DNC: Does Not Change

One of the things that separates me from the neanderthals currently occupying the White House is that I view introspection and the ability to say, "I was wrong," as a great strength, not a weakness. After all, if you're driving a car and the road turns but you don't, you're going to have an accident. "I stayed the course!" won't look too good on the police report.

Sticking with the same metaphor, if you take a wrong turn, you'll get where you want to be a lot faster if you turn around.

So in that spirit, I may have been wrong.

A visit to the DNC website is a profoundly disheartening experience. What's at the top of the page? Tom DeLay's mugshot. Now, I, like a lot of other people, chortled over DeLay's arrest warrant. It's one thing for a private citizen to enjoy a corrupt politician's comeuppance, but it's another thing entirely -- a tacky, pathetic thing -- for the opposition party to put it at the top of their webpage.

In all fairness, Congressman DeLay has not yet been convicted. The arrest warrant and mugshot were merely legal formalities. (Click here for some really great mugshots, if you're into that sort of thing.) Democrats should not be celebrating DeLay's fall. They ought to be kicking themselves that they were so weak and so ineffectual that someone as corrupt and stupid as DeLay got as far as he did and stayed there so long. What we are seeing is self-destruction and certainly not anything we can take credit for.

The mugshot accompanies an article titled, "GOP Culture of Corruption Unraveling." Well, it does look that way, but the message is: Republicans are corrupt, so vote for us! Please. As Howard Dean said so often on the campaign trail, "We can do better."

I was attracted to Howard Dean because I felt he was speaking truth to power; getting out there and saying things that desperately needed to be said, and that in attacking Bush he wasn't being partisan, he was talking up truths that were so far away from the sugar-coated fantasies the White House was spinning they seemed to many Americans like crack-induced hallucinations. His verbal gaffes were refreshing, because they were raw and sincere, not buffed to a high-gloss by round after round of DC-spinmeisters and partisan message-mechanics.

So I was very optimistic when he took over the DNC, because I was convinced that in Dean we had a man who would really tackle the issues facing Americans today and that he would use his position and influence to do hard-hitting cost analysis of Bush's budgets to show that the President isn't doing what he says he's doing, that compassionate conservativism means apparently having a special empathy for corporations and college roommates.

But the flip side of that is offering an alternative. It's simply not enough to say, "Bush is wrong." It's not. We have to take Bush's budget figures, as one example, and line them up with a solid alternative proposition that says, "Here's what we want to do." I'm not seeing that anywhere.

There's also the text of a radio address on Iraq by former presidential candidate Wesley Clark. Now, here's a man who really ought to be speaking with authority on military operations. He asks the following questions: "How can we do a better job with less corruption in the reconstruction of Iraq? And, how can we make Iraq's neighbors a part of the solution, instead of a source of the problems inside Iraq?"

But he doesn't answer them.

As a person of faith, I am delighted that the Democratic leadership has taken notice that faith matters in this country; 60% of Democrats believe in God. But you know, it's not enough for there to be a link on the webpage for Howard Dean, a lapsed Episcopalian, to salute Yom Kippur. How about a guest article written by a Rabbi talking about how the values and sentiments expressed during the Jewish holiday of atonement translate into everyday life and how those messages can form a plan of action to make America better?

It gets worse. Click on the link for information about the Katrina recovery efforts. "Gulf Coast Needs Relief, Not a Right-Wing Agenda from Bush." Then it lists in paragraph after paragraph, everything that Republicans are doing wrong. "DNC Research has compiled some examples of right-wing policies President Bush is pushing that will hurt, not help, Gulf Coast residents recover and rebuild from Hurricane Katrina," says the story. Too bad they didn't compile any expert recommendations about how to do things better.

Congressional leadership in Washington contains some real kooks. I was appalled by Dianne Feinstein when she pleaded with stellar Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, "I'm trying to get your feelings as a man." Lady, the entire point of the proceedings is to determine that we get judges whose personal views are separate from their professional responsibilities.

Sitting around hoping to take credit for the imminent self-destruction of the current administration is not a winning strategy. The American people deserve better.