Primary Colors of Idealism

After my AP US Government students take the AP exam in May I proceed to show them my favorite political movie, Primary Colors. The movie, adapted for the screen and directed by Mike Nichols and based on the book by Joe Klein, is an excellent exploration of the role of idealism in politics.

Michael Kinsley famously wrote that politicians experience a four phase path to corruption once they reach Washington:

It used to be said that the moral arc of a Washington career could be divided into four parts: idealism, pragmatism, ambition and corruption. You arrive with a passion for a cause, determined to challenge the system. Then you learn to work for your cause within the system. Then rising in the system becomes your cause. Then, finally, you exploit the system -- your connections in it, and your understanding of it -- for personal profit.

Kinsley's arc for politicians applies to their staff as well. This tension between idealism and corruption is illustrated by two characters in the movie, Henry Burton (aka. George Stephenopolous) who is the young idealist longing for a person and a campaign to believe in and Howard Ferguson (aka. Harold Ickes) the pragmatic, realist whose initial reaction to the heart attack of Governor Stanton's (aka. Bill Clinton) chief rival is to let out a spontaneous "Yes!!!"

versus

If one spends enough time in Washington one will often show off their sophistication by declaring everything both sides does as a cynical power play. Everything and everyone is morally compromised and any attempt to critique and criticize the other side as better or worse than their opponent is naive. Some bloggers (ie. Matthew Yglesias, Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Geenwald) have come to call this inclination "Broderism." So named after the "dean" of the Washington Post press corps, David Broder of the Washington Post, someone who embodies the tired, seen it all before attitude that can't be bothered to assess whether one party or the other is more to blame for the failures of our political institutions.

The Urban Dictionary defines Broderism as:

The worship of bipartisanship for its own sake, combined with a fake "pox on both their houses" attitude. The main goal is the establishment of a permanent ruling class of Washington insiders, our betters who know better. It is their rough agenda which is sold as "centrism" even when it has no actual relationship with the political center in a meaningful way. The establishment of an aristocratic class in America.

The belief that it all sides are equal and must compromise at all times. Regardless of the final outcome or the level of understanding or intelligence presented by each side.

This DailyKos post further explores the implications of "Broderism."

Although in my younger years I was often sucked in to "Broderism" type thinking I now reject it completely. The continuous drifting of the Republican Party in to Sarah Palin territory (here is Andrew Sullivan's recap of her lies) and it's cousin the Tea Party movement (Michael Kinsley's explanation of why the Tea Partiers are NOT patriots) makes clear that there is only one political party for adults today, the Democratic Party. For all their warts (see the near collapse of health insurance reform) the Democrats are capable of creating, debating, critiquing and finally presenting solutions to America's most pressing problems. You may or may not agree with all of their proposals but they are the only one on the stage putting forward realistic solutions.

The maturity of the Democratic Party vis a vis the Republican Party is most evidenced by their ability to have open and honest debates about the central issues of the day.

Glenn Greenwald makes the case convincingly that Democrats are much more likely to criticize their own rather than go along out of tribal loyalty:

One of the linchpins of the Bush presidency, especially during the first term (and well into the second, until he became a major political liability), was the lock-step uncritical reverence – often bordering on cult-like glorification – which the “conservative” movement devoted to the "Commander-in-Chief." An entire creepy cottage industry arose – led not by fringe elements but by right-wing opinion-making leaders – with cringe-inducing products paying homage to Bush as "The First Great Leader of the 21st Century" (John Podhoretz); our "Rebel-in-Chief" (Fred Barnes); "The Right Man" (David Frum); the New Reagan (Jonah Goldberg); "a man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius" who is our "Big Brother" (John Hinderaker); and "the triumph of the seemingly average American man," the supremely "responsible" leader who, when there's a fire, will "help direct the rig to the right house and count the kids coming out and say, 'Where's Sally'?" (Peggy Noonan).

Even as Bush implemented one massive expansion of government power after the next -- the very "un-conservative" policies they long claimed to oppose -- there was nothing but (at best) the most token and muted objections from them. The handful of conservatives who did object were cast aside as traitors to the cause, and criticisms of the President became equated with an overt lack of patriotism. Uncritical support for the Leader was the overarching, defining attribute of conservatism, so much so that even Bill Kristol, in The New York Times, acknowledged: "Bush was the movement and the cause."

Whenever I would speak at events over the last couple of years and criticize the Bush administration’s expansions of government power, extreme secrecy and other forms of corruption, one of the most frequent questions I would be asked was whether "the Left" -- meaning liberals and progressives -- would continue to embrace these principles with a Democrat in the White House, or whether they would instead replicate the behavior of the Right and uncritically support whatever the Democratic President decided. Though I could only speculate, I always answered -- because I believed -- that the events of the last eight years had so powerfully demonstrated and ingrained the dangers of uncritical support for political leaders that most liberals would be critical of and oppositional to a Democratic President when that President undertook actions in tension with progressive views.

Two months into Obama’s presidency, one can clearly conclude that this is true. Even though Obama unsurprisingly and understandably remains generally popular with Democrats and liberals alike, there is ample progressive criticism of Obama in a way that is quite healthy and that reflects a meaningful difference between the “conservative movement” and many progressives.

Over the last month, the Obama administration has made numerous decisions in the civil liberties area that are replicas of some of the most controversial and radical actions taken by the Bush administration, and the most vocal critics of those decisions by far were the very same people – ostensibly on "the Left" -- who spent the last several years objecting to the same policies as part of the Bush administration’s radicalism. Identically, many of Obama's most consequential foreign policy decisions -- in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan -- have been criticized by many on the Left. Opposition to Obama’s bank bailout plan is clearly being driven by liberal economists, pundits and bloggers, and much of the criticism over the AIG debacle came from liberals as well. There was pervasive liberal criticism over some of Obama's key appointments, including Tom Daschle, John Brennan and Tim Geithner. That's more independent progressive thinking in two months than the "conservative movement" exhibited with regard to Bush in six years.

No one illustrates this point better than Glenn Greenwald himself. Here he is on ABC's "This Week" going after Democratic poohbah Greg Craig who tries to defend the nomination of Elena Kagan.