With the primaries edging nearer and the Democratic debates uncovering mediocrity, Veteran Democratic campaign gurus James Carville, Stan Greenburg, and Bob Shrum last week released a new DemocracyCorps memo to Democrats on what our “Core Message” ought to be, given President Bush’s weakening in the polls. Here it is:

“President Bush is overwhelmed by the problems facing the country—employment and the economy, Iraq, and the budget deficits. The problems grow out of control, yet he has no plan for expanding employment and no plan for post-war Iraq or the growing budget mess. Failing to win international support, he wants $87 billion from US taxpayers for Iraq, but with exploding deficits, that means cuts in spending for education and health care and a lack of funds for Social Security.”

Now apply to this message Micah Sifry’s simple three word test for Democratic candidates—Vision, Passion, Honesty—published recently on TomPaine.com. The result is clear: In this core message there is no vision, there is no passion, and it is less than honest. Howard Dean and Wesley Clark, the Democratic leading men, need to find the message that brings these three things together.

Campaign professionals will balk, saying Bush will beat himself and the Democrats just need to decide who will be their candidate—therefore diverting from the script risks a cascading series of tactical failures. But trying to ride the tiger of disapproval into the White House is a cynical strategy and Americans are more fed up with cynical politics than they are of Bush’s troubles. Tactical messaging to pursue the “anything but Bush” strategy is a loser for the Democrats and an even bigger loser for America.

The risk is clear. While the televised Democratic debates create a forum in which candidates and policies can be tested, they are fundamentally two removes away from reality. The first remove is because these debates are trying to win over the choir, not the general electorate. The second remove is that the debates are occurring on the policy plane when our problems exist on a higher plane, that of American grand strategy. The first disconnect wastes precious time with internecine fights and the second disconnect proves once again to most Americans that politics, whether Republican or Democrat, are incapable of grasping reality—incapable of doing anything but putting policy level band-aids on a case of grand strategic cardiac failure. Democrats will talk of big changes but their actual prescriptions will smack of Bush-lite. Ultimately Republicans and Democrats just want to fix the old system that cannot be fixed and Bush believes in that system more.

Faced with such a choice, many undecided Americans will choose to stay the course with Bush. Even if a Democrat wins, the empty rhetoric of the new Administration will not deal with our problems, and regardless of what happens in the 2004 congressional races, by 2006, our spiraling problems will hand Republicans a supermajority in Congress, on the way to a 2008 White House grab. That scenario will make the first term of W. look like Camelot in comparison.

The answer is to change the game from Bush-lite to grand strategy and thus address the underlying problems in our system. This will pull the curtain away from Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, and Paul Wolfowitz. It is also what Americans want their politicians to admit: of course Bush can’t control the problems of today, but neither could Democrats—the system we created 60 years ago no longer works for America or the world. Our analysis must be based on reality, not on the failures of George W. Bush:

• Our economic engine is failing 80% of Americans and excluding 5 billion people from meaningful human development.

• Our strategic posture is overwhelmed and corrupted by the need to secure fossil fuel producing regions and transport routes, creating instability and insecurity rather than reducing it.

• Our Federal budget is incapable of providing a safety net to the 80% of Americans whose proportion of income and hope has been steadily transferred to the wealthy minority since the early 1980s.

Our message as Democrats must be that it is time for America to transform itself and that it is in transformation, global partnership, and the pursuit of justice—rather than the maintenance of the status quo and the pursuit of dominance—that America will find prosperity and peace.

That transformation requires that we create a new economic engine and a new strategic posture. The new economic engine will rebuild America towards a sustainable society, integrating our metropolitan regions into safe, healthy, and productive communities. The new American engine will end the corrupting experiment of income tax and economic subsidies started in World War II, and shift revenue generation to tap the resource and energy inefficiency in our economy thus increasing employment and creating a fair and open marketplace. The new economic engine will transform our energy system from fossil fuels and centralized generation to renewables, hydrogen, and distributed generation. Together, these changes will catalyze a boom longer and deeper than the post-war boom that built suburbia, while creating the conditions of reduced energy and materials intensity necessary for America to grow and for the five billion people in the developing world to enter the global economy.

Our strategic posture must complement that economic engine, changing unjust norms and institutions, building essential infrastructure, and providing the strategic and human security necessary for America and the world to transform peacefully. The global system must adopt new norms around responsible sovereignty and a sustainable global development consensus, while strengthening regional organizations and adapting global institutions. America must focus its development assistance on the five systems of infrastructure essential to successful development: energy, water, ecosystem services, public health, and information, working with regions to create the conditions in which markets and states can deliver these services in a just and efficient manner. Increasingly freed from its energy security burden, America’s role in strategic and human security will remain to prevent and guard against opportunistic aggression, disruption, or pervasive threats to communities and societies. Our power must be extended and legitimated by regional delegation and global consensus, a consensus that the world has been dreaming of since the end of the Cold War. Focusing on norms, infrastructure, and security will create the conditions in which America’s economic transition will be secure and the conditions in which the developing world’s economic transition will be secure—allowing us to merge our potential and prosperity in a just global economy.

With the underlying issues—grand strategy—so addressed, Democrats will finally pass Sifry’s test: Vision, Passion, Honesty. Vision, because Democrats can see through the smoke and mirrors of a desperate and dysfunctional economic engine and identify the six essential changes that lead to a new era. Passion, because finally Democrats will have a comprehensive path to prosperity and peace and know it is the way. Honesty, because Democrats are willing to speak the hard truth about our system, to recognize that the system designed by our fathers and grandfathers is bankrupt and that it will take political courage to change the corruption this dysfunction has bred. With grand strategy as the message, the issues fall into line: a booming economy, sustainable federal and state revenue, full employment, safe and healthy communities, clean and reliable energy, reduced strategic threats, and a clear development path to end global poverty and the violent frustration it breeds.

That’s the message that Dr. Dean and Gen. Clark need to be adopting and debating. Let the Congressional centrists cling to their DLC fantasy about fixing up the old system and let the fringe be fringe. Let the Republicans cling to their “bold” vision producing at best marginal growth, social Darwinism, and perpetual wars. Democrats must stand for a new grand strategy with a booming economic engine and a stabilizing strategic posture that together meet the real challenges of America and the world. When Democrats pursue grand strategy rather than tactical messaging we can earn the White House, earn a majority in Congress, and then America can once again embrace the American Experiment and earn the respect and partnership of the international community.

Patrick Doherty spent a decade in the field of international conflict resolution, working in the Middle East, Africa, Southeastern Europe, and the Caucasus. He now resides in Washington, DC and may be reached at pdoherty7@earthlink.net

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