The Battle of No-Ideas

With so much discussion of how the Democrats have no ideas, and of their recent attempts to come up with some, it has been easy to ignore the ideological black-hole that is the Republican party. The most serious ideological discussion amongst the Republicans recently has been over the meaning of the word ‘amnesty,’ which resembled not so much an informed and reasoned debate as it did a Jerry Springer special about lovers arguing over the meaning of the word ‘cheating’. There was a lot of pomp and circumstance, and it was clearly made for television.

Bruce Reed’s recent piece in the Democratic Leadership Council’s Blueprint Magazine serves as a pointed, and somewhat humorous, reminder of the Republican’s active retreat from the vision thing. Riffing off the Republicans’ decision to pursue a mid-term electoral strategy of emphasizing local politics and trying to prevent them from being about national issues, Reed sardonically observes, ‘Republicans are rushing to claim the idea-free mantle for themselves.’ In fact, as Reed goes on to point out, Republicans have been washed up for a while:

‘when it comes to tired ideas, Democrats can't possibly compete with a Republican Party whose sole remaining bedrock principle is a tax-cut theory that didn't work a quarter-century ago, either.’

Reed exaggerates for emphasis, but the point is valid. The tax cut is not so much an idea as it is a redistribution of income, and it’s certainly unrelated to any broader economic program or social project. The only thing really holding the Republicans together is a shared antipathy for the Democrats and a general desire for power.

If Reed’s analysis of the Republicans is solid, he is somewhat more evasive about the Democrats. He does believe they stand for something ‘Many Democrats actually have ideas, so it has become a real burden for the party to pretend otherwise.’ But he ends his scalding critique of the Republicans with tepid fare: ‘Democrats have a good answer to the Republican charge that Democratic ideas will run the country into the ground: You ran the country into the ground first.’ This is not a good answer, and it’s certainly not a ringing call to arms. It does not even present the Democrats as a good choice, so much as the only other option besides complete and empty failure. Political competition between failures is not the same thing as partisan conflict or a battle of ideas.

In fact, the ‘ideas’ that Reed thinks the Democrats have are not really the same thing as Ideas. Reed really means the Democrats have a series of policy proposals that might win enough votes to carry an election, not that they have a coherent project for social change. In fact, it is symptomatic of limited the horizons of mainstream political imagination is, that Reed can’t think of ideas as anything more than policy proposals. It is no wonder that both parties fall back on a politics of fear. They have no other way of animating their policies, and enchanting their rule. One thing is for sure, inspiration won’t be coming from Washington.