The Longtime-Democrat Blues

THE SADDEST THING about being a Democrat is the arrival of presidential election years. Ordinarily, it isn’t such a bad feeling, being a Democrat, because the party is, after all, the oldest political party in the world; the largest party in America; and quite certainly the dominant party not only in most of the state legislatures, but also in the U.S. House and Senate. It is also (after all) the second most capitalist party in the world. Many of the most colorful political leaders in America during the last sixty years have belonged to it. Nearly all major journalists-at the networks, on the major dailies and newsweeklies-support it, with thinly disguised political passion. In faculty clubs and in classrooms, as well as at public university functions, the prevailing speech assumes that anyone with moral discretion is a Democrat. As Pauline Kael once wrote, disbelieving the outcome of the Nixon-McGovern election of 1972, “Nixon can’t have won; no one I know voted for him.”

So it is nice to be able to slip casually into a conversation the soft-voiced confession, “I am a Democrat… ,” which wins one at least an initial exemption from being thought a complete Neanderthal. A significant proportion of American left-wingers of artistic, intellectual, or academic standing, it seems, have never had a conversation with an intelligent Republican, and think the latter term an oxymoron. (This explains the extremist speech that left-wingers frequently allow themselves; they have virtually never heard their views challenged. Anybody who is anybody in their circles agrees with them.) Being able to say one is a Democrat is like having the card that gets one into the first-class lounge at an international airport.

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Michael Novak

Michael Novak was a Catholic philosopher, journalist, novelist, and diplomat.

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THE SADDEST THING about being a Democrat is the arrival of presidential election years. Ordinarily, it isn’t such a bad feeling, being a Democrat, because the party is, after all, the oldest political party in the world; the largest party in America; and quite certainly the dominant party not only in most of the state legislatures, but also in the U.S. House and Senate. It is also (after all) the second most capitalist party in the world. Many of the most colorful political leaders in America during the last sixty years have belonged to it. Nearly all major journalists-at the networks, on the major dailies and newsweeklies-support it, with thinly disguised political passion. In faculty clubs and in classrooms, as well as at public university functions, the prevailing speech assumes that anyone with moral discretion is a Democrat. As Pauline Kael once wrote, disbelieving the outcome of the Nixon-McGovern election of 1972, “Nixon can’t have won; no one I know voted for him.”

So it is nice to be able to slip casually into a conversation the soft-voiced confession, “I am a Democrat… ,” which wins one at least an initial exemption from being thought a complete Neanderthal. A significant proportion of American left-wingers of artistic, intellectual, or academic standing, it seems, have never had a conversation with an intelligent Republican, and think the latter term an oxymoron. (This explains the extremist speech that left-wingers frequently allow themselves; they have virtually never heard their views challenged. Anybody who is anybody in their circles agrees with them.) Being able to say one is a Democrat is like having the card that gets one into the first-class lounge at an international airport.