A few days ago, I posted an article by Robert Reich "Dems: Yield Not To Temptation" from Tom Paine.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Totally%20Committed/6I asked DU-ers if they agreed or disagreed with the premise of his article', which is summed up in this excerpt:
You’ll be sorely tempted to showcase the Bush administration in all its lurid awfulness. Imagine an endless parade of witnesses offering shocking details of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, torture camps, payoffs to Halliburton, Defense Department usurpations, Iraq’s descent into civil war, and other cover-ups, deceptions, data manipulations, suppressions of science, crass incompetencies, and outright corruption. Out of all of these hearings would come a bill of particulars so damning that every 2008 Democratic candidate running for everything from Indianapolis City Council to president will be swept into office on a riptide of public outrage. After all, didn’t House Republicans during the Clinton years wreak all the damage they could even when there wasn’t much to complain about? Recall Dan Burton, the Indiana Republican who, while chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, issued truckloads of White House subpoenas along with a sulphurous geyser of unsupported accusations. Why shouldn’t Henry Waxman, who will fill the same shoes, give as good as the Clinton White House got? Imagine how John Dingell, who will run the House Energy and Commerce Committee, could expose the intimacies between the Bushies and Big Oil; what John Conyers, in command of the House Judiciary Committee, could reveal about Bush’s trouncing of Americans’ civil liberties; or the job Barney Frank, at Financial Services, could do on the administration’s nefarious links to Wall Street. Hell, why not try to impeach Bush?
Warning: Resist all such temptation. You won’t be credible. The public would see the investigations and hearings as partisan wrangling. They might even cause the public to question what it already knows, allowing Republicans to argue it was all conjured up by partisan zealots from the start.... You won’t get any new information anyway. Your subpoena power would have no effect on this White House. You’d end up fighting in federal courts for the whole two years. Besides, there’s enough dirt out there already to sink any administration. Although cowed at the start of the administration, the mainstream media have done a fairly good job since. Moreover, Bush is the wrong target. His popularity could hardly be lower than it is already, which means 2008 Republican candidates in all but the reddest of red states will distance themselves from this White House. Sen. John McCain, should he be the Republican nominee, won’t be tarnished by Bush at all because in the public’s mind McCain is a maverick and independent. He’ll remain above the partisan mud-throwing while you’d just mire Democrats in it.
>snip
Here’s a better way to go. Use the two years instead to lay the groundwork for a new Democratic agenda. Bring in expert witnesses. Put new ideas on the table. Frame the central issues boldly. Don’t get caught up in arid policy-wonkdom.
I got some that disagreed with Reich completely, and a lot tat thought a two-pronged approach would be better, but I only got maybe one or two that agreed with him.
This morning, Paine posted a really good rebuttal from Alexandra Walker at Alternet:
What Reich Gets WrongOne of my favorite writers at Alternet, Josh Holland, does a handy job of explaining why Robert Reich was off-base in his latest piece of advice to Democrats, published earlier this weekon TomPaine.com. In it, Reich urges Democrats to "resist" the temptation to use their increased power on the Hill after the midterm elections for launching investigations and hearings into the Bush administration on any number of issues. As laudable and as justified as such investigations might be, says Reich, they'll have no traction because they'll be perceived as merely partisan attacks. Holland argues, and I agree, that Reich is wrong in framing the Democrats' options as an either/or proposition.
As usual, Reich gives good counsel when he tells Democrats to use the last two years of the Bush presidency to tighten their focus on developing a "bold agenda:"
Here’s a better way to go. Use the two years instead to lay the groundwork for a new Democratic agenda. Bring in expert witnesses. Put new ideas on the table. Frame the central issues boldly. Don’t get caught up in arid policy-wonkdom.
For example, instead of framing basic economic questions as whether to roll back Bush’s tax cuts, make it about how to recreate good jobs at good wages and rebuild the middle class. Consider ideas for doing this through trade policy, industrial policy, antitrust, publicly financed research and development, and stronger trade unions.
