Issues And Competence

by digby

TAPPED approvingly quotes this from a new Union blog called Laying it On The Line

We keep losing elections because the parties are fighting on two different levels. We talk about competence and issues. They talk about character and values.

We appeal to narrow self-interest and a laundry list of issues. We are down in the weeds. They appeal to a higher plane, as pollster Cornell Belcher puts it, getting a substantial number of low income whites to vote not ‘against their economic interests’ as some would have it, but for what they see as higher interests.

Democrats will continue to win on the issues but lose elections until we learn to cast our issues in terms of values and characater.

Or until people finally see that the Republican committment to values and character is nothing but a scam — which is happening — and they see that such things are not very well measured by someone spouting a few religious code words and being against abortion.

I’m all for inspirational and aspirational rhetoric. They are essential components of successful politics and I don’t think Democrats do enough of it. But the Republicans have bastardized these concepts of “character” to mean you don’t have sex and “values” to mean you are against gay marriage and abortion and they have become code words in themselves. Once people begin to separate this phony Elmer Gantry hucksterism from the actual performance of the Republican majority in office, perhaps some universal values like “honesty” and “responsibility” and “respect” might even come back into fashion. I suspect when that happens, many voters are going to be looking for teacher instead of a preacher. Issues and competence tend to become more highly valued when the shit comes down.

Update:

To clarify. Ever since Dukakis I have railed against using the “competence” argument. It’s flat and technocratic and doesn’t work when compared to the soaring “we are the greatest” or “we are the free-est” rhetoric coming from the right.

But right now we are seeing an epic meltdown in basic governance layered underneath years of values rhetoric, inspirational cant about freedom and democracy and fear mongering about “smokin’ em out o their caves.” I have a suspicion that we are going to have a couple of elections in which competence is going to be a substantial part of the discussion. The debacle in Iraq and the corruption scandals have turned the tables on the soaring rhetoric about freedom and the values arguments about personal character. They won’t play the way they used to — indeed, they are probably going to be most useful as criticism.

As I wrote, I’m a big believer in inspirational and aspirational rhetoric. I think we should get some. And I think we should talk about values like “honesty” “responsibility” and “respect.” I’ve been relentlessly hectoring the Democrats about showing conviction and fighting for fundamental principles. I believe this is essential.

But let’s not make the mistake of fighting the last war. We may just naturally be bringing something to the party that people want right now. Good government. Issues and competence are arrows we have in our quiver and we should not be afraid to shoot them when the time is right.

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