Refight the Nineties?

By historical standards -- or any other -- the Democrats have an excellent set of presidential candidates from which to choose this season, and I look forward to campaigning enthusiastically and without reservation for our nominee. But this does not mean that we should be suppressing the discussion of differences, and it is in this framework that I think it is important to express my discomfort with a major theme of Senator Obama's campaign.

I am referring to his denigration of "the Washington battles of the 1990's" and, usually implicitly but sometimes explicitly, of those who fought them. My unease is compounded by the very explicit note of generational politics in his approach. I should note that I cannot be accused of self interest in taking exception to those who lament the baneful influence of baby boomers on our current politics, having myself been born well before the boom. Indeed, being much too young to claim membership in the greatest generation and even being a couple of years short of being a depression baby, I am reconciled to being part of a fairly large birth cohort that goes undesignated in our pop sociology. But since I do not have much intellectual respect for generational politics, I can live with this chronological anomie. I say that because generational politics presumes that I should have a different set of political values today than I had in the sixties when I began my political activity. But I cannot think of a cause that I cared deeply about then that I felt it appropriate to abandon as I aged, nor an important issue in which I had no interest then, but which now gets my attention.

This brings me to my particular concern with Senator Obama's vehement disassociation of himself and those he seeks to represent from "the fights of the nineties." I am very proud of many of the fights I engaged in in the nineties, as well as the eighties and before. Senator Obama also bemoans the "same bitter partisanship" of that period and appears to me to be again somewhat critical of those of us who he believes to have been engaged in it.

I agree that it would have been better not to have had to fight over some of the issues that occupied us in the nineties. But there would have been only one way to avoid them -- and that would have been to give up. More importantly, the only way I can think of to avoid "refighting the same fights we had in the 1990's", to quote Senator Obama, is to let our opponents win these fights without a struggle.

It would have been nice in the nineties not to have had to fight to defend a woman's right to choose whether or not to have an abortion, and I would be very happy if that fight ended tomorrow. I was troubled when Newt Gingrich and his right wing band took over Congress after the election of 1994 and sought to put an end to programs to deal with continuing racial discrimination and the resulting inequality, and I am even more distressed that we have to continue to fight that battle against a Republican party largely opposed to all of these efforts -- consider the Bush Justice Department and its role in dealing with people's right to vote. As a gay man, additionally, I would have been delighted in the nineties if our conservative opponents had been willing to recognize our rights to be treated fairly under the law, and I would have saved a lot of time, as recently as this past year, if there was not continued strong right wing opposition to the "radical" position that people should not be denied jobs because of their fundamental nature, or that hate crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity should be treated less seriously than those based on racial or religious prejudice. These are three of the major fights in which I was engaged in the nineties, and I literally do not understand what Senator Obama means when he says that he does not want to keep fighting them. I know that he understands that those who were opposed to all three of those causes in which many of us deeply believe in the nineties continue their opposition, and I do not understand how we can avoid fighting those battles other than by conceding them, which I know he does not advocate.

In some cases, Senator Obama does not seem to remember what some of the fights of the nineties were. I agree that it would be a good thing to have the 2008 election be in part "about whether to...pass universal health care" but that in fact is one of the central fights we had in the nineties. The effort of many of us to pass a universal health care plan is precisely one of the battles of the nineties, and it seems to me one that we very much want to keep fighting. Again, the only alternative to fighting it is losing it by concession.

Another major fight of the nineties which seems to me essential -- not simply relevant -- to the current election is tax policy. Few fights that we had in the period when Senator Obama is denigrating our battles was more important than the successful effort to pass President Clinton's tax plan in 1993. That battle was so hotly fought that it contributed, sadly, to the Republican takeover the next year, because a number of the Democrats who had voted for a progressive tax plan which made the tax code less unfair and provided important revenues for important programs lost their seats because of it. I make no apologies for having fought that fight, and in fact I hope that whoever is the President of the United States in 2009 will take up the battle against excessive tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the country, both as a matter of fairness and as a matter of being able to afford fundamental programs essential to the quality of our lives. I also remember fighting hard during that period for the rights of working men and women to join unions, and while we lost that once the Republicans took power in '94, we did score one victory when we were still in the majority in passing, in a "bitter partisan battle," the Family and Medical Leave Act -- the need for us to wage that battle is once again as strong if not stronger in 2008 than it was in 1995.

