The first issue of this magazine appeared in September 1995, part way through the Clinton administration, and less than a year after the Republican victory in the congressional elections of 1994. The pressing foreign policy issue of the day was Bosnia. The world seems a very different place today. To mark our 10th anniversary, we invited several of our valued contributors to reflect on the decade past and, at least indirectly, on the years ahead. More specifically, we asked them to address this question: "On what issue or issues (if any!) have you changed your mind in the last 10 years- and why?" Their responses follow.
ONE THING I CHANGED MY MIND ABOUT in the last 10 years is the Democrats' future. Ten years ago, I believed that they had one. They had lost Congress, but they had a president who, whatever his faults, was in touch with reality. He had campaigned and won as a "new kind of Democrat" who could build a bridge to the 21st century, and then coax the donkey across it, as he signed the welfare reform bill and went into Bosnia. He was no JFK--except in the wrong ways--but at least he seemed headed, if slowly, in that direction. Who could have dreamed it was all an illusion? Who ever dreamed that 10 years later, his party would be back where it had been 10 years before him, almost as if he had never existed?
Nothing has changed with the Democrats for 37 years. In 1968, they split in half over war and values, nominated an old liberal, and the doves all walked out. Four years later, they nominated a new liberal, and the hawks all walked out. Four years after that, they nominated a hawk (sort of) who turned into a wimp, and got shellacked four years later. Four years later, they nominated his veep, a big government dove in love with identity politics, and had the worst defeat ever. In response, moderates founded the Democratic Leadership Council, to wrest the party away from the liberals who had been losing with such regularity. They had what looked like a great team of horses, with Al Gore and Joe Lieberman, and of course Clinton; and when Clinton and Gore won, it seemed they had traction. But 20 years later, they're still wrestling away, locked in trench warfare. Clinton had only elided the splits, not resolved them. Neither side gains, neither side loses, and neither side gives up an inch. Late last year, the New Republic's Peter Beinart urged a purge of the left, and couldn't even convince his own colleagues. Bill Clinton had his little embarrassments, Al Gore lost his mind in the Florida recount, and Joe Lieberman is perhaps the one man in the universe liberals hate more than Bush.
The Democrats nowadays seem like a bad movie, or rather a rerun, with the old script they have played many times. At each convention, they have millions of flags, zillions of pledges, and talk a great deal about God, faith, and values, and no one believes them. In 1972, there was George McGovern, a World War II fighter pilot who turned into a peacenik; in 1976, there was Jimmy Carter, the naval officer who turned into a wimp. So it was no surprise in 2004 when they came up with John Kerry, their ideal war veteran, famous less for what he did in Vietnam than for what he did after, when he turned against the war and the military, and accused fellow servicemen of terrible crimes. After each loss, they have the same argument, which involves the same gestures, and ends the same way. Ten years ago, I thought they could change, or I thought Clinton could change them. I never imagined they would so quickly revert to the status quo ante. And so, I was wrong.
Noemie Emery is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD.