THE LIFE OF THE PARTIES
As America heads into its quadrennial circus of nominating conventions (this year’s even more surreal because of the pandemic), it’s important to understand the real difference between America’s two political parties at this point in history.
Instead of “left” vs. “right,” think of two different core competences.
The Democratic Party is basically a governing party, organized around developing and implementing public policies. The Republican Party has become an attack party, organized around developing and implementing political vitriol. Democrats legislate. Republicans fulminate.
In theory, politics requires both capacities — to govern, but also to fight to attain and retain power. The dysfunction today is that Republicans can’t govern and Democrats can’t fight.
Donald Trump is the culmination of a half-century of GOP belligerence. Richard Nixon’s “dirty tricks” were followed by Republican operative Lee Atwater’s smear tactics, Newt Gingrich’s take-no-prisoners reign as House speaker, the “Swift-boating” of John Kerry, and the GOP’s increasingly blatant uses of racism and xenophobia to build an overwhelmingly white, rural base.
Atwater, trained in the Southern swamp of the modern Republican Party, once noted: “Republicans in the South could not win elections by talking about issues. You had to make the case that the other guy, the other candidate, is a bad guy.” Over time, the GOP’s core competence came to be vilification.
The stars of today’s Republican Party, in addition to Trump, are all pugilists: Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio; Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp; Fox News’ Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson; and attack dogs like Rudolph Giuliani and Roger Stone.
But Republicans don’t have a clue how to govern. They’re hopeless at developing and implementing public policies or managing government. They can’t even agree on basics like how to respond to the pandemic or what to replace Obamacare with.
Meanwhile, the central competence of the Democratic Party is running government — designing policies and managing the system. Once in office, Democrats spend countless hours cobbling together legislative and regulatory initiatives. They overflow with economic and policy advisers, programs, plans and goals.
But Democrats are lousy at bare-knuckles political fighting. Their campaigns proffer policies but are often devoid of passion. Democrats seem stunned when their GOP opponents pillory them with lies, rage and ad hominem attacks.
This has put Democrats at a competitive disadvantage. Political campaigns might once have been about party platforms, but today’s electorate is angrier and more cynical. Policy ideas rarely make headlines; conflict does. Social media favor explosive revelations, including bald lies. No one remembers Hillary Clinton’s policy ideas from 2016; they only remember Trump’s attacks on her emails.
As a result, the party that’s mainly good at attacking has been winning elections — and pushed into governing, which it’s bad at.
This dysfunction has become particularly obvious — and deadly — in the current national emergency. Trump and Senate Republicans have let the pandemic and economic downturn become catastrophes. Their knee-jerk response is to attack — China, Democrats, public health officials, protesters, “lazy” people who won’t work.
Democrats know what to do — House Democrats passed a comprehensive coronavirus bill in May, and several Democratic governors have been enormously effective — but they’ve lacked power to put a national strategy into effect.
All this may change in a few months when Americans have an opportunity to replace the party that’s bad at governing with the one that’s good at it.
The big question hovering over the election is whether Democrats can summon enough fight to win against the predictable barrage. Biden’s choice of running mate, Kamala Harris, bodes well in this regard. Quite apart from all her other attributes, she’s a fierce fighter.