Cold War Call to Action Wouldn't Ring True for Democrats Now
Where's Ronald Reagan when you need him -- or Eleanor Roosevelt and Walter Reuther?
In a provocative cover article this month, New Republic Editor Peter Beinart argues that today's Democrats should follow the example of Reagan (then a centrist Hollywood Democrat), Roosevelt (the former first lady), Reuther (the great labor leader) and other prominent activists who founded Americans for Democratic Action in 1947, largely to build a Democratic constituency for opposing the spread of communism during the Cold War.
The ADA's formation was a turning point for Democrats because it strengthened a "vital center" committed to resisting expansion by the Soviet Union while many on the left (led by Henry Wallace, Franklin Roosevelt's former vice president) still minimized the threat.
Beinart argues that Democrats today need a comparable centrist movement that will define a "fighting faith" for resisting "totalitarian Islam" and reclaim the party's identity from those on the left -- like filmmaker Michael Moore -- who he believes see the struggle against America's new foe as "a distraction if not a mirage."
Beinart is a smart and serious student of political history, and his lengthy argument (published in the Dec. 13 issue) is intriguing. But his analogy to the 1940s is imperfect for explaining the situation Democrats face now. In fact, his argument shows how difficult it will be for Democrats to set a new course on national security until they regain the White House.
Beinart's biggest complaint is that in the war on terrorism, Democrats have allowed themselves to be defined more by what they oppose than what they support. "When liberals talk about America's new era, the discussion is largely negative -- against the Iraq war, against restrictions on civil liberties, against America's worsening reputation in the world," he writes.
Democrats, he says, must find a positive agenda that can convince the country that the party will combat Islamic terrorism as staunchly as the post-World War II ADA centrists resisted Soviet communism.
Beinart is surely right that in this uneasy new era, as at the height of the Cold War, Democrats are unlikely to win the White House unless voters trust the party to protect them. But he glosses over the principal reason the ADA generation could articulate a positive foreign policy agenda more easily than Democrats can today.
