REBRANDING

Matt Yglesias on the Democrats' need to improve their national security message:

The first step is simply to recognize that the task will be a hard one. The Democrats burned a lot of credibility during the Vietnam War, did themselves no good during the Carter years, then had to sit and watch from the halls of Congress as Republican chief executives presided over the successful conclusion of the Cold War. After a rocky first term, Bill Clinton did much better in the second half of his administration but never got much credit for it -- in part because he didn't seek much credit and never made a serious effort to outline a liberal vision of national security for the 21st century. As a result, even though it was fairly absurd to think that George W. Bush was more personally competent to handle national security than was Al Gore, Bush took a clear majority of the "world affairs" vote in 2000, essentially on the strength of the much stronger Republican brand.

First, I think it's a very good thing that national security does seem to have been the issue that made the difference in the election, and not abortion or gay marriage as was first thought. As I see it, there's just not a lot of room for liberals to compromise on either abortion or gay marriage. It's not a perception problem, as I think it is with national security; the differences between the parties on abortion and gay marriage are about as black and white as things get in American politics, and liberals cannot back off on them.

I think Yglesias makes some great points in his article, but he, like a lot of liberals, misses a key element of the Republicans success on national security, and regarding the War on Terror specifically, which is that Republicans have cast the issue in existential terms, as a question of who we are as a nation. (Who are we? We're good. Who are they? They're evil. You're either with us or agin' us.) This pitch holds a lot of visceral appeal to voters, even for those who don't consider themselves particularly spiritual, as everyone likes to think that they're the good guys. Immediately after 9/11, Bush began weaving a narrative of a global crusade against evil, a crusade whose membership was open to anyone who would follow him, and he has been pushing this ever since. Democrats need to come up with a competing narrative.

More than any other issue, foreign policy is one which voters make gut decisions. Most people simply don't have too much information with which to analyze foreign policy positions, let alone any personal experience with foreign policy issues, as they might with domestic issues, such as having a cousin who had an abortion or who just lost her job or was killed by a handgun. This means that, in selling a set of foreign policy positions, style means a lot and substance means very little.

Election 2004 is a perfect example. Substantively, Kerry had Bush completely outgunned. Not only did Bush quite obviously have only the most tenuous grasp of the details of his own policies, those policies themselves have proven disastrous. But then, of course, Bush told people, among other things, that they were in danger of being eaten by wolves. Kerry really didn't have a sufficient response to that. I respect him (a little) for not playing that game, but I think it's obvious at this point that if Democrats want to win on national security, as I think we can and should, we're going to have to get our kabuki on a little.

No one ever won an election by being right, they won it by selling their ideas better. Being right only helps. I'm certainly not suggesting that Democrats should try and co-opt the Republicans' positions or rhetoric, only that Democrats recognize and learn from Republican success. It's going to be a difficult task, both because Republicans, with their reputation as the "strong on national security" party, already have a head start, and because their message is deceptively simple, as well as being simply deceptive. International relations is a complicated issue; Republicans have succeeded by pretending that it isn't. It's hard to counter "You'll be eaten by wolves!" or "America: Fuck Yeah!" with "Multilateralism works!" or "The UN enhances American power by appearing to constrain it!" but Democrats have got to figure how to weave these complex counter-arguments into a compelling counter-narrative which recognizes and appeals to the same psychological needs which the GOP has been manipulating for all these years.