24 Tuesday Oct 2000
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
One thing is certain about George W. Bush and Al Gore: One of them is going to lose. To the victor, victory requires no explanation: The outcome is as it should have been, given the self-evident excellence of the candidate, the campaign, the strategy, the issues, the message, etc. There is no need to pick at victory, especially not when there are parties to go to as well as the executive branch of government to run.
17 Tuesday Oct 2000
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
The story of the Gore campaign so far can be summed up with a word from the vocabulary of financial market watchers: “underperform.” Except for the heady weeks following a very successful Democratic convention, when it looked like Mr. Gore might be turning the corner and opening up a lead against George W. Bush that was more than a post-convention bounce, Mr. Gore has simply not done as well as he ought to, given the givens.
10 Tuesday Oct 2000
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
I find it very difficult to score debates, for the simple reason that I tend to respond favorably to a candidate articulating a position with which I agree – and, perhaps more viscerally, to respond unfavorably to a candidate taking a position with which I disagree, or one unfairly (in my judgment) attacking a position I favor. This tendency is probably no more unusual among political commentators than it is among other members of a debate audience. But it is rarely acknowledged, and it may help explain why the Republican candidate is so rarely judged the clear-cut winner in a debate.
03 Tuesday Oct 2000
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
En route to the airport in the cab of a politically attuned taxi driver this weekend, I found myself listening to a C-SPAN radio broadcast of the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debate. The clich about this debate is that those who listened to it on the radio thought Nixon won, whereas those who saw it on television thought Kennedy won.
26 Tuesday Sep 2000
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
The presidential race is now neck-and-neck. Democrats who thought Al Gore was pulling away once and for all after trailing George W. Bush for virtually the entire pre-convention season are going to have to contain their euphoria.
19 Tuesday Sep 2000
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
In what way is the 2000 Gore campaign different from the Clinton campaigns of 1992 and 1996? The answer to that question provides some insight into the political odyssey of the Democrats over the past decade and where their party may be trying to go now.
05 Tuesday Sep 2000
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
Much to the disappointment of Republicans hoping that George W. Bush would coast into the White House on the strength of impressions of the candidates long firmly established in the minds of voters, Al Gore has finally become as formidable as he ought to be. Quite simply, the past – a nearly unbroken string of Bush leads in head-to-head polls against Mr. Gore, even through the tough primary contest with John McCain – can no longer be construed as prologue.
29 Tuesday Aug 2000
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
Political scientists have been writing for decades now about the decline of the major parties in American political life. It’s true that voters are less willing to identify themselves as either Republican or Democrat. And it’s likewise true that such massive developments over the decades as the professionalization of the civil service, thus diminishing patronage rewards at the disposal of party leaders, has reduced clout in the old style. Likewise, the democratization of the parties in the form of caucuses and primaries – including primaries in which nonparty members can participate – has substantially decreased the amount of business that gets done in smoke-filled rooms.
22 Tuesday Aug 2000
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
Al Gore’s selection of Joe Lieberman as his running mate promised a Democratic campaign for the White House pitched squarely at the center of public opinion. This was the triumph of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council in presidential politics. Although Mr. Lieberman’s personal and family story is compelling, the initial rush of attention to his Jewishness probably detracted attention from the fact that this is the most right-leaning ticket Democrats have ever put together.
21 Monday Aug 2000
Posted in Weekly Standard
Gore and Lieberman continue to lead the Democratic Party, ever so cautiously, to the right.
View this article at The Weekly Standard
From the time he emerged as a serious presidential aspirant in 1991, Bill Clinton consciously set himself to the task of remaking the Democratic party, cracking it loose from the ossifying ideological liberalism of FDR and LBJ in an effort to broaden its political appeal. Clinton was a New Democrat in 1992. And notwithstanding a few major political missteps along the way, most notably a health care initiative that was too big for his own party to chew in Congress, he remains a New Democrat to the end, the first and foremost practitioner of the Third Way politics that has brought left-leaning parties back to power all over the world.
From the beginning, the politics of the Third Way has been greeted by skepticism from both left and right — as one might expect, since Third Way adherents define themselves at least in part in opposition to both left and right. Conservatives have sometimes refused to take it seriously as anything but old-style liberalism flying a false flag. Liberals have wondered whether it was anything more than a slogan providing political cover for an unwelcome lurch to the right.
Does the Third Way have content in its own right? Or is it primarily a strategy of political positioning aimed at carving out an electoral majority from the center-left to the center-right?
Tod Lindberg 