At 09:49 PM 9/18/2004 -0700 Gautam Mukunda wrote:
>2) In my opinion, the Democratic Party went stark,
>staring, raving nuts in 2000 and has gotten worse ever
>since.
On that much, we agree.
In fact, I see a lot of similarities between the Democrats of 2004 and the
Republicans of 1996 - so motivated by their detestation of the Incumbent
that they felll into a group-think like trance in rally around a
particularly abysmally candidate in the belief that he was somehow "the
most electable."
>I note, in my occasional gesture at systemic reform,
>that the legendary "smoke-filled rooms" got us
>Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson,
>Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and
>Harry Truman. Among others. The primary system got
>us...well, everyone since LBJ. Does this seem like an
>improvement to anyone? I give you Reagan as a success
>- it's unlikely that a non-primary system would have
>selected him. But other than that?
I totally disagree here.
Just in considering the elections with which I am personally familiar, it
has been very evident to my mind at least whom the candidate of the
"establishment" has been in each case. Certainly, Bush in '88, Bush in
'92, Dole in '96, and W. Bush in '00 and '04 were all results that would
have been achieved as much by the smoke-filled rooms as the primary
election process. Clinton in '96, Gore in '00, and Kerry in '04 likewise
strike me as predictibly the results of the smoke-filled rooms, had they
occurred. I am less familiar with the primaries of earlier years, but
maybe someone can help me out with that.
Now granted, it is possible that the smoke-filled room process would have
settled upon a candidate who did not even run, such as Powell in '96 or
'00. Then again, given the Colin Powell has been a spectacularly bad
Secretary of State - perhaps the worst ever - I find it difficult to
believe that he would have resulted in greatness.
To reverse the exercise, is there really any doubt that Washington and
Theodore Roosevelt, at minimum, would have been nominate by a primary
process? (Well, Washington would have had his issues with primaries in
general - but suffice to say he would have won had they existed and he won,
but more on that later.) I think that Jefferson, Madison, and Jackson
would certainly have fared quite well in primaries to be sure. I don't
know enough about Adams to speak intelligently either way.
Additionally, it is a little unfair to claim Washington - and really I
would argue Adams, Jefferson, and Madison as well - as products of the
"smoke-filled rooms." They all became President before Party politics had
really gotten going in this country, so there wasn't really a "smoke-filled
room" in the modern sense - albeit a smoke-filled room (or House of Reps.)
did spare us the Presidency of Aaron Burr, but that was the general
election and not the primary.
Besides, the smoke-filled rooms also brought us Van Buren, Fillmore,
Pierce, Buchanan, Hayes, Arthur, and Harding.
Lastly, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Monroe were truly this Nation's
"Greatest Generation" - a truly extraordinary assemblage of human beings in
time and place - the sort of talent we can hardly expect to be able to draw
upon with regularity. The primaries did produce Ronald Reagan, however,
and I find it difficult to imagine that the smoke-filled rooms would have
spared us Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon.
JDG
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John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world,
it is God's gift to humanity." - George W. Bush 1/29/03
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