When ‘New Democrat’ Becomes ‘Republican Lite’

How did “New Democrat” become a synonym for “Republican Lite”? It’s a key question as Democrats head into their low-cal convention in Chicago, especially in the wake of Bill Clinton’s cancellation of Franklin Roosevelt’s commitment to care for those Bobby Kennedy called the weakest among us.

FDR’s New Deal, of course, metastasized and ossified into LBJ’s Great Society. By 1972, unpopular and out of ideas, post-World War II liberalism had reached its nadir. New forces emerged as national power shifted away from the Northeast. The New South and the New West became the new focus. Each produced its champions, each pledged to pursue progressive ideals in a new and different era. Yet there were crucial differences.

New West Democrats of 20 years ago such as California’s Jerry Brown and Colorado’s Gary Hart were pro-capitalist and pro-high tech but skeptical of big private and public institutions, at times fighting huge business interests. Internationalist rather than globalist, environmentally conscious and civil libertarian, they focused on political reform, were critical of the military and intelligence establishments and pursued industrial policies to help manage change in the midst of historic economic transformation.

New South Democrats, typified by then-Gov. Jimmy Carter of Georgia and, later, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, conscious of their tragic regional heritage, were admirable reformers on black-white relations. But they were accepting of concentrated economic power, less interested in environmental concerns and hostile to political reform.

In the end, the forces of the New West were not so much defeated as they were superseded as the forces of the New South joined hands with permanent Washington.

The Democratic Leadership Council is emblematic in this regard. From its inception in 1985, this “New Democrat” vehicle has been dominated not by reformers, but by Washington careerists and conservative Southern Democrats, most of whom backed Walter Mondale, that quintessential Old Democrat, in 1984. The most lobbyists I’ve ever seen together in one place were delegates to the 1991 DLC convention in Cleveland, where Clinton unveiled his presidential candidacy.

Some blame the emergence of Clinton’s Republican Lite presidency on a Svengali consultant who works both sides of the aisle. But the president knew the class of advice he wanted when he reached for the instrument known as Dick Morris.

Even before the Gingrichian reaction to Clinton’s troubled first two years in office, the Republican Lite cast of his presidency was coming into focus. One of the most telling moments in Bob Woodward’s “The Agenda” is when economic advisor Laura Tyson, a former UC Berkeley professor, submits a vision statement for the president’s 1994 economic message. In it, she describes government’s proper role as being that of a “catalyst” in the creation of mass prosperity. This was the core neoliberal economic concept, hardly a radical notion. But it was rejected by spin maven David Gergen and former chief of staff Mack McLarty as inconsistent with Clinton’s New Democrat status.

The ex-spokesman for Reaganomics and an ex-Southern gas company chief executive officer were Clinton’s ideological arbiters. All that remained of neoliberalism was the “neo.” From there, it was a short step to Morris’ notion of the president as resonator-in-residence.

Now Clinton affably presides over an America not unlike Ronald Reagan’s: a nation with the greatest polarization of incomes and wealth in the advanced industrial world (educational differences only partly accounting for the problem), with growing concentration of media ownership by vast transnational corporations.

These, of course, are not the concerns discussed in the intimate $100,000 per plate dinners that the president holds in private hotel rooms near the White House. Nearly a quarter of a billion dollars will be spent on behalf of the Clinton-Gore ticket. Bill Clinton’s party has become a political money launderer. It should come as no surprise that many of the corporations that sponsored the Republicans in San Diego are sponsoring the Democrats in Chicago.

To borrow a phrase from the president’s idol, we can do better.