List the TWO most regrettable mistakes of BOTH major parties since the end of WWII here, and on that basis argue a good lesson for the next administration to take from it.
Me:
DEMS: 1) allowing Cold War to overshadow Great Society. If LBJ could have eased up on Vietnam, ended our commitment by '66 instead of escalating it, there’s no telling what social policies could have been pursued.
failing to defuse blowjobgate–if Clinton had caved much sooner on having had an affair with an intern, and accepted whatever censure Congress was going to dish out, we might have been spared some of the worst destructive, sustained political bickering ever.
In both cases, I think the democrats screwed themselves out of the next two Presidential elections, by underestimating damage they had caused themselves.
PUBs: 1) Watergate. Unwillingness to risk even the unlikelihood of losing to a democratic opponent, Nixon created an atmosphere in the White House that dictated “anything we do to win is by definition virtuous.”
9-11 response. Over-emotional gut response that suited their preconceived agenda (Iran=Bad) removed U.S. from sympathy for attacks to unprecedented hostility.
In both cases, a stubborn refusal to allow for open debate created much unwarranted secrecy disguised as patriotism.
For me, the lesson reads: be willing to endure criticism, even when it seems harsh, and be willing to be your own worst critic, instead of digging in your heels and defending what you’ve done so far. You will make mistakes–be willing to to take the heat for those you make, so as to avoid years of destructive argument about how right you really were.
Republicans have screwed up so much in the postwar period it is hard to pick just two - but I’ll try. One has to be the wage and price controls of the Nixon administration - this was supposed to rein in inflation then creeping into the economy. This was such a monumental failure that by the time they were dismantled after three years (initially they were to have lasted ninety days) inflation was hitting double digits, and would get worse yet later.
Second, the Republicans actually had a better civil rights record as a party than the Democrats heading into the 1960s - but when suburban voters completely freaked out over housing integration and what that would (in their minds) do to property values, suburban Republicans joined suburban Democrats in opposing these bills. I really don’t know how that could have been avoided - these voters were so energized over this that many of them were attracted to Wallace and his poisonous rhetoric. Neverless, lots of progress in civil rights and a party’s noble record in that area was squandered.
As for the Democrats, again there is an awful lot to pick from. The two biggest for me was allowing a strong pro-defense party led by the likes of FDR and Truman and Kennedy get hijacked by McGovern and Carter and Dukakis. Between the McGovernite revolution in the party and the end of the Cold War the Democrats won one presidential election in a squeaker - this was post-Watergate and that president served one term, and was generally regarded as a failure. Not only did this hurt the party, it hurt the country - the military by the tail end of the Carter administration was falling apart.
Additionally, the Democrats suffered by not accepting more modern economic theories sooner than they did. No Democrat today would propose returning to the tax levels of the 1970s - they would instantly recognize that as an economy killer. Yet lowering these taxes in the first term of the Reagan administration was more controversial than it should have been.
Alliance with the Religious Right - This has poisoned the party to a degree unheard of in history. Giving political opinions religious backing is against everything this country was founded upon.
Alliance with the Military-Industrial Complex - Ike was right. The MIC is the Devil incarnate, and the Republicans are their butt-monkey.
Democrats
Embracing the fallacy of “gun control” as a political issue. Shot them in the foot, it did.
Thinking that the liberal elite East Coast academics and the like are America. Or that they are any better than Appalachian hillbillies. The “We know better than you” attitude has cost the Dems any number of elections over the years.
Alliance with the Religious Right - This has poisoned the party to a degree unheard of in history. Giving political opinions religious backing is against everything this country was founded upon.
See 1
Democrats
Embracing the fallacy of “gun control” as a political issue. Shot them in the foot, it did.
Thinking that the liberal elite East Coast academics and the like are America. Or that they are any better than Appalachian hillbillies. The “We know better than you” attitude has cost the Dems any number of elections over the years.
They’re really both the same. Both parties are culpable, either because of lying down and letting the majority pursue ideologies over realities, or being the majority and pursuing ideology over reality.
Vietnam
Iraq II
What makes them the most regrettable is that unlike failures in fiscal management(of which there have been many), or failures in handling the US’s social contract(of which there have been many) these dumped the majority of the cost for the mistake onto non US citizens. The Vietnamese and Iraqi people suffered and died in those mistakes. They have no ability to redress the US Congress with their grievances, or to vote them out if they make things worse, or simply fail to make things better. In my world, trashing your own house is regrettable, but ultimately your choice. Trashing someone else’s house is a bigger deal and it shouldn’t be done. The lesson of aggressive war should have been learned in WWII.
