Dean’s misunderstood domestic agenda

By Weekly Archive On Jan 8, 2004

By Matthew Miller

Tribune Media Services

It’s one thing for rival Democrats to slam Howard Dean’s domestic agenda as some “left-wing abandonment” of President Clinton’s centrist triumphs; after all, a little demagoguery in the service of winning is what primary politics are about.

But in reality, the notion that Dean is somehow radically left on domestic policy, or has “dissed” Bill Clinton, is nonsense. To the extent these charges are serious, they prove how little critics grasp Dean’s proposals – and how little they recall Clinton’s own domestic vision, which Dean largely seeks to fulfill.

To see today’s Democratic squabble in proper context, it helps to take a longer view. On domestic policy, Bill Clinton’s presidency consisted of two years on “offense” followed by six years on “defense.” The meltdown of his health-care plan in 1994 cost Democrats control of Congress and ended the affirmative phase of Clinton’s presidency.

Clinton’s great achievement on “defense” was to move the country from large budget deficits (which put Democratic domestic ambitions in a straitjacket) to unprecedented budget surpluses. As 2000 drew near, it was clear that Clinton’s surreal odyssey of survival would be vindicated only if he were succeeded by a president who would use the surpluses he was bequeathing to pursue the unfinished progressive agenda he never had a second chance to pursue himself.

But Al Gore did not become president. And now, in record time, George Bush has dissipated the surpluses.

Enter Howard Dean. To his critics, Dean’s crime the other day was to suggest it was time for the party to move past Clinton’s famous 1995 declaration that “the era of big government is over.” Dean said Democrats should not “join Republicans and aim simply to limit the damage they inflict on working families.”

Instead, Dean argued that Democrats should again raise their sights. But this isn’t abandoning Clinton’s legacy – it’s precisely the opportunity that Clinton’s defeat of the Gingrich “revolution” and his surplus-generating survival was intended to create.

What “radical” goals would Dr. Dean urge the party to pursue, in what he now calls a “New Social Contract for Working Families”? Affordable health care for the 44 million uninsured. Affordable child care. Universal preschool for millions of poorer kids who don’t have it. A new commitment to make college more affordable. A modest increase in the minimum wage. New efforts to encourage savings for average citizens.

These goals aren’t radical; they’re common sense. But the conservative movement has so successfully shaped perceptions of where the 50-yard line lies in political debate that they can be plausibly branded as “lefty” – meaning the media can (for now, at least) be persuaded to characterize them this way.

In seeking to move the 50-yard line back toward common sense, Howard Dean is doing what needs to be done – and privately, other Democrats know it. If anything, his ambitions are too timid. A modest increase in the minimum wage, for example, won’t begin to address the scandal of tens of millions of Americans who live in poverty despite living in households headed by full-time workers. On education, Dean has offered nothing to address the teacher crisis that plagues millions of our poorest children.

The one place where Dean’s tone does break with Clinton’s is his determination to take on the excesses of corporate America. Yet few recall that a central riff in Clinton’s 1992 campaign decried excessive CEO pay; the issue resonated powerfully (and still does) with ordinary citizens of all stripes. In office, however, Clinton eschewed such confrontational rhetoric in favor of working with Wall Street and the corporate community to tame the deficit and expand health coverage.

But after the shocking corruption exposed in the last few years – from Enron to Tyco to the New York Stock Exchange, the heart of capitalism – no serious candidate can ignore the “rot at the top” as a political issue. Even conservatives and thoughtful business leaders know something went wrong among a serious swath of our business elite – and that this needs to change.

Bottom line: You can have doubts about Howard Dean’s electability. But you can’t doubt that his domestic agenda is roughly where Democrats in 2004 ought to be.

Now if only we could get Dean to stop worrying about reading Osama Bin Laden his Miranda rights . . .

Matthew Miller, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, is the author of “The Two Percent Solution: Fixing America ‘s Problems in Ways Liberals and Conservatives Can Love.” Reach him at www.mattmilleronline.com.

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