I Share the general joy among conservatives regard ing the outcome of this week’s elections — but I’m sorry to see the departure of some centrist Democrats who wound up losing.
I’m thinking, in particular, of such congressmen as Ike Skelton of Missouri, John Spratt of South Carolina and Gene Taylor of Mississippi.
All were longtime members of the House Armed Services Committee: Skelton is the outgoing chairman, Spratt the second-ranking Democrat, Taylor a subcommittee chairman. They’re part of a dwindling band of centrist, strong-on-defense Democrats — a tradition stretching back to the days of Sens. Stuart Symington and Scoop Jackson.
The willingness of such men to cross the aisle, combined with the similar tendency among Republican leaders such as Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, gave US foreign policy a reliably bipartisan, hard-line tilt in the Cold War’s first two decades.
Those days are long gone. Today, alas, the Democrats are led by the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
The fact that so many Blue Dog Democrats have been knocked off is good news for the short term — but it will have parlous future consequences. When Democrats someday succeed in taking back the House, their leaders on defense and foreign-policy issues are likely to be considerably to the left of today’s crop.
Just look at the House Armed Services Committee. After the wholesale departure of senior Democrats, both contenders to become ranking minority member — Silvestre Reyes of Texas and Adam Smith of Washington — had a 95 percent liberal voting record last year, according to Americans for Democratic Action. The outgoing chairman, Skelton, only voted with the left 70 percent of the time.
The Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, Carl Levin of Michigan, also has a 95 percent liberal voting record. So, admittedly, does the next member in seniority — Connecticut’s Independent Democrat, Joe Lieberman — but in his case that voting record is deceptive, because he has broken with his party’s orthodoxy on many issues, from the need to prevail in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the need to try terrorists in military tribunals. Levin, on the other hand, has been a reliable voice of the party’s dovish wing.
That committee is, all things considered, a bastion of centrism for the Democrats, with such members as Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Jim Webb of Virginia. Not so the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, which is led by John Kerry of Massachusetts. The second-most-senior Democrat, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, has been defeated, but that simply means that Barbara Boxer of California will move up a notch; she’s as far left as they come.
On the House side, the Foreign Affairs Committee is led by a liberal but sensible Democrat, Howard Berman of California. But behind him is the hard-core left, including such local lawmakers as Gary Ackerman and Donald Payne.
Say what you will about President Obama: With his willingness to order drone strikes in Pakistan and a surge in Afghanistan, he looks positively hawkish compared to many Hill Democrats. There’s a real danger, however, that he’ll be pulled to the left in order to assuage his party’s hard core, as he has done by setting an ill-advised deadline for withdrawal from Afghanistan. The tendency may become especially pronounced if he faces a left-wing primary opponent such as Feingold.
Given the way the Democratic Party is drifting these days, we may look back one day and marvel at how conservative Obama was in comparison with his successors.
Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Adapted from contentions, the group blog at commentarymaga zine.com