It's My Party

by Peter Robinson

  “Ever hear of vectors?” David Brady asked when he and I discussed this. “No, you wouldn’t have. It’s math.” Vectors, David explained, are sets of data with both distance and direction—in effect, arrows. “Start two vectors right next to each other on a graph. Then point them in different directions—just slightly different, a degree different, half a degree different, whatever. The further you plot them, the further apart the vectors become. Follow those two suckers out any distance at all and you’ll end up in two completely different places.”

  Likewise our political parties. Even when they appear close together, the differences between them still add up.

  George W. Bush and John McCain may both refuse to promise that they will appoint only pro-life judges to the Supreme Court and the federal bench. Yet either would appoint far more pro-life judges than would Al Gore, who has promised to appoint only pro-choice judges. George W. Bush’s and John McCain’s plans to cut taxes, boost defense spending, and restrain domestic spending may be tepid compared with those of Ronald Reagan—McCain’s plans, since they are so ill-formed, particularly so. To use Kellyanne Fitzpatrick’s formulation, Bush’s and McCain’s plans may amount not to a Republican revolution but to Republican ripples. But either George W. Bush or John McCain would cut taxes, boost defense spending, and restrain domestic spending far more than would Al Gore—and if either Bush or McCain had the support of a Congress controlled by his fellow Republicans, he would cut taxes, boost defense spending, and restrain domestic spending even more. At the end of four years, still more at the end of eight, the nation would find itself in a completely different place under a Republican from where it would end up under a Democrat.

  This brings me to a point that I have been trying to avoid.

  Throughout this book I have worked assiduously to keep my focus on the Republican Party, suppressing my impulses—and I have felt them repeatedly—to attack the Democratic Party. In just a few pages this book will be over, and you would think that I could make it to the end gracefully, containing myself, civil and well-mannered for just a few hundred more words. I can’t. The tension is too much. Permit me to rant.

  I begin with the leader of the Democratic Party, Bill Clinton. In recent years President Clinton has told us that “the era of big government is over.” Yet early in his administration he enacted the biggest tax hike in more than a decade, then proposed a health plan that would effectively have nationalized one seventh of the entire economy. President Clinton speaks constantly about the need for our armed forces to remain strong. Yet during his administration the navy has been reduced from just under six hundred ships to just over three hundred, combat readiness in every branch of the armed services has plummeted, and military spending as a proportion of GDP has fallen, as Mayor Giuliani noted, to its lowest point since before the Second World War. During the 1992 campaign, President Clinton pledged to make abortion rare. Yet on the very day he was first inaugurated he signed five executive orders extending the role of the federal government in funding abortions. Thus despite his talk about bringing it back to the center—about establishing a new, third way—Bill Clinton presides over a Democratic Party that continues to stand for higher taxes, an ever-expanding welfare state, cuts in the military, and the moral values, if they may be called that, of the sexual revolution.

  The Democratic Party wasn’t always like this, of course. In 1960 the Democratic presidential candidate John Kennedy actually ran to the right of the Republican candidate, Richard Nixon, calling for greater military preparedness. Then, as president, Kennedy proposed massive income tax cuts. * But today? George McGovern may feel right at home in the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton, but John Kennedy would scarcely recognize it. And even though Bill Clinton has only months remaining in office, Al Gore has done nothing to repudiate any of Clinton’s positions, limiting himself instead to occasional tongue-clicking about the president’s dalliance with Monica Lewinsky. The Democratic Party might pay lip service to free markets and traditional values. It might manage to keep its more radical impulses in check. But under Al Gore the Democratic Party would remain what it has been under Bill Clinton: a party not of the center, but of the left.

  There. I feel better now.

