Stop the Waffling

From the Nation:

"I have loyalties that are greater than those to my party," said the former vice presidential candidate, who last December made the anti-democratic claim that, "We undermine the president's credibility at our nation's peril."

Less overt is the waffling of New York Senator Hillary Clinton, but her confusion is arguably more damaging to the Democrats, given her position as the party's front-running presidential aspirant. At least Lieberman stands exposed as a true believer in the Bush crusade, whereas Clinton continues to support a war that her confidants tell us she knows is wrong.

If Clinton does indeed know better than to support the war, let her say it out loud--and clearly. Why is it so difficult for the Democrats to grasp that waffling doesn't work as a form of leadership? The public takes it as a sign of moral disarray. Does anyone doubt that John Kerry lost the 2004 presidential election when he whiffed on Bush's curveball question: Knowing what you know now, would you have supported the Iraq invasion? He should have instantly said, "Hell no, you lied to Congress and the American people and deserve to be defeated precisely for that betrayal of the public trust."

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While the Republicans have been busy defining the terms for national debate this last quarter century or so, the Democrats have been busy freaking out about it, finally deciding during the 90s that their best response is to concede to their right-wing rivals the overall agenda for discussion. President Clinton led the way, doing so well that "out conservative the Republicans" eventually became wildly popular as a philosophy for the Democrats. Call me stupid, but this "strategy," if you want to call it that, strikes me as retarded: as Nietzsche said, "he who hunts the dragon becomes the dragon." That is, if Democrats have decided that the best way to win elections is to emulate the politics of the Republicans, become "Republican lite," why shouldn't everybody simply vote for the real deal? "Republican lite" neither tastes good, nor is it less filling.

I am so extraordinarily sick of the consultant-driven, poll-heavy, everything-to-everyone, veer-to-the-right-veer-to-the-left style of the Democrats that I still kick myself for my Kerry vote a couple of years ago. Hell, a real and honest conservative is almost preferable to me these days, anything but these phony liberal/moderate personas carefully constructed by the party. Is it too much for me to ask that the people who want to be our leaders actually lead for a change?

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