[Cross-posted from DailyKos]
The Republican party has recently put a lot of effort into painting us as the “Party of No.” They have taken great pains to tell Americans what to think about us, but what should we think about them? As I look at the Republican party today, the perfect description is obvious: They are the “Me” Party.
Republicans love to try to appeal to our selfish side. In debates over tax cuts, the standard Republican line is “It’s YOUR money.” They want to separate us into greedy individuals, squabbling over pennies on our tax return. They want us to forget the great lessons of Jesus about selfless giving and the lessons we learned on Sesame Street about cooperation. They want us to forget about the great things we could accomplish if we worked together as a nation.
Instead they want us to fucus on Me.
(More about the Me Party inside. . . .)
When President Bush first started selling his Social Security plan, he tried to appeal to the selfish side of seniors by telling them that their benefits would not be touched. If you’re 55 or older, he said, your benefits will not change. So you can just tune out the whole debate. He repeated those assurances over and over again, trying to tell senior citizens that whatever happened, THEIR retirement was safe. He was appealing to their selfish side.
What Bush didn’t count on was that our senior citizens are not selfish people. The Me party says, don’t worry about everybody else. Just look out for your own retirement. But our Senior Citizens are concerned not only for their own retirement; they want to protect Social Security for their children and their grandchildren. And so Bush’s appeal to Senior citizens failed.
The entire proposal to overhaul Social Security is basically an appeal to private gain over the common good. Social Security is an insurance program, where everyone gains if everyone participates. But the Me Party says, forget about the common good. How about a Private Account? With a private account, you can do better than the rest of those guys. You can invest your money, and as long as you come out ahead, who cares about those other people. It’s their own fault if their retirement fund goes bust. That’s the line from the Me Party.
Throughout Bush’s Presidency, he has never appealed to the better side of Americans. He has never asked us to sacrifice, never asked us to give of ourselves. In 1961 John F. Kennedy gave us the ringing challenge, “My fellow Americans: Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”
Bush too had an opportunity to call on the greatness in Americans. After September 11, Bush could have issued a similar call to service. Instead he asked Americans to go shopping. Don’t let the economy down, he said. If the Nasdaq drops, the terrorists will have won.
In Bush’s mind, our Patriotic duty was to spend money on ourselves. That was all he asked of us. To go shopping. We would have done so much more.
Even as he led us to war in Iraq, Bush has never asked Americans to sacrifice anything. He claimed it would be a quick and easy war, financed with oil money from Iraq. (Never mind that none of these predictions turned out to be true.) And all along the way, Bush has continually tried to downplay the true costs of the war. He has hidden the monetary costs of the war using emergency appropriations to fund the war to avoid including the funds in the budget. He has hidden the military costs of the war by the extensive use of mercenary contractors, who cost a fortune and are unaccountable to military command, but who prevent the necessity of a draft. He has downplayed the greatest cost, the loss of human life in the war by preventing the photography of our fallen soldiers returning home, by refusing to go to even one funeral for a fallen soldier, by putting ill prepared Iraqi soldiers in the most dangerous situations to take the bullets for our guys, and by obscuring the true number of civilian casualties. For the Me party, these painful realities cannot be acknowledged. The huge costs of the war must be minimized. After all, Bush has spent four years convincing Americans to be selfish. Asking Americans to sacrifice now would be betraying that fundamental principle of “Me first.” The Me party has promised war without pain, and that’s what some Americans have come to expect. Within the Me Party, support for the war would crumble if it involved any actual sacrifice.
Fortunately for us, most Americans are not true members of the Me party. Most Americans are good, honest caring people. We saw that after September 11, when people gave so much more than anyone asked. We saw that after the Tsunami disaster, when Americans joined people from all over the world to help the victims. (Bush, head of the Me Party, said that disaster relief should be left up to the private sector. Well don’t worry, George. We’re taking care of it.)
Our job as Democrats is to remind Americans of their greatness again. Our job as Democrats is to remind America of the power and innovations that come from working together. We need to remind Americans that cooperation is not the same as Communism, that two heads are better than one, that seventy million Americans working together really can change the world.
If we can do that, the Me party will wither on the vine.
