Tom Vilsack should stop talking to Al From.
From Jeffrey Goldberg's latest New Yorker whither-the-Dems piece:
Though Vilsack is no optimist on Iraq, he still puts himself on the more conservative side of the Democratic spectrum. “I don’t think the face of the Democratic Party is Nancy Pelosi,” he said pointedly. When we discussed why there had been no domestic terrorist attacks since September 11th, he even echoed Bush’s argument that fighting jihadists in the Middle East is preferable to fighting them in America: “We have a hundred and thirty-two thousand Americans in a country where they have a lot easier shot at hitting us than they have here. It’s a lot easier to attack us in Iraq and Afghanistan, since they’re a lot closer.”
I'm not sure that Vilsack is really trying to repeat Bush's "fight them over there" argument with that statement. If that's really what he's saying, though, then he's exactly the sort of hopeless dilletante that being from Iowa isn't going to fix. Just imagine how that sort of our-soldiers-are-human-shields-for-suburban-soccor-moms quote would go down during a national campaign in 2008.
Closer to home, though, the face of the Dems is Nancy Pelosi. And Vilsack's nervous calling-out of a controversial party House leader absolutely reeks. I'd hoped that Vilsack would help move the DLC away from this sort of thing. Guess not.
Though Vilsack is no optimist on Iraq, he still puts himself on the more conservative side of the Democratic spectrum. “I don’t think the face of the Democratic Party is Nancy Pelosi,” he said pointedly. When we discussed why there had been no domestic terrorist attacks since September 11th, he even echoed Bush’s argument that fighting jihadists in the Middle East is preferable to fighting them in America: “We have a hundred and thirty-two thousand Americans in a country where they have a lot easier shot at hitting us than they have here. It’s a lot easier to attack us in Iraq and Afghanistan, since they’re a lot closer.”
I'm not sure that Vilsack is really trying to repeat Bush's "fight them over there" argument with that statement. If that's really what he's saying, though, then he's exactly the sort of hopeless dilletante that being from Iowa isn't going to fix. Just imagine how that sort of our-soldiers-are-human-shields-for-suburban-soccor-moms quote would go down during a national campaign in 2008.
Closer to home, though, the face of the Dems is Nancy Pelosi. And Vilsack's nervous calling-out of a controversial party House leader absolutely reeks. I'd hoped that Vilsack would help move the DLC away from this sort of thing. Guess not.
1 Comments:
The whole Pelosi-is-the-face-of-the-Dems thing rings a little false to me. She's the leader by default, as the highest ranking leader (other than Harry Reid). But there are some fairly serious limits to what the House Minority Leader can do. Gingrich was in her position in '94, and he led a revolution, but look what happened to him.
My take on this is that there isn't really a national leader, and that's OK. There are some core values that Democrats stand for, but I think individual leaders have to tailor their messages to their specific constituencies. Pelosi has a specific burden, being a member of the House - she's linked to a very specific area. The messages that she sends to her constituency in her district don't necessarily resonate with the rest of the country.
Ideally, of course, the leader of the party would be a highly articulate spokesperson who could unite the different constituencies of the party, but we're stuck with Howard Dean. He seems to be doing a decent job organizing, but in terms of articulating a national vision, he's not impressing me.
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