Dartblog

I just picked up this morning’s New York Times to see a 16:9 photograph of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, stationed on opposite sides, leading a civil rights parade in Selma, Alabama, where the march to Montgomery began—with tremendous violence—in 1965. Scott Ott’s take on the event is here, where he notes that both candidates “fulfilled Dr. King’s dream” by being in Selma. If Dr. King’s dream was to have a crisply trailored photo opportunity, and to use the mortal struggles of several generations of blacks for political advantage decades later, then Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton succeeded marvelously.

The entire race on the Left—increasingly narrowed to just the two, Obama and Clinton—has amounted to little more than theater. For the Democrats, the only policy question that has piqued the national stage has been the Iraq War. And the flesh even there is thin: the newspaper reports are all about who has apologized for his or her vote in favor of the war. (If you’ve missed the last five years, the story is this: Virtually all American politicians supported the War in Iraq, but Popular Wartime Presidents Win Reelection, so the Democrats are opposed to it now and have convinced fully half of the country that if it is not easy it is not worth doing.)

This is to be lamented. Whom the Democrats nominate for President hinges on whether Democratic primary voters would rather that their candidates be “tricked” into voting for war or vote for war soberly but then hypocritically oppose it in all respects thereafter. Not exactly conducive to the commonweal.

Nor is the vaudeville that played in Selma on Sunday. There, Hillary Clinton actually said that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 allowed her to run for President. There, Barack Obama said the same act allowed him to run for President. There, Mrs. Clinton spoke the words “We’ve got to stay awake, we’ve got to stay awake because we have a march to finish.” Mr. Obama, who would like to defeat Mrs. Clinton, said, referring to her, “We don’t have time for other folks to divide us.” Both ended their days singing the Pete Seeger song, We Shall Overcome. It was, if the lengthy Times report is at all accurate, a muddled spectacle of platitudinal nonsense and general embarrassment from two Americans who believe themselves capable of the presidency.

The same grim rigs exist on the right side of the aisle, but they hardly prevail over argument. That is to be expected from a party interested chiefly in philosophy. (Which the GOP is—myriad philosophies some mixture of which, voters feel, will lead to good policy. The Democrats, by way of comparison, exist by the grace of a thousand discrete issue-constituencies, the successful placation of some subset of which will lead to electoral success.) Even at the big annual conservative conference—CPAC, an event with an audience one would reasonably presume more ideologically homogenous than the citizens of any given American town, like Selma—each candidate’s speech was ruthlessly issue-based. Giuliani, Romney, Brownback, and Gingrich spoke about their views on each of the leading issues, and the broad political philosophies that would drive, say, Supreme Court appointments or engagement in foreign conflict in their White Houses.

In praising CPAC rhetoric, it is easy to laud too much. The conference had to do with a collection of not-entirely-conservative candidates trying to convince conservatives that they, the not-entirely-conservative candidates, are suitably conservative. But embedded in that task is a discussion of issues. At the very least, the candidates at CPAC felt an obligation—inherent when one presumes oneself fit for the White House—to both explain their opinions and to defend them. As near as any observer can tell, that standard has not been applied to any of the Democratic candidates. On the left, it is but theater. For the common good, even CPAC attendees should hope that changes.