While I wasn’t enthralled with Bill Clinton as president, most of the differences I had with him were, shall we say, personal issues rather than serious policy differences. I disagreed with him on foreign policy. I thought he was amoral. And he was a poor husband to say the least.
But is there any doubt that he’s the most skilled politician of my generation? And probably the shrewdest American politician of any party around right now? That’s why I think that Democrats may be prudent to take heed of these comments of his quoted in the New York Post.
Former President Bill Clinton, in his first comments on President Bush’s re-election, yesterday urged Democrats not to “whine” about the outcome, but to find a “clear national message.”
Not whining is certainly good advice and I think that the “clear national message” is a swipe at Kerry’s, ahem, nuanced positions.
Clinton also said that Democrat John Kerry was hurt by the polarizing issue of gay marriage, which was legalized by Massachusetts’ top court and put on the ballot in 11 states, and the surfacing of a tape from Osama bin Laden in the final days of the race.
I know that the notion that the vote was an anti-gay vote is au courant among Democrats these days but it’s looking less and less likely. And terrorism is certainly the dog in the manger from many Democrats’ point of view but it certainly can’t have come as a surprise.
He also said that while Democrats registered more new voters than Republicans, the Bush campaign did a better job of getting voters to the polls who were already registered but had not previously voted.
So much for the Democrats’ ground game. This also calls into question the Democrats’ professionalization of voter registration (they paid for people to register voters). One of the messages of this election may be while that’s an effective way to get your registration numbers up, it’s less effective for developing motivated voters.
Clinton attributed Kerry’s loss to the Democrats’ failure to combat how they were portrayed by Republicans to small-town America.
“If we let people believe that our party doesn’t believe in faith and family, doesn’t believe in work and freedom, that’s our fault,” he said.
Part of the problem here is that that’s exactly what some of the members of the party do believe as illustrated by Ms. Smiley’s recent Slate article. The Democratic Party has been made up of constituencies with extremely diverse goals and interests since Roosevelt’s time and, perhaps, since Jackson’s time. That’s why Will Rogers famously remarked, when asked if he was a member of an organized political party “No, sir. I’m a Democrat.”
Democrats “need a clear national message, and they have to do this without one big advantage the Republicans have, which is they won’t have a theological message that basically paints the other guy as evil,” he said.
I categorically disagree with this point. Neither party has a monopoly on this view. Five minutes worth of reading Democratic Underground would make this obvious to anybody. But as I see it the Democrats have officially embraced the elements within their own party that have this view. That’s what I meant earlier this week by “getting their crazy people off the front porch”.
Clinton said the country was more divided than it was in 1968 and called for an end to the “culture war.”
I agree with this wholeheartedly. Who’s the vanguard of the culture war?
In his hourlong speech Clinton, who had open-heart surgery in September, gave Bush and the Republicans full credit for the election victory.
“The Republicans had a clear message, a good messenger, great organization and great strategy,” he said.
Clinton’s being gracious here. Bush was a poor messenger in 2000 and little better in 2004. But I agree with the clear message, great organization, and great strategy part.
Clinton said Bush should use his second term to move toward less dependence on foreign oil.
I sincerely wish that politicians would stop repeating this misconception. The United States dependency on foreign oil is mostly not due to our consumption of Middle Eastern oil. We import 80% of our oil from non-Middle Eastern countries and our single largest supplier is Canada. But the misconception goes deeper than that. As long as there’s a world market for oil and the Middle East in aggregate is the largest exporter, Middle Eastern oil production will affect world oil prices. So regardless of our levels of conservation or investment in alternative energy sources, we’re going to be dependent on Middle Eastern oil production in some sense for the foreseeable future. Let’s stop kidding ourselves.
“This election presents a great opportunity for President Bush and a great opportunity for Democrats, and the two are not necessarily in conflict,” he said.
Excellent. Very hopeful. Is there anything more to say about this?
The biggest opportunity he noted was the prospect of an Israeli-Palestinian peace amid the impending demise of Yasser Arafat.
Peace in the region would “take enormous steam” out of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism worldwide, Clinton said. “They would have to think of a new excuse to murder people.”
Like this, for example.
Good post, but there’s one bit where I’m not clear about your point.
As long as there’s a world market for oil and the Middle East in aggregate is the largest exporter, Middle Eastern oil production will affect world oil prices. So regardless of our levels of conservation or investment in alternative energy sources, we’re going to be dependent on Middle Eastern oil production in some sense for the foreseeable future.
Pretty much all the oil we import is either burned in IC engines or used as industrial feedstock. In both these sectors, consumption could be reduced by conservation and/or a shift to alternative sources (of energy in the case of cars, of carbon in the case of industry).
In both cases, these shifts are likely to be quite modest in the short-to-medium term (the next 20 years, say) due to both economic and technological limitations. However, in both cases very large long-term shifts are also possible.
So, if by “foreseeable future” you’re willing to go past about 2025, then heck yeah — very large reductions in reliance on imported oil are indeed possible.
But if you mean before that, you’re right — not much.
N.B., I have a feeling that what Clinton was really saying was, “Quit arguing about drilling in Alaska. It may be a noble cause, but it’s cost you one Senate seat already, and overall you’d be better off deploying those resources to something that matters.”
Doug M.
Doug Muir:
Don’t get me wrong—I’m not anti-conservation, quite the opposite, in fact. For the purposes of this post I’d say that foreseeable future was less than five years. And we won’t be completely independent of Middle Eastern oil in that period if only because our trading partners are completely dependent on it and that, since there’s a world market for oil, Middle Eastern production affects prices everywhere.