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When Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey died in 1978, the country rightly memorialized a statesman who had meant so much to his party and his country. Many in the country watched with some surprise as Richard Nixon entered the memorial service. They had thought that face and name, "Nixon," were gone forever. But as they watched the service, a new thought occurred: The man who had come to represent the worst in politics — abuse of law, cynicism, a win-at-any-cost approach, lying — had come to pay tribute to a man who had represented some of the best in public service.
I had voted for Humphrey for president in 1968 because I thought his policies were right and because I thought Nixon corrupt. Over the next six years, Nixon found new lows — and his representation of the Republican party was one reason I remained a Democrat, and stayed a Democrat, for so long (I did not become a Republican until 1986). But Nixon's attendance and mood at the Humphrey memorial marked the beginning of Nixon's rebirth into a statesman. He came to a public event to honor a political opponent and another statesman — he did not look cheerful and one could not look at him and think he was beaming and scheming about the prospects of turning Humphrey's seat over to the GOP. A decade and a half later, President Clinton would come to represent the same corruption that Nixon had: abuse of law, cynicism, a win-at-any-cost approach, lying. These thoughts came back to me as I thought about Senator Paul Wellstone, and as I watched his memorial service. I did not agree with Paul Wellstone on many things, but there was no doubt in my mind that he was a man of honor who sincerely believed in his principles and who would never compromise on those principles — or ask others to compromise on theirs. And then the memorial service became a political rally. And that rally became yet another sad chapter in the reputation of the once-great Democratic party, represented by people like Hubert Humphrey. Former President Clinton entered the event beaming and laughing, and this time he did not feel the need to hide his laughter as he did at Ron Brown's funeral once he saw the camera point at him back in 1996. The Brown event was a memorial service requiring Clinton's tears, even if they were crocodile — an election was not a week away. The Wellstone event was a political rally requiring a get-out-the-vote drive. Foot-stomping was the order of the day — somber reflection and grief were at a discount. Perhaps we should have been clued in that we were going to have a rally when news broke that Vice President Dick Cheney was asked by the Wellstone family not to attend the memorial. When Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott was booed at the ostensible memorial service, we knew this was not a memorial service of any kind, but, rather, a mid-term Democratic Convention. When Rick Kahn, a friend of Wellstone's, took to the podium, we received the most memorable and dynamic political rallying speech since the 2000 conventions. Kahn not only pointed to certain Republican officeholders to publicly ask them to prove their friendship to Wellstone by voting against their principles (something Wellstone would never have asked an opponent to do), he said, "We can redeem the sacrifice of his [Wellstone's] life if you help us win this election for Paul Wellstone." In that statement, ratified by thunderous applause and foot stomping, we finally understood something about the Democratic party and its constituency. Politics was not only all-consuming for them, and the political was not just the same as the personal — politics had revealed itself for what it truly had become for the Democratic party: final. Nothing is too monumental, nothing is too important, nothing is too serious not to become a cause political for the Democrats. ITEM: When President Clinton was found to have not only pointed his finger to scold the American people for believing he had an affair with an intern but was also revealed to have lied under oath, the Democrats rallied to protect him, change the topic, and ensure his political survival. ITEM: When the 2000 political campaign looked to be a close race in the battleground state of Wisconsin, Democrats were caught handing out free cigarettes to the homeless to get them to vote for Al Gore, even as the Democratic party's coffers were dependent on the trial lawyers' litigation against "big tobacco." ITEM: The Democratic party, having failed to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court that Bush did not deserve to be president, won over the New Jersey supreme court in ratifying their political efforts to simply trade out a losing candidate (Robert Torricelli) for an elder statesman with better chances (Frank Lautenberg) less than two months before that critical election, long after primary season when these decisions should be made by voters. ITEM: This month, we are slowly learning, the tight Senate race between Sen. Tim Johnson (D) and Rep. John Thune (R) in South Dakota is being tainted by Democratic-party registration efforts on Indian reservations where the names of dead people are turning up on Democratic registration cards and absentee ballots. More fraud investigations to follow. I did not think about the foregoing examples as of a piece until I watched the spectacle in Minnesota and realized there was almost nothing the Democrats would not do to win an election. I was a Democrat until my forties — and I changed parties over policy differences with the party of my birth. But, starting with President Clinton's scandals and the willingness of Democrats to defend them, I have become increasingly worried about the soul and ethics of the Democratic party. I am now seen as a partisan Republican, but I will continue to urge the Democratic party to denounce and renounce its reproaches and its reproachable tactics just as I continue to call the Republican party to task when they do dumb and wrong things, even if they are not as bad or done to the same degree as those of the Democrats. Abuse of law, cynicism, a win-at-any-cost approach, and lying are not healthy for a democratic politics, or a democratic polity. I am not alone; in a conversation about President Clinton in 1999, it was Senator Paul Wellstone who said, "I think Democrats run a real danger of being a party that doesn't seem to be concerned about values, and doesn't seem to be concerned about morality if, at a personal level, we don't make it crystal clear how disapproving we are of the conduct — the president's conduct. And we don't talk about character." The Democratic party no longer runs a real danger; it crossed that line some time ago. The memorial service cum political rally for Senator Wellstone brought the sacred low. The 2002 Democrats' politics of death may yield a certain death to politics. And their political contretemps — abuse of law, cynicism, a win-at-any-cost approach, lying — have turned the Democratic party into a Nixon party, a pre-1978 Nixon party. It is nothing to be proud of. There is, however, one distinction that Nixon marked that the current Democratic party has not, and that is shame — Nixon knew shame, finally, which is why he resigned and knew he had to rehabilitate himself. We are waiting to see some level of shame from the current Democratic party because today it is, above all, shameless. — William J. Bennett served President Ronald Reagan as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities and secretary of education, and President George H. W. Bush as drug czar. |
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political parties in America do things that are dumb and wrong, but in
the case of the Democrats it is both extreme and shameless. 
