Drury Lame
The ancient bothsider myths that still hobble Democrats
The utility of the Jan. 6 Congressional hearings has been in dispute, but I do see a clear advantage in them – for Republicans.
No, I don’t mean the preposterous idea that, once the hearings brush the scales from their eyes, members of the GOP will see the folly of their Trump infatuation and become decent governing partners.
I know a lot of liberals apparently see that as the optimal result. Uber-neolib Jonathan Chait, in a New York magazine column that, up until that very moment, was good, actually said this:
The path to reconstituting the GOP as a party that we can entrust with the Republic involves shoving out at least some of its extremists while bringing the Never Trump wing back into the fold.
There’s a lot of hooey packed into that one sentence. “Shoving out some of its extremists”? How many? Most Republicans — most of them! — think January 6 was just a “legitimate protest.” And they believe a lot of other crazy things, too.
In other words, if you shoved enough of the extremists out of the GOP to make any difference, they’d have fewer members than the Greens. Also, bringing back the Never Trump wing? You mean David French and Bill Kristol? Come on.
But for me the biggest laugh is that a prominent liberal like Chait is telling the other side how to do their job, as if he thinks they’ll listen to him.
When have they ever done that? Seriously, when? Over the past few decades, that’s only been something Republicans have done to Democrats — and the Democrats have eagerly gone along. In fact I had a recurring theme at alicublog about it: Advice from your mortal enemies.
Yet Democrats were inclined to take their opponents’ advice. Which made sense — hadn’t they been running as sorta-Republicans since the days of Paul Tsongas and Michael Dukakis? Weren’t they crack-rock addicted to compromise?
Whatever sense that may have made decades ago, now we’re closing in on the second quarter of the 21st Century, and anyone who’s been paying any attention sees that the Republicans are on a fascist rampage, working as hard as they can with the tools at hand to strip all undesirables of their rights and rule as a minority. The absurdity of the idea that they would pursue “reform,” never mind the possibility of any cooperation with them on anything except our own demise, should be obvious.
Yet Jon Chait is talking as if it were a live possibility, and Biden Democrats are pushing “bipartisanship.”
It really seems like our elderly Democrats and DLC liberals, however practiced and savvy they may be when it comes to vote-trading and amendment-writing, are clinging to fundamental ideas of politics that are childish — literally. All of us over a certain age probably remember how patriotic stuff was drilled into us when we were young — the musical 1776 is a still-comprehensible example. Such good-natured interventions portrayed the more repulsive parts of early American political history (like the three-fifths compromise) as something we all just had to move past to get to the less repulsive, indeed inspiring part of the American story.
If you identified with the disenfranchised, you might reject it; if you were a budding Republican you might think: How can I exploit the idiots who actually believe this shit to get over? But if you were decent but ambitious and politically inclined, you might think: yes, this is what it’s all about — of no clique or party!
I’m reminded of Otto Preminger’s 1962 film of Advise and Consent, based on one of the best-sellers by Allen Drury, who specialized in political intrigue stories that alluded to the ideological divisions of his time but also took care to denature them so readers wouldn’t think he was making a political argument — because it was really not about that, but about who acted honorably, you see, and thus deserved to succeed in power.
I love that movie, but the politics… well, look: The sorta-liberal-seeming president really wants a new sorta-even-more-liberal Secretary of State, Leffingwell, installed because he doesn’t trust his VP to continue his sorta-liberal policies. The nomination is contentious and both sides work hard in the closely-divided Senate to swing it their way, but the young sorta-liberal (and who knows, maybe really-liberal — after all, he is shown to be dishonorable) firebrand Van Ackerman (played by George Grizzard, a sadly underused actor) does some dirty politicking to leverage a former gay relationship to blackmail a young Utah Senator into change his vote — resulting in the Utahn killing himself instead.
The follow-through is undeniably dramatic in a way that would deeply touch people who’d been raised to think any such a thing were remotely possible and patriotic, but would make more realistic people barf: Bothsides (I mean, both sides) in the Senate are abashed and release their colleagues’ commitments so they can vote according to — get this! — principle.
“Mr. Leffingwell’s voice is not the voice I want to hear speak for America,” says the hammy old South Carolina Senator played by jowly Charles Laughton. “It is to me an alien voice, Perhaps it is the new voice of my country… I ask no man to follow me in this.”
