Los Angeles Times
October 12, 2004
Thank you, George W. Bush, for trying to assure me that John Kerry is a
liberal. Wish it were so.
I like liberals. They gave us the five-day
workweek; ended child labor; invented unemployment insurance, Social Security
and Medicare; and led us, despite fierce opposition from "America First"
pseudo-patriots on the political right, to victory over fascism in World War
II. Liberals also ended racial segregation and gave women the vote.
But when Bush used the L-word in the second presidential debate, Kerry did not
defend that proud progressive tradition. Nor did I expect him to. Kerry is
one of those New Democrats who rejects the "liberal" label that I find so
honorable. After all, Kerry, as he bragged in the debate, voted for the
atrocious 1996 welfare reform bill, which has contributed to the 4 million
additional people, mostly children, pushed below the poverty line during Bush's
tenure.
However, after Bush's attempt to tar him as a bleeding heart,
I thought I had it wrong — so I checked the website of the National
Journal, the source cited by Bush as branding Kerry the No. 1 liberal of our
time.
As is his habit on so many things, Bush had the facts wrong.
The career voting record of the "Massachusetts liberal" ranks him as only the
11th most liberal, behind current colleagues from Iowa, California, Illinois,
Minnesota, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Vermont and Maryland — and his
running mate is a miserable 27th.
It turns out the duo moved up in
the journal's 2003 rankings only because they were both out campaigning and,
just as Republican presidential nominees have in the past, missed many
congressional votes. As the journal later explained in disclaiming the GOP's
misinterpretation of its ranking system, the 2003 rating of Kerry as the top
liberal was based only on the 19 votes he cast on economic issues.
But even that narrow selection was misinterpreted, as noted by Al From and
Bruce Reed, the leaders of the Democratic Leadership Council — and th us
the guardians of the party's dominant centrist ideology. They define Kerry not
as a liberal but as a Clinton-style moderate, even when looking at only his
2003 votes.
Eight of Kerry's "liberal" votes last year dealt with
cutting back Bush's tax giveaway to the 1% richest Americans. Another four
reflected moderate pro- environment positions, while two others should have
been supported by all Americans: an extension of benefits for folks thrown out
of work, many by the outsourcing abroad of decent jobs, and a challenge to the
Bush assault on overtime pay.
The DLC guys further point out that
Kerry's "centrism" has been affirmed in the last decade by his votes for
measures that many liberals rightly opposed, such as the 1997 balanced-budget
agreement, free-trade extensions without commensurate protections for the
environment and workers' rights, and the knee-jerk 1994 law-and-order "100,000
cops" anti-crime bill.
So, once again, as with Bill Clinton, I find
myself supporting a Democra t with a domestic agenda to the right of Richard
Nixon. Yes, the man Arnold Schwarzenegger eulogized at the GOP convention was
in favor of a guaranteed annual income for all Americans — something that
can be made to sound even more socialist than liberal. Nixon's point man on
such issues was Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who as a Democratic senator from New
York later blasted Clinton's anti-welfare bill as an immoral assault on the
poor.
I interviewed Nixon in 1984, long after he had been chased from
office, and found him to be quite proud of his domestic agenda. How sad for
the nation that his domestic policy is now considered progressive compared with
Bush's. Many excellent programs such as Social Security and Medicare that once
had strong bipartisan support are now under attack by a perversely destructive
president.
OK, Kerry may not be a daring liberal, but he is an
enlightened moderate who would at least safeguard the gains made since Franklin
Roosevelt's New Deal. By contrast, the Bush administration seems determined to
return us to the 19th century, when corporate robber barons owned the White
House and employed crude "gunboat diplomacy" to serve their greed.