The lesson of alliances with mutual defense pacts which entangle the entire world in a war should have been learned after WWI, but here we are talking about putting Georgia in NATO. I guess we’re slow learners.
Defeating the Bush immigration proposals. I know there was lots of cooperation from Democrats to defeat immigration reform, but Bush had the right idea there and it was mostly his own party that shot it down.
Democrats
Nominating Kerry. Bush wasn’t a very popular president, and the Democrats managed to nominate probably the only guy who could have lost an election against him.
The Clinton blowjob scandal. It was a ridiculous thing to do, and an even more ridiculous thing to cover up. The party is extremely lucky that the economy was so strong and people were mostly happy at the time, because if he had been less popular Bill would have had hell to pay.
So your bipartisan cred comes from believing that the Democrat’s mistakes were that they weren’t farther to the left and didn’t stand up to Republican evil enough, and that the Republicans are evil and stupid.
This does not make you bipartisan - it makes you someone to the left of the Democrats.
Bipartisanship doesn’t mean hating both parties, but one a lot more than the other - Bipartisanship comes from agreeing with both sides on some issues. The whole premise of your thread, that you can show bipartisanship by listing mistakes in both parties, is flawed. Instead of asking for the two most regrettable mistakes from each party, you should have asked for the two best results from each party, which at the time were opposed by the other party.
How did “Clinton should have fessed up and accepted appropriate punishment” become “believing that the Democrat’s mistakes were that they weren’t farther to the left and didn’t stand up to Republican evil enough”?
Vietnam – It’s escalation put a huge blot in our country’s history.
Abortion – I’m pro-life. Politically, it makes sense for the Dems to be pro-choice, but that doesn’t make it right.
Republicans
Discrimination. Since the Civil Rights Acts in the 60’s the Republicans have all but embraced discrimination, first racial and gender and now sexual orientation, in order to appease their base.
Fiscal Irresponsibility/National Debt – All the lipservice to fiscal responsibility and portraying Democrats as big spenders would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious. Tax cuts during a war? Out of control spending on idiotic wars and allegiance to the military industrial complex are a big part of this. But the hypocrisy is icing on the cake.
I’ll try to think of a larger and evenhanded list later on, but right now I’ll just offer one that I think is unusual and perhaps bipartisan:
Varying ballot standards would have made it extremely problematic if the Supreme Court had allowed the 2000 recount in Florida to proceed. I admit I don’t remember a lot of the specifics about how it worked at that time, but I don’t think there was a consistent standard for interpreting voter intent, which would have put a lot of discretion into the hands of the individuals counting the ballots. A clear standard was needed in those cases and to my knowledge it didn’t exist. At the time, and still today, I think the correct solution would have been for both parties to have allowed an independent group to hash out a standard and then begin a nationwide recount. Doing it on a county by county basis probably would have been unfair.
D1: Making abortion a litmus test for any senior/leadership position. This absolutist position on an issue where Americans are basically evenly split was part of what allowed the evangelical vote to go all Right.
D2: Enslavement to the unions.
R1: Giving up on truly limiting the role of government.
R2: Buying the lie that the neocons sold/are selling.
Are most people reading the OP as “what policies were bad” or “what tactics were bad?” Because, e.g., Dem. class warfare baiting could be bad policy but good electoral politics/good for the party.
I agree with this. We can always find mistakes for those we oppose and lesser mistakes for those we agree with. This doesn’t mean we’re not partisan, it just means the party we’re amenable to isn’t perfectly in lockstep with us. Times when you’ve gone against your normal party to support something which was the other party’s platform would make the most sense to me.
So, in the spirit of the title of the thread, versus the implementation suggested by the OP, here is my bipartisan cred.
The Democrats did the right thing in 1964, over the opposition of many Republicans. Jim Crow had to go.
The Democrats did the right thing in 1993 with the defecit reduction act, passed without a single Republican vote.
The Republicans did the right thing in opposing trade restrictions and opening up markets worldwide.
The Republican Presidents generally handled the Cold War better than the few Democratic Presidents we had during that time. Kennedy nearly started WWIII, LBJ escalated Vietnam, Carter couldn’t face down a hostage crisis.
Actually, most of the opposition to the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 (as well as the Civil Rights Bill of 1957) came from southern Democrats. Civil rights split the Democrats pretty badly along regional lines.
Does the hostage crisis fit as part of the Cold War. I know it happened during the Cold War, but I don’t think it had anything to do with it. If anything, it could be seen as the start of our war on terror, or whatever you want to call our current mid-east troubles.
silenus should get credit (or blame) for that pun.
But yes.
I had a pretty good list of regrettable mistakes made by the Republican party over the years, but realized that most of them could be blamed on their alliance with the religious right.
