Grover Lust

One of the most disturbing phenomena among liberals is the mindless worship of Grover Norquist as the model of the sort of single-minded organizer and ideological enforcer that a party needs. Some on the left seem to venerate Norquist in just the way that he he claims to treat Lenin, whose picture supposedly hangs in his living room. If I had a dime for every time I've heard someone say, "We need a Grover for our side," I'd be able to fund the whole progressive infrastructure myself. (If I had a dime for every time someone has said to me, "you should become the Grover for our side," I'd have about seventy cents. And after what I'll write below, at least five people who'll want their dime back.)

The latest expression of this view is from David Sirota, who argues that Democratic members of Congress who voted for CAFTA should be held "accountable" by the same vicious mechanism by which Norquist holds moderate Republicans accountable. "Accountability" has become a bit of an overused and nasty word lately, and what Sirota means by it, other than that people should do what he thinks they should do, is not clear. But let's stick with the Norquist point for now.

There are a lot of things to admire and try to emulate in what Grover Norquist does, or what we think he does. While the degree of coordination that ensues from his overcrowded Wednesday morning meetings is unclear, there's no doubt that that an enormous collaboration on information and strategy passes through him and is tremendously helpful to rightwing activists and lobbyists. Even more, his understanding of how to use states, via ballot initiatives and grassroots organizing, to set the agenda is something we are only beginning to understand on the left, and our politicians generally don't get it yet. (Florida Senate candidate Betty Castor has, I'm told, said that she might have won in 2004 if she had embraced the Living Wage ballot initiative that passed overwhelmingly, and which John Kerry wouldn't even endorse!)

But Norquist's merciless treatment of moderate Republicans is not going to be a legacy that he or his allies will be proud of. By forcing the moderates to toe the Club for Growth line, he and his allies may have won some battles, but they will surely regret it in the long run. By placing these moderates in incredibly awkward positions, he has made them even more vulnerable than Bush alone has already made them. And when Democrats make gains in 2006 and later, it will be the moderates who are first to go, with Chris Shays of Connecticut among others joining Maryland's Connie Morella in early retirement. Or, Norquist will succeed in replacing these moderates with more pliant conservatives who will be even more vulnerable in their districts, such as Mike Ferguson of New Jersey.

(One of the less well-recognized facts about Newt Gingrich and his revolution was the fact that he was extremely solicitous of Republican moderates like Nancy Johnson who became his strongest supporters because they wanted a vigorous party even as the party respected their differences of opinion. Gingrich's "Contract" was fairly anodyne, not a sharply ideological document, to protect that diversity. It was later rebellions by Armey and DeLay among others that brought the real Bolsheviks to power.)

As for the specific case of CAFTA, I agree with Sirota that the right vote was No, for reasons that Rep. Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the trade subcommittee, explained in the Financial Times.. There are also particular objections to the process by which this treaty was brought up, and it would have been tactically advantageous to deny the Republicans 14 votes so that they would have to twist 14 more arms of their own to fulfill the White House's categorical demand that it pass the legislation.

But trade has never been a party-line issue for Democrats and is unlikely to be any time soon. The dispute is not nearly as bitter as it was in the NAFTA era, but even then, no one argued that pro-NAFTA legislators (notably my old boss, Senator Bradley) should be drummed out of the party or "held accountable." Even in the case of CAFTA, some Democratic representatives may conclude that for their constituents the treaty as written is preferable to no treaty at all. They may represent major employers that would benefit from CAFTA, or a key port, or a significant ethnic constituency, e.g. Dominicans.

They may be wrong, you may disagree with them or believe that in the same position, you would have made a different choice. But in a pluralist democracy, which is not a parliamentary system, it is only their constituents who are entitled to hold them "accountable" for their choices.

There are issues that call for absolute party unity. Social Security was certainly one of them, the cornerstone of FDR's legacy. It was absolutely right to discourage Democrats from even opening the door to negotiations on phase-out, knowing what the consequences would be. But this has not been without cost. The public perception that Democrats were not allowed to think for themselves or collaborate on a bipartisan objective is part of the reason we have a damaged brand. Inisisting on party unity was the right thing to do on Social Security, but that cannot apply to every issue. People like Paul Hackett, as strongly as they oppose Bush, also send a clear message that they think for themselves, and are no one's tool, in sharp and appealing contrast to their automaton opponents.

There are moments when absolute party unity should be enforced by those who are in a position to enforce it. But for each of us to demand absolute party unity around the issue positions that we ourselves happen to hold, as Sirota does in insisting that Dems who don't hold his views on trade be "held accountable" seems to me a recipe for a much deeper form of divisiveness. There are ways to gain and exercise power in this democracy other than the Norquist way, which is unprecedented and ultimately self-destructive.