THE PARTY OF TREASON
Nicholas von Hoffman argues that Saddam Hussein's massacre of Iraqis will do little to help the Democrats
Tenants Harbor, Maine IT'S a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. The Democrats acknowledge that, but none of them has shown enough team spirit to volunteer to be their party's next pres- idential candidate. No one can remember a time this late in the election cycle when no announced candidates had appeared.
Virginia's African-American Governor, L. Douglas Wilder, has taken the first step in the labyrinthine process by filing papers for what is called an 'exploratory commit- tee' to sniff around and report back on the lie of the land. The time is past when the thought of a black man in the White House is too ridiculous to bear thinking about.
However, Democrats from any gene pool will find it tough going against George Bush. Reports in Europe notwithstanding, few Americans care whether Saddam Hus- sein continues in power at the expense of ethnic and religious groups they had never even heard of until last week. The voters are less concerned about chaos and mayhem in Mesopotamia than they are about the potential costs of a military occupation. In their eyes this country is still Uncle Sucker, the nation which pays to put its defeated enemies back in business. From time to time, The Mouse That Roared, that old film about the little country which went to war against the United States in order to get American aid, can still be seen on television. Winning is one thing, hanging around to pick up the pieces is another. International relief aid to Kurdish refugees, promised by the Secret- ary of State, James Baker, on his brief visit to the area this week, is about as far as anyone here wants to go. The war and the victory have revived ancient anti-Democratic prejudices among the population. American political parties are not like European ones. The two parties are cultural agglomerations, not organisations of people bound together by shared principles and common views of political economy. Thus since its begin- nings the Republican Party has been the party of military patriotism. Seven of its first ten candidates for president were military heroes. Thanks to the Civil War the Democrats became 'the party of treason', and they have never quite been able to shake off the suspicion that, when it comes to fighting and flag-waving, they are deficient. The fact that four American war presidents in the 20th century have been Democrats makes no difference.
In the year leading up to America's entry into the first world war the Republican Theodore Roosevelt stumped the country calling Woodrow Wilson a coward. In- deed, without the Republican pressure to get into the war, the reluctant Wilson, whose fellow Democrats had little stomach for it, would never have got involved. A generation later, the Republicans cam- paigned against Franklin Roosevelt's move towards war by accusing him of unpatriotic toadying to foreigners and neglect of national interest.
Thanks to Yalta and the communist triumphs in China and eastern Europe, the Democrats came out of the second world war still the party of treason, still the faint-hearts who won't fight it out with the bad guys. Korea and Vietnam, wars run by Democratic presidents who made the milit- ary 'fight with their arms tied behind their backs', confirmed the notion that they are not the party to entrust with the nation's security. On one occasion Republican bellicosity played the GOP false. In 1964 a Democra- tic presidential candidate, Lyndon John- son, was able to win an election by claiming that, if elected, the Republicans would get the country into a war. Some- times Democratic candidates have chosen to prove that they have more hair on their chests than the Republicans. It worked for John F. Kennedy, but by the narrowest of electoral margins. It did not work for Michael Dukakis, who made a fool of himself awkwardly riding around in a tank and reminding the electorate that Demo- crats do not look good in khaki.
Democratic remarks about Mr Bush's wimpishness have boomeranged to the extent that their leading men think that the next election, still more than a year and a half away, is unwinnable. In the old days when the party was an odds-on loser, its leaders would put a knife in somebody's ribs and force him to accept the nomina- tion. A dispirited convention would do its duty and everyone would go through the motions of pretending to be trying to elect a president.
There are no longer party leaders who can make demands and expect anyone to listen. Nor are candidates actually nomin- ated by conventions. Conventions merely ratify the outcome of the primaries, which are conducted state by state, but this arrangement depends on having people who are willing to endure the suffering, expense and humiliation of offering them- selves as presidential candidates.
Compounding the dearth of candidates, the Democrats are coming up against another affliction which has visited them periodically since the Civil War — and that is their lack of a central core. The Republi- cans have always been the party of law, stability, propriety and property. Republi- cans are the sober church-goers. They are the Protestant ethic/work ethic party. To be a Republican, go out and buy a decent- looking suit of clothes and be punctual for your appointments. In a gathering, it is pretty easy to guess who the Republicans may be, but with the Democrats, well, you never know.
The Democrats are the 'everybody else' party, the sweepings and leavings party. If the Republicans pool their money to get elected, the Democrats pool the needy. From the Civil War onwards the Demo- crats have been the coalition party, which takes anybody who wants to join. You don't have to go out and get a shave, .a shine and a shampoo to sign up with them as you do with the Republicans. Regard- less of who you are or how you behave, the Democracy will welcome you, and if, perchance, luck is with them this time, you will get your share of the spoils.
Thus for 130 years it has been the Democrats' lot to wait for the Republicans to make a mistake, whether it's Watergate or the Great Depression or — a very remote possibility — the ghastly aftermath of the great Arabian war of liberation. What the Democrats have mostly had to offer is not being Republicans. Every so often, that's good enough.
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