BOSTON – It’s a choice, not a crusade.
It took the Democrats’ most effective and beloved messenger, Bill Clinton, to give a seamless exposition of what has happened in the United States of America since Sept. 11, 2001. It took Clinton, loosened up with the balm of adulation he absorbed from the podium of the FleetCenter, to argue that the November election is a choice not only about where our nation stands abroad but where we, the people, stand here at home.
“Not a single American on September 12, 2001, cared who won the next presidential election,” Clinton said.
The shock of the attack and the unity born in national mourning presented an extraordinary opportunity for President George W. Bush to draw the country together. Instead, Clinton argued, Bush and his Republican congressional allies used the grief and the fear and the overhang of public uncertainty to pursue a “far to the right” agenda, and not just abroad. At home, too.
“For the first time when America was on a war footing in our whole history, they gave two huge tax cuts, nearly half of which went to the top 1 percent of us,” Clinton said. The former president, a celebrity and a millionaire, doesn’t want his. “I almost sent them a thank-you note for my tax cuts – until I realized that the rest of you were paying for the bill for it, and then I thought better of it.”
Thus did Bill Clinton describe the essence of the Bush economic policy.
Tax cuts for the lucky few are financed by deficits borne by the many. It is, in fact, the foundation of our entire domestic policy. There is no need great enough – education funding, health care, veterans benefits, even inspecting cargo containers to guard against a terrorist attack – to break the bitter political equation in which preserving and protecting the Bush tax cuts has greater value than all else. The government’s own accountants even said the other day that we’re running out of money to fight in Iraq.
Had we forgotten?
The delegates here are under John Kerry’s firm control. They joyfully take their places in the hall and cheer at all the right times – and privately chafe at the Kerry campaign’s admonition against indulging their inner rage.
“Obviously for those of us in the hall, we want the red meat thrown at us,” said Sheila Horvitz, a delegate from Coldchester, Conn. Her first convention was the 1992 Clinton coming-out party and she understands fully, she says, the requirement to be positive and upbeat for those uncommitted viewers at home. But, she said wistfully, “we’re not talking about the lying, cheating, manipulating, misleading.”
It’s Kerry’s party. But Howard Dean supplied the punchbowl.
After Dean emerged last fall as the voice of the outraged Democrat, the party sobered itself with Kerry. The Massachusetts senator provided not the best sounding board for ranting, but the best vehicle for winning. Much of the rank and file has, nonetheless, stoked itself with endless discussion of the subjects about which there is no depth to the anger. The missing weapons of mass destruction and the missing links between al-Qaida and Iraq. Halliburton. Cheney. The Saudis and oil.
Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, talk of the squeezed middle class. But it is Clinton who articulated best, so far, just how the squeeze came about – and who tightened the vise. Of all Clinton’s examples of choices made and choices rejected, is there any more powerful than the tale of White House and House Republican refusal to go along with a plan to pinch back a mere $5,000 of the rich man’s tax cut – to pay for more stringent anti-terror inspections?
“They thought our $5,000 was more important than doubling the container checks at our ports and airports,” Clinton said. “If you agree with that, by all means re-elect them.” Or you choose Kerry and John Edwards instead.
It is, after all, our choice. The Kerry people are right to tamp down the Democrats’ fervor for crusade. Making informed choices, as the coveted swing voter perhaps will do, requires thought. It forces us to watch more than the distressing drama of Iraq. We must see as well an economic policy that hurts America and was put in place even as America was hurting.
Marie Cocco is a Newsday columnist. Contact her by writing to cocco@newsday.com.
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