Beyond Paul Wellstone's death being a tragedy, the one thing everyone seems
to agree on is that as a "true liberal," Wellstone was a member of a dying breed
(for GOP purposes this endangered species will of course include Walter Mondale
in the next few days). But this casting only proves how dramatically the terms
of debate in American politics have shifted to the right.
The interesting thing is that the postmortems on Wellstone's liberalism
almost never mention actual policy issues that supposedly placed him beyond the
pale, apart from his two votes against war in Iraq. So let's look at what
Wellstone actually stood for when he died:
• Health care. Wellstone thought it was wrong that 41 million Americans
were uninsured. He believed they should be guaranteed a benefit package equal
to that enjoyed by members of Congress. I defy any conservative in Congress to
explain why this notion is "outside the mainstream."
• Wages. Wellstone believed it was wrong that the federal minimum
wage, at $5.15 an hour, was worth less now, adjusted for inflation, than it
was in the 1970s. He thought full-time work should enable a decent life. Polls
show that most Americans agree.
• Welfare. Yes, Wellstone voted against 1996's welfare reform.
But so did Bob Kerrey, nobody's idea of a "true liberal." Kerrey voted against
it because he thought ending a $15 billion a year subsistence entitlement
for (at the time) 4 million poor adults and their 10 million blameless children
-- while leaving untouched several hundred billion a year in entitlements for
Americans earning more than $50,000 a year -- was immoral. "We don't spend
too much on the poor," Kerrey told me this week. "We spend too little. Then and
now." What a pinko! Well, at least Kerrey wants Saddam's head.
• Education. Wellstone fought for well-funded after-school programs,
which Arnold Schwarzenegger is championing via a ballot measure in California,
and smart people think it may get Arnold the GOP nod for governor in four years.
Wellstone opposed the "Leave No Child Behind" hoax because it was full of make-believe
fixes -- such as a decree that states have a qualified teacher in every classroom,
without any money to help poor districts actually achieve that goal. Opposing
such "unfunded mandates" is usually a conservative fetish. My bet is that within
six months governors of both parties will persuade Washington to waive many of
these requirements as impractical, validating Wellstone's view of the bill
as a politically inspired charade.
Wellstone thought it was wrong that the Head Start preschool program serves
only half of eligible children, that Pell grants for disadvantaged college students
are worth less than they were two decades ago even as tuitions have soared, and
that crumbling schools need $100 billion in repairs. He therefore thought
it sensible to put off further tax cuts for people who earn more than $300,000
to address this. If that's "too liberal," then why are conservatives afraid
to defend the merits of their tax cut for the top vs. Wellstone's uses for
the same money -- and desperate to frame the debate instead through their generic
"They're tax hikers!" demagoguery?
There's more, but you get the point. Paul Wellstone wasn't "embarrassingly
liberal," as the attacks against him charged. It's that the rest of country
has become "shamefully conservative," or, perhaps more accurately, "unthinkingly
conservative," and the vital task is to understand why. Daniel Patrick Moynihan
quips that no Democrat today would stand behind Richard Nixon's proposals
for universal health coverage and a guaranteed minimum income for poor workers.
Too liberal. What happened?
The right's great strategic achievement in the last 25 years -- from the
aggressive conservative think tanks to Newt Gingrich's artful demagoguery
on "Clintoncare" to the "compassionate conservative" hoax now on display -- has
been to confuse the press and the public about how reasonable goals like Paul
Wellstone's actually are. Wellstone wrote last year that he felt he was playing
defense 80 percent of the time in the Senate. Given how mainstream most of his
ideas were in the minds of real people, Democrats can best honor Wellstone's
memory by finally becoming strategic themselves about how to play offense.
© Copyright 2002 Star Tribune
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