What Democrats Want

Over at Early Returns, Ken Baer is using Matt Bai's article on Lakoff to lash Democrats for lacking a "public philosophy". Generally speaking, I'm fine with the Lakoff part. Matt Bai's criticism of him, at least the part that Baer quotes, is exactly the criticism I wrote a few months ago, and I'm always excited to see the NYT plagiarizing from my site. But then Baer goes on to say this, and all my warm fuzzies fly away:

This, in a nutshell, is the problem with Democrats. We lack an overriding argument or a clear public philosophy. That is, the outlook on politics and government that informs one's stances on the central issues that face a country: from its role in the world to how its goverment should work and how its consensual values should be put into practice.

I don't understand people who say this. Generally, when confronted with public policy X, people know which side Democrats are going to come down on. That predictability is informed by a basic understanding of the values that motivate progressive politics. It's not the sort of thing that lends itself to pithy repetition, but neither is it hard to pin down. Democrats like social programs that help the needy, they like government regulation that protects consumers, they think business needs watching if capitalism is to function well, they think health care should be provided -- or at least guaranteed -- by the state, they think international legitimacy is important, they're uncomfortable with the use of force but still willing to wield it, etc. These haven't been jammed into a 10-word formulation, but neither do you need a decoder ring to figure them out.

The issue here is that the GOP's "strong defense, free markets, lower taxes, smaller government, and family values" isn't a public philosophy. No sir. Sorry to disappoint. It is pithy and effective and fun to say and a host of other things, but it's not some sort of coherent world perspective that plays a large role in informing their policy decisions. Everyone believes in strong defense, the GOP just believes in more defense spending; everyone believes in free markets, the GOP just eschews regulation; everyone wants lower taxes, the problem is Democrats actually pay for their social programs; everyone wants smaller government, the problem is the GOP reliably enlarges it while advocating the opposite; everyone wants family values, the problem is no one knows what they are.

Every time we invoke those 10 words as some mystical artifact that we can just reverse engineer for political success, we lose. Those 10 words are a political construction. A good one, to be sure, but still a poll-tested method of presenting a GOP platform voters won't reject. If it was anything more, the Republican party wouldn't constantly contravene its tenets. If the GOP were truly concerned about low tax rates, they wouldn't be pushing for huge expansions of social programs. If they really worried over small government, they wouldn't legislate to make it larger. If they really believed in free markets, they wouldn't pass the Millennium Copyright Act or shackle generic drug makers or stop reimportation from China.

The GOP has assembled a list of policy specifics that Democrats don't support, that the public, in theory, does, and that Republicans follows when it's convenient. And yes, the Democrats should do the same. Not with Lakoffian boilerplate, but with five policies that we support, the GOP doesn't, and the country does. Democrats can be the party of universal health care, a livable wage, universal day care, corporate regulation, and international moral leadership. Or they can be the party of five other things they support and Republicans don't.

Once they do, they can publicize the list, talk about it, build elections around it, and have their very own pithy statement of intentions that defines them. But don't mistake a summarized agenda for a philosophy. The trick is realizing this is a messaging issue, not a deep philosophical quest to find the true nature of the progressive project. And if you ever need help telling the difference, remember: coherent public philosophies, in a world that includes everything from health care to stem cells to Sudan, take more than 10 words. Anyone who tells you different is just trying to get elected.