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 Recent commentary from National Journal: Social Studies: A New Center Beckons, but Can Either Party Find It? (June 21, 2001) A lasting governing majority awaits whichever party loses the turtle race and gets to the New Center first. By Jonathan Rauch. Legal Affairs: Bush vs. Gore and the Partisanship of the Professors (June 21, 2001) The professors exude a smug sense of moral superiority and a thinly veiled indifference to principle. By Stuart Taylor Jr. On Books: They're There—If You Look (June 21, 2001) A review of a study—unusual for a RAND analyst (or anyone else, for that matter)—of the often blissless married lives at the very bottom of the Army's chain of command. Accompanied by an interview with the author. By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. Media: Rules of the Twins (June 13, 2001) So, who are the wild ones? Pressies everywhere found the Bush Twins' story rife with cosmic significance, rich with historical parallels, and fraught with Freudian undertones. By William Powers. Legal Affairs: Finding Racial Bias Where There Was None (June 13, 2001) There's not a shred of evidence that anyone deliberately disenfranchised a single eligible voter. By Stuart Taylor Jr. Political Pulse: The New Soccer Moms (June 13, 2001) High-Income Owners of Gas-Gulping SUVs Love Bush Energy Plan. By William Schneider. On Books: Combative, Facile, and Boggling (June 13, 2001) A review of Unfree Speech, a new book by Federal Election Commissioner Bradley A. Smith. By Eliza Newlin Carney. More from National Journal. |
Political Pulse 
The Danger of Going Too FarConservatives' recent defeat in Britain sends a message to American politicians by William Schneider .... You might call last week's British election a reluctant landslide. Tony Blair's Labor government repeated its stunning victory of four years ago by winning 413 of 659 seats in Parliament. This total is down only slightly from 1997, when Labor won 418 seats. For the first time in the party's 100-year history, Labor has won consecutive full terms in office. At the same time, voter turnout dropped to near-U.S. levels: 59 percent, down nearly 12 points from 1997 to the lowest level in any British election since 1918. The Conservatives gained just one seat in Parliament. Most of the gains went to Britain's third party, the Liberal Democrats. Conservatives now hold barely one quarter of the House of Commons. With his resignation as party leader the day after the election, William Hague has become the first Tory leader in 80 years to fail to make it to No. 10 Downing St. The message of the election was not that Blair and his policies are wildly popular. It's that the Conservative opposition has lost credibility by going too far. Is there a message here for American politicians? Absolutely. Blair's government was certainly vulnerable. British voters are unhappy about the deterioration of public services—education, the railways, and the national health service. Labor promised more public investment without raising taxes. The Conservatives responded by demanding a huge tax cut, a proposal that gave Labor a handy target. "Labor has said the Conservatives want to go down the George Bush path," one commentator observed. "They want to cut taxation in order to cut services." British voters are also angry about the flood of illegal immigrants. The Conservatives' reacted with a dire warning about too many foreigners and a costly proposal to hold questionable immigrants in detention centers. "Let me take you on a journey to a foreign land," Hague said on the stump. "Blair under Britain." Labor found it easy to portray the Conservatives as divisive and racist, and to depict their proposed detention centers as costly and unworkable. Then there's the euro issue. British voters are worried that Blair may be willing to abolish the pound in favor of the euro, a common European currency. Blair says he is not opposed to the euro as long as economic conditions are right, but that he will not adopt the euro without first holding a national referendum. The Conservatives say "never" to the euro. "Giving up the pound would threaten our ability to run our own affairs in this country," Hague said. "It is vital that you vote to save the pound." Blair, meanwhile, portrayed the Conservatives as having a broader anti-Europe agenda. He called the Conservatives' anti-euro policy "a recipe for leading this country to exit the European Union," adding: "It will be a disaster for jobs, for industry, and for British influence in the world." Blair is not widely trusted in Britain. "All spin and presentation," his critics say. He's viewed as a man of slippery—even borrowed—principles. When The Times of London endorsed Blair, the newspaper wrote: "After only four years, Labor has consolidated many elements of Thatcherism. The central tenets of the economic settlement of the 1980s—fierce resistance to inflation, a recognition that taxation at a certain level inflicts more harm than good, and a distrust of trade union power—are further entrenched today than they were four years ago." The Conservatives' problem is they have too many principles, most of them right-wing: anti-Europe, anti-immigrant, anti-public services. Even voters who are dissatisfied with Blair don't want to go that far. Pollster Robert Worcester noted: "William Hague would have liked this election to be ... a referendum on the euro—but the public didn't buy it. They think this election is about service delivery-police, law and order, and social services." The British economy is certainly strong, with unemployment at its lowest level in 26 years. Yet Blair's government has had plenty of problems. The government's handling first of mad-cow disease and then the foot-and-mouth epidemic was slow and clumsy. The government has not stemmed rising fuel costs or illegal immigration, or deterioration of railway service and health care. In Northern Ireland, Protestant and Catholic voters in effect repudiated the Good Friday peace accord last week. Hague and the Conservatives squandered their opportunity. Instead of running on Blair's vulnerabilities, they went too far to the right and made themselves a target. "Put that cross on the ballot paper for taking this country forward and building what we've started," Blair urged voters, "and not for going back to the years of Conservative instability, cuts in services, and social division." Going too far is a mistake the Labor Party made in the 1980s, when it went too far to the left and kept the Conservatives in power for 18 years. In the United States, Democrats made the same mistake in the 1980s with presidential nominees Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. On the Republican side, House Speaker Newt Gingrich became famous for going too far. And now, guess what people are beginning to say about President Bush? His tax cut, his energy policy, and his missile defense plan all go too far. What's the cure for going too far? Losing. That's the message British voters sent: "We're not entirely happy with Tony Blair, but you Conservatives have gone too far. You lose."
What do you think? Discuss this article in the Politics & Society conference of Post & Riposte. More from National Journal. More on politics and society in Atlantic Unbound and The Atlantic Monthly. William Schneider is the Cable News Network's senior political analyst. He is also a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., and a contributing editor for the Los Angeles Times, National Journal, and The Atlantic Monthly. His column appears every week in National Journal, a weekly magazine covering politics and government published in Washington, D.C. For information on National Journal Group publications, see NationalJournal.com. Copyright © 2001 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved. | [an error occurred while processing this directive] | ||
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