Finally, I do take pretty strong exception to Senator Obama's evenhanded denunciation of "the same bitter partisanship" of the nineties. It is true that American politics became much more partisan in the nineties, but that was primarily the result of the successful right wing takeover of the Republican Party, embodied at the time--he has since become a little more moderate for some tactical purpose--by Newt Gingrich. Again I do not think those of us who fought back against Gingrich's poisoning of the atmosphere should apologize for that. If anything, the apologies should come from those who were too slow to respond. It was Gingrich and his right wing allies who decided to inject a much harsher note of partisanship by explicitly rejecting the notion that the Democrats were honorable people with whom they disagreed, and instead decided, as Gingrich's own printed and taped materials argued, to portray us as treasonous, corrupt, immoral and otherwise vile. And when Gingrich was forced by his own flaws to step aside, Tom DeLay took up those cudgels with a little less rhetorical flourish but with an even heavier hand. If Senator Obama was denouncing the outrageous tactics of Gingrich and DeLay, I would be very much in support of his comments. Instead, he evenhandedly denounces the "bitter partisanship" of that period and seems to me to be distancing himself equally from the Gingrich/DeLay attack and the efforts of many of us to combat it. The comment calls to mind the marvelous words of John L. Lewis, at a point when Franklin Roosevelt pronounced a plague "on both their houses" with regard to a significant labor dispute. "It ill behooves one who has supped at labor's table and who has been sheltered in labor's house to curse with equal fervor and fine impartiality both labor and its adversaries when they become locked in deadly embrace."

As a Democratic Member of the U.S. House of Representatives today, I close by noting that there does appear to me to be a strong contradiction between two of the criticisms we sometimes receive. One is the approach taken by Senator Obama, which I have just tried to describe, which expresses distaste for too much fighting and too much anger, with too little effort to govern in a way that bridges differences. But contrary to that, I often hear that we Democrats in the Congress have not fought hard enough, that we have not stood up enough for what we believe in, and have been too prone to conciliate. I personally do not think that either criticism is justified, but I know as a fact that they cannot both be true.

I fully agree with Senator Obama that we should be arguing for the policies we advocate and the values from which they derive in a manner that appeals to the broadest possible segment of the public. His own ability to do that is one of our great assets. But I worry when people on my side underestimate the difficulty of our most important work, and I believe that is what Senator Obama does when he dismisses our efforts to fight the right wing in an earlier period because it suggests to me that he does underestimate the difficulty of the job. I think the best way to summarize my concern is that if you tell people that we should not be willing to refight the battles of the nineties -- including many very important ones that we are far from having won -- and if you tell people to refuse partisanship, you may be inviting people to leave the battlefield to those with whom we have the biggest differences. Racial fairness, reproductive rights for women, an end to discrimination against sexual minorities, universal health care, the right of working men and women to bargain collectively with employers -- these battles we waged in the nineties remain essential to our vision today, and I do not understand why we should either be embarrassed about having fought hard for them, ten, fifteen or twenty years ago, or why we should not be determined to keep fighting until we have achieved success.

Comments

[AtlantaBill]

Ok Barney, now tell us what we should know about the positions taken by the clintons. Hopefully, you will have equally eloquent arguments against the war-mongering approach she has taken to prove herself as being tough. Both you and your sister are her supporters, so please defend her vote on the war and her present refusal to show the slighest bit of remorse for all the death and destruction that that vote helped enable GW to bring about. African-American like myself will not sit silently on the sidelines and let the hordes of clinton puppets proceed with the personal destruction that is being rolled out. And trust me, she will never be president because african-americans know a hatchet job when they see it and will move over to the other side of the aisle before they sit by silently as you people try to destroy Senator Obama. So go ahead and make the republicans day.

[bobh]

The problem, of course, is that the Republicans do want to refight these issues. They will not respect any mandate, and will try to destroy whoever wins on the Dem. side. Clinton appears to be better equipped to death with this inconvenient truth.

