The Past Is a Bucket of Ashes

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed Rahm Emanuel admonishes the progressives in his political party:

Democrats need to tear a page from the Republican playbook. When interviewing for a job, you don’t lead with self-loathing. Democrats need to assert that they’ve got a record of success. If the GOP could claim that a past Republican president had created 20 million jobs, do you think they would disparage him as a RINO—a Republican in name only? If a GOP president had sparked the longest peacetime economic expansion in the nation’s history, do you think they’d label his efforts as “tepid”?

These aren’t trick questions—of course they wouldn’t. Nevertheless, it’s chic today in certain quarters of the Democratic Party to disparage Presidents Clinton and Obama, who actually did those things, on the misguided pretense that criticizing the progressive past will somehow open the door to a more robust progressive future.

and he recommends a version of Reagan’s “11th Commandment”:

Decades ago, Reagan coined what many call the 11th commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.” Democrats don’t need to pretend that every Democrat who ever held office was infallible. But if they want to pursue a progressive agenda and win elections on the economy, they should burnish their own narrative of success.

Franklin Roosevelt established Social Security, and Harry Truman improved it. Lyndon Johnson’s Medicaid planted the seeds for Mr. Clinton’s Children’s Health Insurance Program and Mr. Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Mr. Clinton made the tax code more progressive by doubling the tax credit for the working poor, Mr. Obama doubled it again, and now Mr. Biden is working to take the next step. To build a movement, you shouldn’t talk down what you’ve already achieved on behalf of the American people.

I’m not sure of what Mr. Emanuel is trying to accomplish with this op-ed or who his target audience is. Is he trying to protect the Democrats’ tenuous control of federal power? Is it a somewhat desperate attempt on his part at maintaining his own relevance in today’s Democratic Party?

I think he fails to understand the essential nature of progressivism. It is focused on the future, disinterested if not dismissive of the past. Not only that but today’s progressives certainly seem insistent on applying their ever-changing standards to past behaviors. Lyndon Johnson, despite his being the Founding Father of today’s federal government, was effectively “canceled” by Baby Boomers. No Democratic president of the 20th or 21st century could live up to the standards of belief and behavior presently being applied. And former Republican presidents? Fuggedaboutit.

If the progressive wing of the Democratic Party actually achieves control of the party apparatus and the organs of government, who could survive its scrutiny? Certainly not Rahm Emanuel.