I have a question for former Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey. When would a landslide Democratic election create a “mandate for all their policies”? How many seats would it take to create a mandate for liberalism? 100? 200? 435?
I understand that successful presidential candidates can sometimes overestimate the public’s thirst for their brand of change. I think it’s fair to say that Bill Clinton made that mistake in 1993 and George W. Bush made it in 2005. Both presidents lost Congress after pursuing unpopular or unsuccessful post-election agendas. One reason that candidates should be clear about their agendas is so that their election represents a clear mandate for their legislative priorities. Obama has been clear that he wants to get our troops out of Iraq and that he wants to provide health insurance to all Americans. He’s been clear that he wants to give 95% of the people a tax-cut, but that he wants to increase taxes on the top five percent. If he wins this election and the Democrats pick up a lot of congressional seats in traditionally Republican areas, I think it will be clear that he has won this argument and has a mandate for change.
By contrast, George W. Bush did not win reelection because he won the argument over whether to privatize Social Security. He won it by making his opponent unacceptable. And Bill Clinton won a fairly small plurality of the vote in a three-way race. The size and resoundingness of an electoral victory matters. If the people elect Barack Obama they will do it expecting him to do big things. And they’re fairly clear on what those big things are. That’s why I don’t like Bob Kerrey’s concern trolling.
This election is not over. But it’s not too soon to envision the dangers and opportunities should Obama win.
My worry is not with increased threats from abroad. I am convinced those threats will be reduced with Obama’s election and the beginning of a much more sensible and trustworthy American foreign policy.
By my lights, the primary threat to the success of a President Obama will come from some Democrats who, emboldened by the size of their congressional majority, may try to kill trade agreements, raise taxes in ways that will destroy jobs, repeal the Patriot Act and spend and regulate to high heaven.
It’s hard to take this as serious rhetoric. It should be obvious that our trade agreements have led to a huge outflow of manufacturing jobs, that Bush’s trickle-down economics and non-existent regulation have killed even more jobs, and that the Surveillance State has gone too far and must be rolled back. It seems obvious enough to the people, anyway, if the polls can be believed.
Kerrey’s brand of centrism has failed every bit as thoroughly as Bush’s brand of governance. Accommodating and compromising with the Republicans led to bad legislative outcomes, bad policy, a ruined economy, a tarnished national reputation, and electoral losses for the Democrats. Success only came when Democrats, led by their liberal activist wing, stood up to the Republicans and said ‘No’. As long as we were taking the advice of Harold Ford, Jr. and Mark Penn, we lost. Their advice brought defeat and national disaster. It wasn’t what Democrats wanted and it wasn’t effective on a national level.
Now, it’s true that electoral success doesn’t automatically translate to successful governance. But, as Joe Cocker said about kicking his drug habit, if you bang your head against a wall long enough, eventually it hurts. Eventually you learn to stop banging your head against the wall. Bob Kerrey hasn’t learned this, yet.