Daily Blague

The climate of political comment has become so rank, so hormonally malodorous lately that I hesitate to applaud the Times for publishing a remarkable pair of Op-Ed pieces today. One is by former Republican Senator John C. Danforth, and the other is by former Democratic Senator Bill Bradley. Each piece advises the author's own party, not the opposition. That's a relief right there. And I could not more enthusiastically endorse what each statesman has to say.

Mr Danforth is unhappy with the conjunction of the Republican Party with conservative Christianity, and he explains quickly and lucidly why the mixing of politics with religion is inadvisable:

When government becomes the means of carrying out a religious program, it raises obvious questions under the First Amendment. But even in the absence of constitutional issues, a political party should resist identification with a religious movement. While religions are free to advocate for their own sectarian causes, the work of government and those who engage in it is to hold together as one people a very diverse country. At its best, religion can be a uniting influence, but in practice, nothing is more divisive. For politicians to advance the cause of one religious group is often to oppose the cause of another.

Mr Bradley believes, as I have done for most of George W Bush's presidency, that the Democratic Party has got to take a good look at the massive but disciplined rganizational effort that made the Republican Party the political powerhouse that it is today, and he astutely traces his party's haphazard fortunes to the charisma of John F Kennedy. But no party can run on charisma alone, as the sequel to Bill Clinton's administrations shows.

If Democrats are serious about preparing for the next election or the next election after that, some influential Democrats will have to resist entrusting their dreams to individual candidates and instead make a commitment to build a stable pyramid from the base up. It will take at least a decade's commitment, and it won't come cheap. But there really is no other choice.

Actually, I believe that progressive Democrats who happen also to be influential ought to form a new party, and call it either "Liberal" or "Progressive." Political advisers would be sure to laugh this idea down, but then few of them would have predicted the phoenix that rose from the ashes of Barry Goldwater's campaign.