John Kerry and the Power of Discretion
Press Action
Thursday, February 26, 2004
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/hand02262004/
By Mark Hand
The ruling elite in the United States is growing tired of the clumsy style in which George W. Bush is administering the American empire. During his three years in office, Bush has managed to fracture relations with allies in Old Europe and frighten old money in the United States.
The volatility surrounding Bush and Co.’s term in Washington is viewed as bad for business. The ruling elite is looking for a leader who, with a sense of decorum, can simultaneously wield a big stick in foreign lands and maintain a firm grasp on fiscal matters in the imperial capital.
A consensus is growing around the belief that John Kerry’s temperament is better suited for the role of American president in the 21st century. Kerry is seen as a potential calming influence on the political and financial affairs of Washington.
“It is not that a Kerry administration would change any fundamental aspect of contemporary American policy, but rather that those policies would be pursued with a little more discretion and finesse, if it is possible to talk about discretion and war in the same breath,” writes Chris Sanders of Sanders Research Associates.
According to Sanders, it’s quite possible the establishment has decided that Bush is too much of a risk. “Bush is giving those opposed to the system an incentive to organize like no other since the Vietnam War,” he contends. “That is the last thing that the power brokers in either party need. You don’t loose a wolf amongst the flock when your business is shearing.”
Officials at the Democratic Leadership Council, the hermaphroditic political outfit in Washington, are pleased that the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination has narrowed to Kerry and John Edwards.
“The two remaining major candidates, Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards offer significant contrasts in background, style, and emphasis,” the DLC explained in a recent edition of its daily commentary. “Each brings a different set of assets to the task of challenging George W. Bush. But on most of the major issues facing the country, their thinking is remarkably similar, and solidly within the Clintonian New Democrat policy tradition. … Democratic primary voters have winnowed the field, and the remaining contestants both look like winners.”
Paying attention to the declarations of the DLC is a prerequisite to understanding Washington politics. These New Democrats emerged in the 1980s and have grown to symbolize the Democratic establishment. But the DLC, together with its think tank affiliate, the Progressive Policy Institute, is increasingly becoming the voice of refined Republicans. The two political entities embrace almost identical economic and foreign policy outlooks and feed at the same financial trough.
From 2000 to 2002, the Progressive Policy Institute, a project of The Third Way Foundation, received $225,000 in grants from the Bradley Foundation. According to Media Transparency, the Bradley Foundation’s principal beneficiaries are right-wing political groups. “[T]he list of Bradley grant recipients reads like a Who’s Who of the U.S. Right,” Media Transparency says. “Bradley money supports such major right-wing groups as the Heritage Foundation, source of policy papers on budget cuts, supply-side economics and the Star Wars military plan for the Reagan administration; … and the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, literary home for such racist authors as Charles Murray (The Bell Curve) and Dinesh D’Souza (The End of Racism), former conservative officeholders Jeane Kirkpatrick, Jack Kemp and William Bennett, and arch-conservative jurists Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia.”
The Clean Air Trust, an environmental group founded in 1995 by former Sens. Edmund Muskie of Maine and Robert Stafford of Vermont, analyzes PPI’s relationship with the Bradley Foundation: “Interestingly, they are also a source of money for the Third Way Foundation. ... Even more interesting is that PPI has adopted the anti-federal chant on such issues as New Source Review.”
The New Source Review rule of the Clean Air Act requires operators of power plants and factories to install modern pollution controls whenever they make modifications to their facilities that result in an increase in air pollution. Under revisions adopted by the Bush administration and supported by Republican and Democratic members of Congress, plant operators are excused from installing modern pollution controls in such situations.
“When triggered, NSR requires companies to undergo a lengthy permit review and typically install costly end-of-pipe technologies like ‘scrubbers’ to control air pollution,” PPI explains. “By focusing on new plants instead of old ones, NSR misses the source of most pollution. The regulations also create an unduly complex and time-consuming permit process, and impose a one-size-fits-all approach to pollution control technologies.”
Critics contend the Bush administration’s rule change creates a loophole in the NSR program, allowing 17,000 power plants, refineries, and other industrial facilities to install replacement equipment without updating pollution controls, even when the replacement increases air pollution.
Liberals often are willing to concede the lack of noticeable differences between Democrats and Republicans on issues such as foreign policy and economics. The Democrats’ positions on social issues and the environment, however, are regularly held up to show the two parties do indeed have distinct positions on at least some of the important issues of the day.
But now, the DLC’s Third Way activists are taking the next step toward consolidation by trying to pull their fellow Democrats closer to the positions of the Republicans on such issues as the environment. Will John Kerry, if chosen the Democratic presidential nominee, follow the DLC into an ideological joint venture with the Republican Party or will he resist the pressures to participate in the establishment of unabashed one-party rule in Washington?
Mark Hand is editor of Press Action.