The Ev and Jerry Show

There is a big to-do in Left Blogistan today.

It started with Glenn Greenwald, and was then picked up by Matt Stoller, by Digby, by TalkLeft  and the Booman Tribune. 

They caved again, they let Michael Hayden pass as head of the CIA, they again were McClellan and Bush once again was Robert E. Lee.

Well, apparently we need another history lesson. This one comes from Peggy Noonan, a conservative for whom I have a special fondness since she grew up (partly) in Massapequa, and like me was the child of a small businessman.

She is writing here of the 1960s, and of how Republicans in the House and Senate dealt with issues which, to the Goldwaterites, were just as frustrating to her as Democrats' attitudes on  the "War on Terra"  are to the Netroots:

What did the Republicans do all those days, from the 1930s through the '70s? They griped and wrung their hands and were alarmed. "This irresponsible spending and taxing will do us in," "You're taxing the genius and incentive right out of the economy!" Journalists heard it once a week every week Congress was in session in the 1950s and '60s, from Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen and House Minority Leader Gerald Ford. It was called the Ev and Jerry show. They banged away on high spending, high taxing, the unbalanced budget. "A million here, a million there and pretty soon you're talking real money," Dirksen famously said, and it was funny at the time because a million dollars was a lot of money.

This was the Goldwater Thesis. It was forged in opposition. It was, to many, a running gag. And not just to Democrats, but to many Republicans as well. (The picture? That's Jerry Ford, Ev Dirksen and other top Congressional Republicans watching the 1966 election returns. Courtesy the University of Texas. Ford is in the foreground, sitting on the floor.)

Most Republicans in the 1960s were leaning against the New Deal Coalition, the Thesis brought to America by FDR and brought to fruition by Harry Truman (who won the unwinnable 1948 election on it). Today Democrats are in the same position, leaning against the Reagan Coalition, first brought forth by Nixon and Wallace in 1968. Nearly 40 years ago.

Today's Democratic leaders have spent their entire careers leaning into the wind. Their only victories came in 1976 (Carter's close win due to Ford's pardon of Nixon) and in 1992 (Clinton's close win due to Perot's candidacy). Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, like Everett Dirksen and Jerry Ford, are reflexively, by temperament, part of the minority.

To expect such people to lead boldly, without power, and without the confidence a political Thesis grants, is to expect too much.

The Thesis is just being born. It's being born on the blogs mentioned, and has been a-borning for some time now.

It is the Open Source Thesis of compromise, of connectivity, of transparency. Power will not be granted this Thesis by anyone, not by Democrats and certainly not by Republicans.

The power must be seized.

And as our movement's Goldwater, Howard Dean, so famously observed, You Have the Power.