[rlappi]

I think Mr. Frank, and some of his supporters, have misinterpreted the very premise of Obama's statements. This probably has something to do with the vague nature of Obama's lofty speeches, but most likely Obama's words are being taken out of context, which seems to be the norm these days.
I don't know when Obama made the statement, but I think that, when referring "fights of the 90's," he was speaking about the idiotic soap operas we had to endure as a result of Clinton's sex life and the "liberties" he took with the truth, which directly fueled the bipartisanship that is rendering our country useless. Sorry, but even though I'm 28, I still feel "too old" for this crap again. I would honestly like to make it through life having experienced one president I can actually look up to. But i still have hope!
Funny though, that Frank can only refer to "issues" when referring to 90's politics. We never talk about principles, integrity, trust... you know, the things that would actually have a long term effect on the strength of the democratic party. Thankfully, Obama is rekindling those very ideas.

[Kane]

"I have from the beginning of this campaign believed that Hillary Clinton was the candidate best qualified to serve as President,” Rep. Frank said. “I am convinced that once elected, the qualities she will bring to the job - commitment, intellect, and political skills - will make her an extremely effective leader in our effort to reverse the badly flawed course on which George Bush and past Republican Congresses have set this country.

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=4182

[strangelet]

Congressman Frank: I share your annoyance about Senator Obama's dismissal of the "fights of the '90s". I'm sixty, and I've watched quite a few legislative fights. I was rather pleased that during the '90s the combination of active minority Democratic action and a Democratic President was able to blunt most of the ill effects of legislation propounded by the Republican Congress.

I was less pleased by the first six years of the Bush Administration, when a lot of the (excuse me) shit from the '90s became law.

Frankly, I have a lot of trouble taking seriously any Democrat who does NOT want to revisit the fights of the '90s (and '00s). I'll vote for the dude if he's nominated, but I sure hope he's lying about the "not refighting the '90s" part. We've taken some giant steps backward in the last few years; at a minimum, we need to step back up to where we were.

Cheers. I'd vote for you if I could, but I live in Cali.

[Jeffersonian1]

Congressman, please.

As a talented legislative tactician, you know very well there was a way to avoid many of those fights, especially the ones that had real potential to do harm.
Had our party not lost our majorities in the House and the Senate in 1994, we could have avoided many battles and a serious amount of lunacy.

Yet when Gingrich, DeLay and their little Dick Armey took control, they managed the legislative process to attempt, sometimes successfully, to reverse decades of social and economic progress, to keep Democrats on the defensive and to give aid and comfort to the forces of reaction in the country.

Why did we face 12 years of mostly rearguard actions simply attempting to prevent harm rather than being able to press a progressive agenda?

Well, Newt et al. didn't come to power by stealing the keys and taking up occupancy in the majority cloakroom in the dark of night. The Republican landslide of 1994 did occur for a reason or, as with any electoral sweep of such magnitude, several reasons.

Yet all of the studies and survey research that I've seen suggest that there was one paramount reason that voters so overwhelmingly flocked to the GOP that year: the perception that the Clinton administration was woefully inadequate and appeared to be incapable of governing effectively.

The prime contributing factor to that perception? The Hilary Clinton/Ira Magaziner health care reform proposal:

-- promulgated in what must be one of the oddest attempts ever to formulate public policy;

-- lobbied for in Congress and presented to the public ineffectively; and

-- abandoned with the administra­tion's/Mrs­. Clinton's unwillingness or inability to negotiate a deal that might not have had Magazineresque purity but still would have made a positive difference in the lives of millions.

Yes, Barney, we could have avoided a lot of the battles of the 1990's, most of which we seemed to lose or, at least, not win. Senator Clinton, however, would not have had such a full complement of that valuable experience she cites so frequently.

[Setsuled]

Very well said, Mr. Frank. I like Obama, but I think his strategy in this regard is incredibly cynical. Billing himself as a candidate for change, and vaguely referring to the old ways of bitter partisanship in Washington, I think is designed to court voters who aren't particularly knowledgeable when it comes to politics but have a dim notion that a lot of time is spent talking while nothing gets done--as if there were some other way to resolve differences in a deliberative body. I rather wish Obama gave the voters more credit.

