Maybe ruthless politics isn’t in our DNA

David Brooks, a conservative writer for The Weekly Standard, wrote an article recently in which he seemed shocked that Democrats consider themselves more virtuous than Republicans.

He noted that Dem strategists such as Bob Shrum have said, “It’s probably a weakness that we’re not real haters. We don’t have a sense that it’s a holy crusade.” Brooks also quoted Donna Brazille, who managed Al Gore’s campaign, saying, “They play hardball, we play softball.”

Brooks hears these quotes and is utterly confused.

“[W]hen many liberals look at national affairs, they see a world in which their leaders are nice, pure-souled, but defenseless, and they see Republicans who are organized, devious, and relentless,” Brooks said. He added, “Republicans think this picture of reality is delusional.”

Brooks, of course, sees this picture as delusional as well. He went on to describe Democrats with words such as “vicious,” “lurid,” and “relentless.”

Brooks’ take on the current political landscape is both fascinating and ridiculous. I find it hard to imagine how he and I can see the same people debating the same issues within the same system, yet draw wildly different conclusions.

He thinks we’re vicious? Amazing.

With this in mind, be sure to read James Traub’s compelling article in the New York Times Sunday magazine yesterday about what he describes as “temperament wars.”

Traub probably never saw David Brooks’ article, but he nevertheless describes why Brooks and his political allies are misguided if they believe Democrats are just as aggressive in politics as the GOP is.

“Could it be that the Democrats are constitutionally incapable of acting as single-mindedly — as ruthlessly, as unfairly — as the Republicans?” Traub asks. “If so, is this the kind of Christian virtue that leads to being eaten by lions?”

Exploring this in some detail, Traub appears to answer both of these questions in the affirmative. I think he’s completely right. (Similar issues were addressed in a fascinating piece a year ago in the Washington Monthly in an article headlined, “Why Can’t the Democrats Get Tough?“)

Traub uses some illustrative examples to highlight his point. First, Traub notes the way Dems refuse to publicly question the legitimacy of Bush’s presidency, despite what the way the GOP undermined Clinton’s presidency at every opportunity.

“For all the talk about the tainted legitimacy of Bush’s Supreme Court-inflected victory in the 2000 election, the Democrats have never sought to discredit Bush’s presidency,” Traub said. “Clinton, on the other hand, won fair and square, but many Republicans treated him as an illegitimate figure from the outset, and from the time of the 1994 election, which brought the Republicans to power in both houses and made Newt Gingrich speaker of the House, the G.O.P. practiced a politics of holy war that culminated in the impeachment proceedings.”

Traub also pointed to the ongoing fight over Bush’s judicial nominees and the gall of Senate Democrats to block two of Bush’s 134 potential judges.

“During the last six years of Clinton’s presidency, the Republican majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee blocked fully one-third of Clinton’s nominees to the federal appeals courts,” Traub explained. “When the Democrats regained control of the Senate in 2001, however, party leaders agreed to rapidly process all but the most controversial candidates in order to fill the vast backlog created by Republican obstruction. The judicial vacancy rate is now lower than it was even in Clinton’s first two years, when the Democrats controlled Congress, and the bench is, of course, increasingly Republican and conservative.”

So, what can explain this phenomenon? Traub thinks he knows.

“Maybe Democrats are just nicer, but a more philosophical view is that liberals are committed to, are in fact bedeviled by, ideals about process that do not much preoccupy conservatives, at least contemporary ones,” Traub said. “Liberals put their faith in such content-neutral principles as free speech, due process, participatory democracy. Is that too lofty? Then maybe we should say that today’s liberals, unlike today’s conservatives, don’t believe in any particular set of ends ardently enough to blind themselves to the means they are using to achieve them.”

Sounds right to me. Depressing, but accurate.