  * * *

  It is easy to find the Republican Party absurd. The GOP calls to mind bland WASPs in New England, television evangelists down South, and feckless members of the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. It is likewise easy to find the Republican Party pigheaded. The GOP has done almost nothing to appeal to African-Americans or single women, while its efforts to deal with the growing Hispanic population have so far proven perverse. At times I find myself imagining that the GOP represents the past, its members, the last remnants of an America that was once overwhelmingly white and Protestant, now living in the interior of the country as they make, so to speak, their last stand, steadily dwindling as a proportion of the population. Then I snap out of it. The GOP controls both houses of Congress and holds thirty of the fifty governor’s mansions. Its candidate for the Senate in New York, Rudolph Giuliani, one of the most intelligent and colorful politicians in the nation, is an Italian Catholic, not a WASP. One of its candidates for president, George W. Bush, won a majority of the Hispanic vote in Texas the last time he ran for governor, and at this writing he has led Al Gore in the polls for months on end. Another of its candidates for president, John McCain, has just romped through the early primaries by demonstrating that even a Republican can win votes from Independents and Democrats. To my mind, McCain has won too many votes from Independents and Democrats and too few from Republicans. But still.

  The GOP may yet go into retreat. Lord knows it has experience at losing. But for now it looks as though the GOP’s principles of self-reliance, limited government, and respect for the Judeo-Christian moral tradition have invested it with continuing appeal. Whenever the GOP seems old, fusty, and hopelessly WASPy, I remind myself that this fall it might sweep into power, winning the White House and both houses of Congress. It might. It really might.

  A love affair? With the Republican Party? Strange to say it, but yes. The GOP has commanded the loyalty of my family for as many generations back as I was able to check. It stands for principles that I myself share. I figure that somehow or other I owe it a little emotional involvement. And the more I think about it, the more I recognize that my relationship with the GOP bears all the marks of an affair. This is a bizarre notion. I admit that. But I can’t shake it. You see, sometimes I find myself thinking about the Republican Party in the middle of the day (when I wonder what Ronald Reagan would have made of the struggle between George W. Bush and John McCain). Other times, I find myself feeling so irritated with the GOP that I want to break off our relationship (last year, when the House Republicans enacted their specious tax cut), but somehow I never do. The bad times are bad (the presidential campaign of Bob Dole), but the good times are good (election night in 1994, when I swilled champagne while watching returns come in showing that the GOP had won control of the House of Representatives for the first time in four decades). The GOP has led me on, like an old love, proving more fascinating the better I’ve gotten to know it, without ever losing its capacity to annoy, gall, infuriate, and exasperate me. It’s my party.

  Journal entry:

  “I’ve had the chance to look at your manuscript,” one of the young people who works for my publisher told me the other day. “I’m a Democrat and everybody I know is a Democrat, so don’t tell anybody I said so. But a lot of what you write about the Republican Party makes sense. I was really surprised. It made me think about becoming a Republican myself. Well, almost.”

  The GOP, still kicking.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Gallivanting around the country to talk to Republicans is a good way to max out your credit card, and I am grateful to those who permitted me to pursue this folly without starving. I wish to name in particular the John M. Olin Foundation and its president, William E. Simon, and executive director, James Pie
reson; the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and its president, Michael S. Joyce; the New Citizenship Project and its chairman, William Kristol, executive director, Gary Schmitt, and former director, Kenneth Weinstein; and my friend and guru, Roger Hertog.

  Needless to say, I am indebted to everyone who took the time to speak to me about the GOP. Most of them appear in the text. I hope they are content to see that as their reward. But several who do not appear in the text offered me invaluable help as well. These include Clark Judge, Steven Man-acek, and Chase Untermeyer, close friends who provided frequent encouragement, which I needed; Richard Wirthlin, who provided polling data and—this is the tricky part—helped me to understand it; William F. Buckley Jr. of National Review, Martin Anderson, John Cogan, Jerry Dorfman, John Ferejohn, Morris Fiorina, and Shelby Steele, of the Hoover Institution, Nelson Polsby, of the University of California at Berkeley, and Jeffrey Hart and Charles Stinson, of Dartmouth College, all of whom provided insights born of minds more rigorous than my own; and John McGraw, who merits a special word. Chairman of the California Republican Party, John got me into Republican events, told me the difference between what seemed to be happening and what was actually happening, and explained what each of the factions in the GOP wants. Without the grounding in Republican politics that John gave me in California, I would have been even more baffled than I was when I turned to the rest of the country.