“The Senior Senator from South Carolina has just eaten a rather large order of crow,” responds the suave and stately Michigan Senator played by Walter Pidgeon, who goes on at length:
Strangely enough, he makes the dish seem palatable. He makes us all want to sit at his table. He calls himself a curmudgeon. Well, I hope the day never comes when there is not at least one curmudgeon in this body to goad us the right direction. I can’t agree with him about Mr. Leffingwell. I don’t interpret Mr. Leffingwell in the same way. I don’t hear an alien voice. To me it sounds realistic and more than that I have great respect for the judgment of our chief executive. I’ll vote for the nominee. But there are tragic circumstances surrounding this nomination which takes it out of the usual business and sets it deeply into the conscience of each Senator. For this reason I now wish to release all pledges made to me.
LOL. Grizzard freaks out: “What kind of a double-cross is this?” he cries — and if you’re in the spirit of the thing you know his breach of decorum clinches it; “The Senator from Michigan has the floor,” reads the clerk, as the other Senators all scowl at Grizzard.
Pidgeon actually shames Grizzard out of the chamber: “We tolerate about anything here … prejudice, fanaticism, demagoguery, anything, That’s what the Senate’s for. To tolerate freedom. But you’ve dishonored us.” The margin is still close, but Pidgeon doesn’t want Grizzard’s vote for the nomination. That’s how principled and bipartisan he is!
Then Laughton and Pidgeon consult collegially: “I’ll beat you anyway.” “That, sir, is a question.” Go see, I’m not even kidding. And the ending — well, that’s why God made YouTube.
IKR? Think of Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley or Marsha Blackburn watching this — as long as they knew no outsiders were observing their reactions — and how they would howl with laughter. This is galactically far from what anyone believes about the Senate, or the House, or indeed anything in American political life…
…except, it would seem, the people who write for our major newspapers, magazines, and networks, and the very oldest members of our deliberative bodies, which would include the Democratic Party leadership.
These all appear to have some sentimental attachment to the Advise and Consent fantasy, not on aesthetic grounds, as I do, but out of some weird, even-handed, bothsider idea of American politics utterly removed from observable reality — which they either believe or exploit.
As to the Republican advantage I mentioned in the lede: It’s not about a change in beliefs at all. It’s about power. You think Trump goombahs like Brad Parscale, who just abased himself before the Jan. 6 committee, are turning on him because, like the Great Men in Advise and Consent, they’ve seen the light? No; Parscale himself has shown himself a ready turncoat and principle ain’t in it. These people would no more sacrifice anything of value for a principle than they would give a sucker an even break.
No, it’s because Parscale and the rest know Trump won’t be the 2024 nominee and they want to get in line for jobs with whomever will be.
Polls show Trump losing his grip among the GOP as a candidate — but not as a prophet. Republicans still believe in the same evil shit they always have, and in the any-means-necessary approach to making that evil shit the law of the land, no matter what most of their fellow countrymen think. They, certainly, are not mooning over an ancient myth of a bothsider America as reflected in old patriotic movies like Advise and Consent.
So why are Democrats? Good question.
The best explanation for the hidebound, milquetoast response of senior Democrats to creeping fascism – in fact, it’s starting to look like sprinting fascism – is they’re rich and profit from the way things are currently run, so it’s an I’m Alright Jack situation all the way down.
But it’s also the fact they are addicted to fairness and playing by the rules, so much so they are willing to sacrifice justice and their own voters. the Peanuts cartoon remains illustrative: the rules of the game are one person holds the football while the other person kicks it. You take turns. This seems like a fair rule and you want to play by the rules. But every time it is your turn to kick, the person holding the football pulls it away. What to do? First you protest and try to reason with them. But they continue to pull the football away. Do you continue to try to kick the football, or after about the third time, do you get up, walk back, and wallop the person who has repeatedly pulled the ball away, then take the football yourself?
A simple, straightforward solution to a simple, straightforward problem, one every child out in the schoolyard understands: you play by the rules. If you consistently break the rules, you get a beatdown. Simple. Yet it seems beyond the grasp of the Democrats who hold the highest offices in the country.
Of course, the New York Times would not report it as “Dems, often thwarted by GOP practices, reclaim football” but would report it as “Horrors, the Dems have forcibly taken the football! Let’s interview the people who kept pulling the ball away to see how they feel.” But by this point that kind of coverage is baked in, and good messaging by Dems could combat it. Hell, the media might even start to respect them, who knows?
So why are Democrats? A good stand-alone question. I'll be one to my dying day, but I totally despair of the changes which need to happen in this benighted country arising in its current form.