Julian E. Zelizer: Why Democrats Have To Go On Offense
[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Jimmy Carter" published by Times Books and editor of a book assessing former President George W. Bush's administration published by Princeton University Press.]
In professional football, teams need a good offense if they hope to win the Super Bowl....
The same can be said about politics. Being good at defense is important, but you need to play offense to win elections and shape political debate. When parties only respond to criticism and participate in the discussion that their opponents want to have, eventually their team will get tired of just being in a reactive mode and the other side will score points....
From the start of his time in the White House, President Obama has always been on the defensive. He has frequently warned the "professional left" about the difficulties that he faces in the Senate and about the need to placate conservatives. With the stimulus package in 2009, he bargained with himself by starting with a figure that was much lower than many economists thought was necessary to jumpstart the economy....
In his 1964 State of the Union address, nearly a year before his huge landslide victory over Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, Lyndon Johnson boasted that: "Let this session of Congress be known as the session which did more for civil rights than the last hundred sessions combined; as the session which enacted the most far-reaching tax cut of our time; as the session which declared all-out war on human poverty and unemployment in these United States; as the session which finally recognized the health needs of all our older citizens; as the session which reformed our tangled transportation and transit policies; as the session which achieved the most effective, efficient foreign aid program ever; and as the session which helped to build more homes, more schools, more libraries, and more hospitals than any single session in the history of our republic."
Even President Clinton learned this lesson after the 1994 midterms. While many commentators have been pointing to his shift to the right after the Republican takeover of Congress, Clinton actually rebounded when he stood up against the Republican's proposed cuts to Medicare and after the bombing in Oklahoma City where he condemned the extremist right for its harsh rhetoric about federal power.
The Democrats might want to take a page from the playbook of the Republican Party. Instead of backing down and running away from their platform, they might instead embrace what the party has stood for and make a case as to why their record is better than what Republicans have to offer. If Democrats can't do this, Republicans will shape the political dialogue in the next two years, regardless of what shifts Obama makes, and Democrats will be looking at a defeat in 2012.
Read entire article at CNN.com
In professional football, teams need a good offense if they hope to win the Super Bowl....
The same can be said about politics. Being good at defense is important, but you need to play offense to win elections and shape political debate. When parties only respond to criticism and participate in the discussion that their opponents want to have, eventually their team will get tired of just being in a reactive mode and the other side will score points....
From the start of his time in the White House, President Obama has always been on the defensive. He has frequently warned the "professional left" about the difficulties that he faces in the Senate and about the need to placate conservatives. With the stimulus package in 2009, he bargained with himself by starting with a figure that was much lower than many economists thought was necessary to jumpstart the economy....
In his 1964 State of the Union address, nearly a year before his huge landslide victory over Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, Lyndon Johnson boasted that: "Let this session of Congress be known as the session which did more for civil rights than the last hundred sessions combined; as the session which enacted the most far-reaching tax cut of our time; as the session which declared all-out war on human poverty and unemployment in these United States; as the session which finally recognized the health needs of all our older citizens; as the session which reformed our tangled transportation and transit policies; as the session which achieved the most effective, efficient foreign aid program ever; and as the session which helped to build more homes, more schools, more libraries, and more hospitals than any single session in the history of our republic."
Even President Clinton learned this lesson after the 1994 midterms. While many commentators have been pointing to his shift to the right after the Republican takeover of Congress, Clinton actually rebounded when he stood up against the Republican's proposed cuts to Medicare and after the bombing in Oklahoma City where he condemned the extremist right for its harsh rhetoric about federal power.
The Democrats might want to take a page from the playbook of the Republican Party. Instead of backing down and running away from their platform, they might instead embrace what the party has stood for and make a case as to why their record is better than what Republicans have to offer. If Democrats can't do this, Republicans will shape the political dialogue in the next two years, regardless of what shifts Obama makes, and Democrats will be looking at a defeat in 2012.