has instead made them boring. If a liberal is someone with his
feet firmly planted in the air, a neo-liberal is the deadweight
tethering him to the ground. Problems liberals were accused
of throwing money at -- like poverty, homelessness, urban decay
and the underclass -- have given way to two-hour symposiums on
"New Strategies for Economic Security: Developing America's
Human Capital."

    The main goal of the D.L.C.'s strategy was on everyone's
mind but on no one's formal agenda: to regain the White House,
which means winning back the Southern white males who deserted
the party in 1984. What better way to increase the comfort
level of Southern white males than with other Southern white
males? Nunn and Robb, Senators Lloyd Bentsen and John Breaux
and Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton are the D.L.C.'s stars.
Dizzy with turning points, raw with fresh starts, wide-awake
with new days dawning, their new Democratic Party has blotted
out the L word with the M word: mainstream. That is D.L.C. code
for letting the constituency it wants to woo know that the
constituency it used to depend on -- feminists, gays, blacks
and Big Labor -- has lost influence.

    The strategy backfired in 1988 when Michael Dukakis, one of
the six remaining liberals in the country, won the nomination.
Although he learned to appreciate Swedish land-use planning at
the Kennedy School, Dukakis was still a Massachusetts Democrat,
the worst kind. The dreaded epithet "liberal" stuck no matter
how many times he parried with "competent."

    That label won't stick on "mainstream" Clinton. Comfortable
being whisked off in a limousine in the evening to Antoine's
by lobbyists for RJR Nabisco, the quintessential symbol of
1980s corporate greed, he can then preach Democratic values in
the morning. Clinton is the perfect front man for an
organization that celebrates the work ethic of the common man
while relying almost entirely on the Fortune 500 for operating
funds. Although Clinton has recovered from his stupefyingly
long prime-time address at the 1988 convention, he is still a
techno-Democrat, one of a dozen or so who in the absence of
political poetry rattle off strategies for a postindustrial,
sacrifice-free America.

    Political analyst William Schneider predicts that Democrats
"won't stop talking about schemes until they come up with a
theme and find someone who can make music." The only Democrat
who can carry a tune is Mario Cuomo, but he is too liberal to
pass the D.L.C. entrance exam, and since his inspiring "City
on the Hill" speech at the 1984 convention, he has been
reluctant to sing before a national audience. D.L.C. stalwarts
like Bentsen, Al Gore and Robb have tin ears. Nunn's libretto
-- defense and national-security policy -- seems increasingly
irrelevant for a world rushing toward peace. The current
season's high-decibel speaker, House majority leader Richard
Gephardt, seems too opportunistic as he screeches out a
hard-rock message of economic nationalism and a Free Enterprise
Corps while bashing Bush for timidity. Bill Bradley is the
party's rap star, tapping out his proposals for Third World
debt, tax-code overhaul and international monetary reform in
monotone.

    Jesse Jackson, a D.L.C. pariah, was invited to speak this
year. His hymnbook has been anathema to this crowd (whom he
once branded "Democrats for the leisure class"), but their plan
to stop Jackson on Super Tuesday in 1988 failed so miserably
that they may have to face the prospect of Jackson preaching
to a crossover audience. In the meantime, with its teeny, tiny
programs designed to assure voters that Democrats are as
committed to life, liberty and the pursuit of an upwardly
mobile life-style as Republicans, the D.L.C. is rewriting the
lyrics of the 1960s song: "Ask not what you can do for your
country but what educational vouchers, economic nationalism and
savings incentives can do for you."