[Mb-hair] NYTimes.com Article: Op-Ed Contributor: Why We Lost

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Op-Ed Contributor: Why We Lost

November 5, 2004
 By ANDREI CHERNY 



 

Washington 

On Wednesday morning, Democrats across the country awoke to
a situation they have not experienced since before the New
Deal: We are now, without a doubt, America's minority
party. We do not have the presidency. We are outnumbered in
the Senate, the House, governorships and legislatures. And
the conservative majority on the Supreme Court seems likely
to be locked in place for a generation. It is clearly a
moment that calls for serious reflection. 

I had the honor of working for both Al Gore and John Kerry.
I believe America would have been fortunate to have had
them in the Oval Office. That neither won is not primarily
a commentary on them. Nor were their defeats really the
result of the mistakes, attacks and tactics that pundits
are so endlessly fascinated by: Al Gore's sighs in debates
or John Kerry's slow response to the Swift boat veterans;
Bill Clinton's campaigning (or lack thereof) in 2000 and
2004; the handling of the Elián González and Mary Cheney
controversies. Any time Democrats spend in the coming weeks
discussing the merits of our past candidates' personalities
or their campaigns' personnel will be time wasted. 

The overarching problem Democrats have today is the lack of
a clear sense of what the party stands for. For years this
has been a source of annoyance for bloggers and grass-roots
activists. And in my time working for Al Gore and John
Kerry, it certainly left me feeling hamstrung. 

Democrats have a collection of policy positions that are
sensible and right. John Kerry made this very clear. What
we don't have, and what we sorely need, is what President
George H. W. Bush so famously derided as "the vision thing"
- a worldview that makes a thematic argument about where
America is headed and where we want to take it. 

For most of the 20th century, Democrats had a bold vision:
we would use government programs to make Americans' lives
more stable and secure. In 1996, President Clinton told us
this age had passed, that "the era of big government is
over." He was right - the world had changed. But the party
has not answered the basic question: What comes next? 

It's not the sort of question that gets answered in the
heat of a national election. A presidential campaign feels
like running full speed across a tightrope. If you're
working on its message, you spend your days sitting around
conference tables in poorly lighted rooms, surrounded by
spent pizza boxes and buzzing Blackberries, with the clock
ticking down on another day and another speech. This is not
the place to devise a new thematic direction for the party.
What you wind up offering are quips and quibbles, slogans
and sound bites, and heaping portions of poll-tested
pabulum. 

The press also seems to overstate what staff changes can do
within a campaign. Much was made of the "who's in, who's
out" reports about the Kerry team, with reporters devising
narratives about a supposed "shift to the middle" or a
"lurch to the left." While new advisers can alter tactics
and form new messages, efforts on their part to create a
larger vision will fail. That has to happen long before the
primaries - and it requires that the party knows where it
is going. 

Throughout the campaign, voters told reporters and
pollsters that they wanted a change, but didn't "know what
John Kerry stands for." Our response was to churn out more
speeches outlining the details of policies that Senator
Kerry would then deliver in front of a backdrop that said
something like "Rx to Stronger Health Care." Of course, it
turned out that Americans weren't very interested in Mr.
Kerry's campaign promises - perhaps because they no longer
believe politicians will follow through on their
commitments. They wanted to know instead how he saw the
world. And we never told them. 

Misguided as they may be, the Republicans have a clear
vision of America's future. Confronted with their ambitious
agenda we have not chosen to match it. Instead, we have
adopted Nancy Reagan's old antidrug motto, "Just Say No."
As in "Stop George Bush's Assault on the Environment,"
"Repeal George Bush's Tax Cuts for the Wealthy" and "End
George Bush's Policy of Unilateralism." These are good
stands. But they are not enough. And the Republicans ended
up defining John Kerry because we did not. 

I don't pretend to know exactly what the party should do
now. But I do know that we better start answering some
important questions. What is our economic vision in a
globalized world? How do we respond to the desire of many
Americans to have choices and decision-making power of
their own? How can we speak to Americans' moral and
spiritual yearnings? How can our national security vision
be broader than just a critique of the Republican's foreign
policy? If we sweep this debate under the rug, four years
from now another set of people around another conference
table will be struggling with the same issues we did. And
America cannot afford the same result. 

Long after midnight in November 2000, I stood in the rain
in Nashville and listened to the Gore campaign chairman,
William Daley, tell us there would be no victory speech. On
Wednesday, long after midnight, I stood in the rain in
Boston listening to John Edwards tell us the same thing.
I'm sick of standing in the rain. 

Andrei Cherny, the author of "The Next Deal," was director
of speechwriting and a special policy adviser to John Kerry
from February 2003 to last April. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/opinion/05cherny.html?ex=1100683938&ei=1&en=536498d7254b27c9


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