POLITICS: By Tod Lindberg Why George W. Bush is unlikely to veer to the right. By Tod Lindberg.
For some reason, commentators, pundits, and other
analysts seem to like a world in which what is
going on is a battle for the soul of the Republican Party—or for the soul of the Democratic Party. In fact, many
party activists themselves like to see things this way, being themselves
members of one or another faction seeking the upper hand. They may even
aspire to see the intraparty struggle settled
in their favor once and for all. Will Democrats be the party of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council or the
activist left wing that produced the surge of early enthusiasm for Howard
Dean? Will Republicans be the party of the religious right, or will the
more moderate types of the John McCain, Arnold
Schwarzenegger, and Rudy Giuliani school carry the day?
But, in fact, this world of binary outcomes is an
illusion—for if ever an internal party struggle was settled once and
for all, there would be two consequences flowing immediately from the fact.
First, the party would become a minority party: A Democratic Party stripped
of either its DLC wing or its progressive wing, one having decided to walk
out because of the intolerable position of dominance within the party of
the other, would have no hope of commanding an electoral majority.
Likewise, a GOP consisting only of evangelical Christians or of opinions
ranging from, say Senator McCain to Senator Arlen Specter, would be a
losing proposition nationally. You need both elements to have a chance of
success.
Second, in the event of such a factional victory
within a party, the prevailing faction would immediately split in two,
probably divided over the question of how to bring the losers, their
erstwhile comrades, back into the fold. I mean
to suggest by this that political parties in the American context are always internally divided and that it is neither one wing nor the other that determines the outcome; rather, it is the dynamic
interaction of the two.
Now, as it happens, Democrats have a general interest
in painting a picture of the GOP that consists almost entirely of its
farthest-right members. The reason for this (in addition to the delusion of
the true-believer “blue state”
types who have been hyperventilating since the election about the
“red peril”) is that it gives
Democrats the greatest room to operate both in maintaining their base and in reaching toward the middle. Similarly,
Republicans have the same interest in
characterizing the Democratic Party as “liberal, liberal, liberal.” Meanwhile, it falls to the more
center-leaning faction of each party to try to
do what it can to rebut the all-left or all-right characterization—in
pursuit not only of influence for its centrist views but also of the support of that median voter whose opinions aren’t
captured by either party’s hard-liners.
So, to the victor go the spoils, right? Well, yes, but
who won? I would be very surprised if the Bush White House—which, as the record
shows, knows a
thing or two about politics—somehow managed to miss the business of
how parties work as discussed here. Those who are expecting a handover of policymaking to evangelical Christians ought to rethink
their expectations. George Bush has a broad, majority coalition to manage.
The key political test of the success of his
administration will be his ability to keep it intact and broaden it for Republicans going forward. That entails not
only saying yes to key constituencies on the right subjects at the right
moments—but also saying no to or sidestepping certain demands that
jeopardize the overall prospects for the coalition.
Anyone in Bush’s position can turn to the right
or, alternatively, hew to the center. The real challenge is crafting a
political appeal and a policy menu that does both at the same time. Bush
won in 2004 with a campaign that did just that. It seems highly unlikely
that the “architect”—as Bush dubbed Karl Rove in thanking
him November 3—or Bush himself will misinterpret the results of his achievement so as to minimize the extent of the
contribution of either the center or the right
to the victory.
This essay appeared in the Wall Street Journal on December 7, 2004. |
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