  My assistant, Susan Schendel, contributed immeasurably to the project by being two things the author is not, meticulous and serene. Searching for facts, my research assistant, Sam Abrams, proved prodigious, turning the Internet inside out. Barbara Sedonic of the White House Writers Group joined the project in the final weeks, double-checking all my assertions. The editors of the Atlantic Monthly permitted me to base the maps in this book on maps that I first came across in the pages of their magazine. I am indebted to them all.

  As I have noted elsewhere, my agent, Richard Pine, suggested the idea for this volume. My editor, John Aherne, proved congenial, which is good, and skillful, which is even better. Colin Fox, who also worked on the book, made several superb suggestions. I am grateful to each. As for my publisher, Jamie Raab—well, there really is no way to account for all that Jamie did to bring this book into being. There is also no way to thank her, although it has crossed my mind to walk up Sixth Avenue on my knees.

  I reserve a particular expression of gratitude for the director of the Hoover Institution, John Raisian. John took a deep breath when I told him I wanted to write this book. Then he told me to go ahead. He’s the best boss I’ve ever had.

  Which brings me to the five people who endured the most while I was composing this volume. To my wife, Edita, and our children, Edita Maria, Pedro, NicolÁs, and AndrÉs, a promise. Next weekend, I’ll put up the basketball hoop.

  * GOP stands for Grand Old Party. I’ve looked at every political dictionary I could find to learn where the term originated. Nobody seems to know. It simply begins popping up in newspaper accounts in the late nineteenth century. I happen to like the term—it conveys both warmth and a certain amusement—so I employ it throughout this volume.

  * My publisher is squeezing the schedule as much as possible, but I’m still having to compose these words almost six months before the book will appear.

  * Since the federal government enacted the welfare reform of 1996, welfare rolls across the country have dropped 40 percent. Although Democrats now associate themselves with the reform, the measure has a telling history. The Republican-controlled Congress passed the measure three times before President Clinton finally signed it.

  * The 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas amount to another neat demonstration of the effect the press has on voters. During the hearings, you’ll recall, Anita Hill, who once worked for Clarence Thomas at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, charged that Thomas had subjected her to sexual harassment. Thomas denied the charges. Polls showed that a majority of the public believed Thomas, not Hill. In the months that followed, the press treated Thomas skeptically and Hill as an injured heroine. The polls began to shift. One year later, polls showed that a majority of the public believed Hill, not Thomas.

  * In each election, the remainder of the Jewish vote went to third party candidates, chiefly Ross Perot.

  * Since racial preferences were abolished in the UC system, black and Hispanic enrollment has indeed dropped at certain schools, including the two most selective institutions in the system, Berkeley and UCLA, but it has increased at other schools, including UC San Diego. As the black conservative Thomas Sowell writes, “it was virtually inevitable that minority students would redistribute themselves among institutions. But the black and Hispanic students who no longer went to Berkeley did not disappear into thin air or fail to go to college at all. UC San Diego is not chopped liver.”

  * Giuliani has only managed to bring down the crime rate, his opponents often charge, by using police brutality. The charge fails to withstand scrutiny. In 1999, for example, New York City experienced only eleven fatal shootings, the lowest incidence since the city began keeping records.

  * Strickly speaking, the GOP never counts its members. It can’t. There are roughly 29 million registered Republicans, but they all live in the twenty-eight states that permit citizens to name a party when they fill out the paperwork that entitles them to vote. That leaves an indeterminate number of Republicans living in the other twenty-two states. Surveys suggest that among Americans who are old enough to vote, about 30 percent consider themselves members of the GOP, a statistic that would place the number of Republicans at some 61 million. But who knows?

  * The tax cuts were enacted after Kennedy’s death.