EVERYTHING has changed, politics included. It's hard to know what "politics as usual" might mean these days. Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe attempted to address this issue on Monday as he spoke to students about the future of the Democratic party. His speech reminds us that the terrorist attacks will make politics more difficult and political solutions more elusive. The challenges of living after Sept. 11 clash with the challenges of living after President Clinton.
McAuliffe spoke at length about how the party must respond to life after Clinton, mainly by focusing its efforts on local politics as a source of energy, involvement and inspiration. For eight years under President Clinton, energy and inspiration flowed from top to bottom - from the president down the chain to the electorate. McAuliffe called Clinton "the greatest communicator our party has ever had," and joked that Clinton could speak at a church bake-sale for five minutes and he would undo the day's work of a team of Republican staffers trying to pull voters over to their side.
Clinton's personal moral failings aside - indeed, most Americans quickly got over them - he made us feel safe, he watched over a period of nearly unprecedented economic prosperity, and he inspired the next generation of New Democrats.
But Clinton is out of the picture now. So how can the party survive? By shifting its emphasis and reversing its mechanism for attracting support, McAuliffe answers. It can no longer be a presidential, top-down party. Instead, Democrats have to work from the other end, starting at the local level and working up. Energy and inspiration must flow from this base. People must get involved locally. The party must look downward for its strength.
Cultivating support at the grassroots level tends to be about results, the tangible differences politics makes in people's daily lives. The timing is great, if this were possible: McAuliffe cited a recent poll that estimates a record 70 percent of Americans now believe politics is relevant to their lives. People are scared, both for their physical safety and their economic security. In addition to a war on terrorism, we're now facing an economic slowdown that appears to be serious and lasting.
So, people want results. But the government is in an unusually poor position to provide them. Every dollar we spend on the war on terrorism - which promises to be protracted and expensive - is one we don't spend on social welfare programs. Even if we raise taxes, as we have during every major war in our history, there will be a lot less to go around for the programs that will matter most in Americans' daily lives. And right now, the Bush administration and Congress are trying to cut taxes. This means less government spending, and hence less in the way of political results.
Where does this leave the Democratic party? It's in the business of trying to excite the electorate en masse, without a strong, charismatic leader and without the ability to fund productive government initiatives. This suggests that politics will become even more a game of smoke and mirrors, not of substance. McAuliffe's own speech illustrated this trend. As he came to the podium, Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" blasted through the Newcomb Hall Theater, trying to cultivate the mood of a pep rally. And his speech, while certainly energetic and enthusiastic, seemed slightly out of touch with reality. He made impossible promises about the Democrats winning "every single election this year," he referred multiple times to "winning" the 2000 presidential election, and he still calls Al Gore "the Vice President."
But I do not think that we were supposed to notice. It's all part of a high-energy, low-substance show designed to captivate the average voter. McAuliffe provides a model for post-Clintonite Democrats: Learn how to talk passionately without actually saying anything.
McAuliffe's performance, then, suggests a dismal future to the Democratic party - maybe not in terms of electoral success, in wins and losses, but in terms of a party that addresses substantive concerns in a meaningful way. One long-term effect of the terrorist attacks looks to be an even further dumbing-down of politics.
In retrospect, the Clinton era is looking better and better.
(Bryan Maxwell's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at bmaxwell@cavalierdaily.com.)
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