One reason for the sourness of American politics is the conviction of partisans on each side that the other side is smarter, meaner, tougher, less inhibited by shame, more disciplined and ruthless. This is a line of thought that is especially tempting when your side is doing badly. Conservatives whined in these terms under President Clinton; liberals are now whining similarly in response to President Bush (and Karl Rove). I imagine that if I still read Paul Krugman columns, I'd be getting a large dose of this kind of thing. James Traub has just written a fine example of the genre in the New York Times Magazine. Democrats, Traub writes, are handing Bush a victory on prescription drugs. They have let more of his judicial nominees go through than Republicans did of Clinton's. They refrained from taking all legal steps they could during the Florida recount. ("Joe Lieberman felt called upon to concede the fairness of a critical Republican claim about the validity of absentee military ballots. Several months later, I asked Lieberman how in the world he could have handed that weapon to his opponents, and he said, 'In spite of the fact that on the other side they were being partisan, there was no reason for me not to say what I saw.' It's impossible to think of any instance in which the Bush-Cheney ticket acted comparably.")
Traub asks, a trifle plaintively, "Why are the Democrats so much more willing than the Republicans to make political sacrifices in the name of procedural fairness or of good government?" Why won't they fight dirty? Where are their "unleashed attack dogs"? (I think I saw them on
Crossfire.) Traub's answer is that Democrats are more committed than Republicans to a morality of means rather than ends. "[T]oday's liberals, unlike today's conservatives, don't believe in any particular set of ends ardently enough to blind themselves to the means they are using to achieve them."
No doubt Traub's article will go down well with liberals, who will be able to tell themselves that they would succeed if only they were louder, and that if they do not succeed it is because they are such nice, fair-minded people. His analysis has nothing else to recommend it.
On prescription drugs, Ted Kennedy does not appear to believe that liberals are making a long-term political sacrifice; and it is not at all clear that his bet will be proven wrong. As for the courts: To believe that conservatives have been more single-minded in trying to affect their direction than liberals, as liberals have been saying for several years, you would have to ignore the confirmation wars over Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas, the easy confirmations of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, and the higher willingness of Republican appointees on the Court to move left than for Democratic ones to move right. (Or you would have to redefine the left pole of the judicial debate as "moderate," as liberals also do.)
Traub's account of what happened in Florida leaves out something important. Challenging the validity of the military ballots would have been a political disaster for Democrats. Everyone knew that. Gore campaign operatives weren't angry that Lieberman had sacrificed a legal victory to high-mindedness. They were angry that he wouldn't take a punch — that he wouldn't run the risk of damaging his political future for the sake of the campaign.
If you wanted to devise a right-wing version of Traub's complaint about procedural fairness, it would be fairly easy to do. Modern liberalism's procedural principles have always had a protean quality. When liberalism cannot advance in state capitols, it moves to Washington. When it is stymied in Congress, it moves to the courts. Conservatives, who are (more) committed to principles of judicial restraint and federalism, are thus at a permanent disadvantage.
"Pity the Democrats, stuck with the wrong set of virtues," concludes Traub. Pity the liberals, who are stuck with an analysis of the Democrats' predicament that promotes their resentments rather than their interests.
