Lies, Damned Lies, and Master Political Narratives

The fictional scenario of mobs of crazed women defecting to Mr. McCain is just one subplot of the master narrative that has consumed our politics for months. The larger plot has it that the Democratic Party is hopelessly divided, and that only a ticket containing Mrs. Clinton in either slot could retain the loyalty of white male bowlers and other constituencies who tended to prefer her to Mr. Obama in the primaries.

This is reality turned upside down. It’s the Democrats who are largely united and the Republicans who are at one another’s throats. — Frank Rich

More like reality sideways, no? Surely Rich is right (as I am) that even a racist Democrat knows which side his bread’s buttered and can vote for a Clinton on account of race during a primary campaign while voting for an Obama during the general election on account of party. Surely this holds just as well for the die-hard woman power set, especially given that John McCain is a man.

But Rich goes too far with his too-neat upending of his pretend conventional wisdom. Democrats are as ‘largely united’ as Republicans were in 2004 — full of fissures and serious disagreements, especially about foreign policy, but driven passionately by a few important broad commitments and a militarized approach to smashing the opposition. The greatest embarrassment to the Democratic party has got to be the absolute listlessness and derivative followership of its party leaders on foreign policy. Lieberman and Obama are virtually the only bold-named Dems who can lay claim to having maintained a master foreign policy narrative of their own, and, as you may guess, I think both of these have moderate to severe flaws.

Then there’s this issue of Republican infighting. I simply don’t see it. There are a handful of bloggers on the young/new/postmodern/prepster/??? right who regularly depart from the homilies of the movement mainstream, and there’s Ron Paul, and I guess there’s Bob Barr; there’s a lot of disgruntlement but as the party leadership of the GOP has vanished up its own posterior, the disgruntled are hard pressed to find a throat to be at. One can always make fun of posts at The Corner, but with Yuval and Ramesh keeping the sane flag flying, reveling in the fratricide just doesn’t feel right. And once again, the blogosphere is hardly the national Republican political scene. Republicans are deflated and disoriented. They fell in line with amazing speed behind John McCain…if only by default, but the proof is in the default. Republicans are too dazed and confused, too hunkered down in post-blood-loss survival mode, and too well-institutionalized to be ‘at each other’s throats.’

Yet Frank is ultimately right, I suspect, that Republicans are ‘hopelessly divided,’ even if the division is hopelessly lopsided (at least for now). What he should’ve had the moxie to reveal is that Democrats are probably hopelessly divided, too. Trouble is, the cleavage (ahem) isn’t a gender gap. It’s a foreign policy gap, I wager. And either Obama will come over to the Clintonian side of things or the Clintonian, interventionist New Democrats will drift over to his.