Instead of framing the central foreign-policy question as whether we should have invaded Iraq, make it how to partition Iraq into Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish zones while America gets out. Focus the national-security debate on how to control loose nukes and fissile material, and secure American ports. Encourage direct negotiations with North Korea and Iran. On energy and the environment, offer ideas for developing new non–fossil-based energy industries in America, and how to ratify a realistic Kyoto accord.
Help the public understand how these are all related—why, for example, we’ll never have a sane foreign policy unless we reduce our dependence on oil. And most important, be positive.But who says you can't advance a bold agenda that addresses the pressing challenges facing this nation and hold the Bush administration accountable for its disregard of the rule of law? There may be partisan points to be scored for holding official hearings attacking the Bush administration, but more importantly, there are serious public interest matters to be served by public hearings, specifically hearings on the Bush administration's conduct in its "war on terror." And here I'll turn it over to Josh to develop the rationale:
He's right that appearing overzealous in going after the Bushies may incur a political cost that is too high, but he's wrong to suggest that the issues that a Democratic Congress might investigate are in any way equivalent to the Republicans' obsessive attacks on the Clinton White House.
There are serious charges against this White House -- charges that go way beyond lying us into a war -- that need to be addressed, and Reich is dangerously close to suggesting that issues like circumventing the 1978 FISA law or international and domestic bans on torture are a matter of ideological or partisan preference not fundamental questions about the rule of law or the separation of powers -- he's saying: "vote for us and we won't choose to spy on you." They have, indeed, become partisan fights, but they never should have been.
Reich might have urged Democrats to pick their fights carefully, and I would have agreed. But at the end of the day, either you're for accountability or you're not. Saying we should let bygones be bygones and look forward is taking a stand against holding officials to account for their actions. We're supposed to be a nation of laws, not men, right?
It's also wrong to argue that Congressional investigations would have little impact because "there's enough dirt out there already to sink any administration." Controlling the Congressional agenda is a way of influencing what is emphasized in our political discourse. Yes, the media has covered Democratic reports of corruption or lying to Congress, but it's done so on page A22. When John Conyers held hearings on the trumped up rationale for the Iraq war, he did so in a crappy, overcrowded hearing room given to him by the Republicans who controlled the House, and that earned him only a typically sneering Dana Milbank column in the Washington Post ("In the Capitol basement yesterday, long-suffering House Democrats took a trip to the land of make-believe"). Yeah, the issues raised there were covered, technically, but never became part of the mainstream national discussion.
There's a lot more I could say about the assumptions that support Reich's piece, but let me just add that he's presenting us with a false dichotomy. Yes, we need representatives who will offer a bold new agenda, but I don't see how you get there without shining a bright light on how we got where we are now in the first place. Reich is correct that Bush shouldn't be the primary target; the big bull's-eye should be on the conservative project itself, and that means laying bare its framework -- the money, the communications, the politicians … everything (including its Democratic allies).
Without that, Reich's "bold agenda" will be limiting to tinkering around the edges, which is what the Clintonistas always endorse -- probably because of their abiding belief that the Clinton years represented some kind of ideal period in American governance. Until they get that a "bold agenda" means just that, millions of progressives will continue to see the Dems as no more than a bandage, a way to stop the bleeding, and not credible agents of change.--Alexandra Walker | Thursday, August 24, 2006 10:10 AM
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/08/24/what_reich_gets_wrong.phpI thought, since so many had either disagreed with Reich, or thought a two-proged approach was the answer, that I'd publish the rebuttal blog-entry here for you to see.
I though this said it all:
Without that, Reich's "bold agenda" will be limiting to tinkering around the edges, which is what the Clintonistas always endorse -- probably because of their abiding belief that the Clinton years represented some kind of ideal period in American governance. Until they get that a "bold agenda" means just that, millions of progressives will continue to see the Dems as no more than a bandage, a way to stop the bleeding, and not credible agents of change.
What do you think?
TC
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