Ripon College Days

Democrats need to learn how to lose. Not, as Republican wags would have it, because they'll continue to do so in future elections, but for the exact opposite reason: it's the only way they'll ever truly win. The day congressional Democrats start acting like a real opposition party is the day they finally begin building a genuine majority. And there's no better opportunity to do it, politically or substantively, than putting John Roberts in his place.

Political knobs that they are, some members of the Democratic "establishment" (read: the folks who have been getting their asses kicked for the last decade) have been scratching their heads over the latest polling data. How can it be, they ask, that Democratic approval ratings haven't risen as approval for President Bush and the Republican Congress have dropped through the floor? The answer, as with most things that they elude their grasp, is simple: the public has nothing to approve.

Democrats have spent the last few weeks blasting President Bush, deservedly, for his negligent, bumbling, insensitive response to Hurricane Katrina. Yet I haven't heard a single word about how Democrats would have done things differently: how government is a means to help, how professionalism should trump political patronage, how the poverty which prevented so many Louisianans from escaping is exactly what Democratic policies are designed to remedy. As I peruse the blogs, I see plenty of posts crowing about Bush's declining approval and dumping on the latest example of political mendacity coming from the floodwaters of the Deep South- but far fewer on just how a response could have worked, or just how we'll use that mendacity to beat the Republicans next year.

Part of the problem, I think, is that Bush has been so mind-bogglingly inept that it's working to his advantage. His actions have so often been so far outside the bounds of reality, competence and political good taste that it's easy to overlook what remains inside those bounds. The public is beginning to realize the first part; that's why Bush's approval ratings are dropping faster than roommates' pants in a season premiere of the Real World. But Democrats seem so caught up in the battle over incompetence that they're forgetting to fight the battle of ideas- to develop a vision of what government back within those bounds could be about.

John Roberts is the perfect opportunity to break the cycle. Friendly, prolific, intellectually respected: when it comes to professional credibility, Roberts is as good an example as either side of the aisle could produce. Yet as his body of work has trickled out over the past few weeks, it's became clear that from a liberal perspective, Roberts' ideas are just as reprehensible as anything our more corrupt and less able executive could ever spout. The Constitutional right to privacy- you know, the one that keeps the government from controlling who you sleep with and what you read- is "so-called" in Roberts' mind, the guarantee of equal protection for minorities, as William Taylor so ably pointed out in the New York Review of Books, a source of "single-minded opposition" in his decisions and memos (check the link at the bottom of the page).

It would seem obvious that any self-respecting Democrat should vote against such radical conservatism. Many probably will vote to confirm anyway, due to the Senate tradition of bipartisan confirmation of nominees. (Maintaining this perspective mere months after the Republican leadership attempted to eliminate the filibuster would take accommodationism to truly absurd heights, but that's a discussion for another day.) And even if they didn't, the Soviet-like cohesion of the Republican majority would make confirmation all but a foregone conclusion regardless.

But instead of fretting over the likely loss, this is a perfect opportunity for Democrats to learn how to lose well- to start fighting the battle of ideas instead of the battle over incompetence. Screw comity, and more importantly, screw the managerial boobery and cynical duplicity of his ideological allies in the other branches: John Roberts needs to be questioned hard about his apparent distaste for fundamental constitutional rights, and if he doesn't answer satisfactorily, Democrats need to vote against his confirmation for precisely those reasons. I have no doubt that John Roberts is a good, sincere, hardworking man, but on a substantive level he would be as poor a chief justice as George W. Bush has been a president. It's time to draw that distinction more clearly, to show that conservatives aren't just bunglers, which they take care of themselves, but to show that they're wrong- and we're right. Only then will we genuinely convince Americans that we deserve their approval, and only then can we build a lasting majority upon the political ruins in which the Bush administration already lies.

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