[thedudeabides]

in the nineties, all there were were the center, right of center and way right of center...t­here was no left in the 90's... billy was surely no liberal...

[TheHandyman]

I have admired Barney Frank for a long time. He is everything I have ever thought a representative of the People should be. I agree with what he says but he can't eat his cake and have it too.

Barney, you can not take Obama to task for saying that he doesn't want to fight the battles of the ninties as if they were not worth fighting or they had been won unequivocally and and imply that somehow both parties were to blame for it. You then say that that it is unfair for the People to accuse you of not having fought as hard as you could have as a party. You accuse Obama of doing something that you then do yourself. If it is wrong for him, it is wrong for you.

As was also disappointed that you with held the fact you have endorsed Obama. Maybe if you made a cogent and equally damning statement about the incongruencies in Hillary's statements I would feel you were being fair and impartial rather than just attacking Obama for Hillary's sake.

Cont:

[plutorage]

Barney, I think there is a difference between the battles we fought during the divided government period of the 90's and the battle that will be fought in the coming campaign either a)featuring Hilary as a revanchist, with a democratic congress now behind her, who would vindicate the left of the 90's against a revived Gingrich right or b)featuring Obama who promises a coalition building effort that will include independents and even some republicans who like him, working for new ideas and putting the old conservatives behind us instead of holding them up as punching bags.

[Herrington]

Mr. Frank,

I'll allow Obama that we should not be refighting the battles of the nineties but only because they have not yet been resolved. And the reason they have not been resolved is the consumate gutlessness of the American people and their equally gutless elected representatives.

Everybody with enough sense to scratch his ass when it itches knows that we are in the same old fight, every day, all the time, year in and year out, with rich and powerful seeking more riches and power at the expense of the poor and powerless. It is the definition of history.

It is a testament to our civility and our stupidity that we let any of the myriad distrations of nationalism, patriotism, racism, genderism or sexual orientation distract us from the death struggle that is class warfare.

In the beginning, in the end, and at all times between, it is always about money. Whether you fight, negotiate, or give up, there is no end to the greed.

And it is the first nature of men to recognize and shun the evil of it, most of us being satisfied with the simple wealths of our families and professions. Yet greed continues to grow like a plague of weeds. Dig them up, poison them, burn them, and still they return.

This IS the fight, evermore and always, and if we do not fight it, all day every day, we will descend into the dark ages from which our great great grand children must claw their way out, only to fall again.

Because they too will have failed to meet the enemy, the few worst of us.

[ShanghaiGuy]

Bravo and thank you, Rep. Frank!

[AxelDC]

Face it, Barney, you lost in the 1990s. Clinton signed DOMA and "Don't Ask; Don't Tell". He sold you out, and paved the way for Bush-Cheney. Don't portray the 90s as the "Good Ole Days", because they are long gone.

The fights of the future will be over global warming, eliminating torture from America's arsenal, and preventing Pakistan from turning into a Taliban state. Clinton has no experience with any of those things, and failed because of her diviseness to deliver on Health care.

We don't want to refight the 1990s. We want to move into the 21st teens.

[Jeffersonian1]

I don't particularly mind that the good Congressman didn't disclose that he had endorsed Senator Clinton. It might have been appropriate, however, to note that his smart and talented sister is a member of Mrs. Clinton's staff.

[BillZBubb]

Thanks Rep. Frank for pointing out this serious problem with Obama's approach. It has been troubling me for some time as well.

The Republican party has moved so far to the reactionary right that to them the very thought of compromise is anathema. Many of Clinton's policies in the 1990's were moderate to slightly right, yet the right wing attacked him tooth and nail and never gave an inch unless backed into a corner.

A President Obama, with his apparently naive view of cooperation, would suffer a worse treatment than Clinton--and be far less successful.

There is the possibility that Obama knows this but also knows that a candidate running on a theme of "bipartisanship" has an advantage. Don't forget we had a guy elected president who ran as a "uniter". Of course that guy never had any intention of uniting.