Gary Hart recently paid a visit to our
editorial board here in Dallas. He was singularly unimpressive, if you ask
me. He whined that the country was going to have on offer a series of
Democratic candidates who were self-selected based on the ability to raise
money, thus depriving the nation of a campaign based on “ideas.” Of course,
it is almost certainly the case that the reason Sen. Hart doesn’t have any
money to run for president is that no one thinks he has any fresh or
interesting ideas, or at least no political juice to turn them into policy.
He droned on and on about “multilateralism,” without offering any real
specifics. I told a colleague later that Hart sounded like the kind of
worthy who was born to run a chin-stroking, left-of-center think tank. I
could hardly believe my ears when he trashed Bush for trying to repeal the
New Deal. That line was fresher back in 1984, when Hart and other Dems used
it against Reagan. I started to remind Hart that a Democratic president
declared famously that “the era of big government is over,” but I decided it
was a waste of breath. This guy’s not going anywhere.