The Democrats have only a short time to capitalise on their success in the US midterm elections and present themselves as a party able to lead as well as oppose. In their manifesto, "New Direction for America," released before the election, they committed themselves to a new domestic agenda—including raising the minimum wage and fixing the Medicare drug programme: measures with wide appeal. But the manifesto had little to say on the issue that still bedevils the Democrats: national security. "A New Direction" made only bland promises to "reclaim American leadership with a tough, smart plan to transform failed… policies in Iraq," muscular vows "to destroy Osama bin Laden" and vague plans to reduce dependence on foreign oil.
In the midterms, the voters' leanings on many economic issues combined with exasperation at Iraq to bring the Democrats success. Yet national security remains a Republican strength. Just before the election, voters gave Republicans a nearly 20-point advantage as the party better equipped to deal with national defence. And in 2008 the Democrats will no longer have George W Bush or, possibly, Iraq, to rally against. The Democrats do not lack for ideas, but if they are to rebuild a majority in the electorate, which has become increasingly conservative over the past two decades, they need a new political narrative that combines their liberal instincts with a broad national appeal.
On the left, Iraq has poisoned the entire war on terror, undermining the idea that the global projection of US power, including democracy promotion, can produce any good at all. One recent survey found that 60 per cent of liberals believed "America's power generally does more harm than good when we act abroad." Leftist publications like the Nation now lavish praise on conservative realist thinkers—and Bush administration critics—like former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft.
But the Democrats' left wing does not share the mainstream view on national security. Polls show that Americans across the political spectrum still consider terrorism the biggest threat to national security and, for that reason, want the US to remain active in world affairs. The left's answer has been not to rethink its national security ideology, but to back anti-war military veterans as candidates, who are supposed to share white, suburban cultural values while also carrying the left's anti-war message. These "fighting Dems" did poorly in the midterm elections.
If the left's national security strategy cannot convince the centrist voters whom the Democrats need, neither will chastened internationalism. There are several versions of "neo-realism" on offer, from people like reformed neoconservative Francis Fukuyama and centrist New America Foundation fellows such as Michael Lind, Anatol Lieven and Robert Wright. But they all agree that the US should not turn back the clock to pure, amoral Scowcroftian realism, in which America would make decisions on using its power out of national interest alone. Washington should remain internationally engaged, and might at times play a global humanitarian role. Yet the US should act as one nation among many—a leading light in a multipolar world. Lind argues (see Prospect, November 2006) that the US has not recognised some of the constraints on its foreign policy, like the rise of Asia and the power of ethnic nationalism, which threaten America's promotion of liberal democracy. Still, he does not advocate a withdrawal from the world: "A concert of great powers, organised and led by the US, offers the best hope for reconciling international peace with liberal order." Wright argues that in the wake of Iraq, "idealism has lost some of its lustre," and asks, "why let the rest of civilisation be a free rider [on US power]?" Why must the US always be a leader?
But for many Americans, realism, even when tempered by progressivism, connotes a kind of jaded European pragmatism. At the height of the unpopular Vietnam war, anti-war candidate George McGovern lost to Richard Nixon partly because the Republicans were able to portray him as standing against American virtue. Even in the midst of the Iraq debacle, one poll showed that more than 70 per cent of Americans believe moral principles should take priority in American foreign policy.
As the historian Walter McDougall writes in Promised Land, Crusader State, since America's founding, its people have seen their country as a "New Jerusalem" capable of transforming the world. Robert Kagan echoes these themes in his new book Dangerous Nation. From the beginning, Kagan argues, America was an expansionist power, constantly trying to spread its influence, first across the American land mass and then to the old world.
The Democrats must reclaim the most important narrative in US political history—that America is not one leader among many but an exceptional, moral and generous country that can inspire other nations. Europeans may cite examples of amoral or self-interested US foreign policy. But the exceptionalist narrative, drawing as it does on the country's founding utopian vision, resonates with Americans.
Democratic leaders like Wilson and FDR and "cold war liberals" like Reinhold Niebuhr once used this narrative to great effect. But as Peter Beinart chronicles in his book The Good Fight, since the 1960s, the increasingly secular and pluralistic Democratic party, uneasy with the idea of exceptionalism and wary of suggesting that all Americans share common values, abandoned the language of Wilson, Roosevelt and Harry Truman. And since the Iraq war, many Democrats have become even more wary of making claims about America's morals and ideals. Yet for the party to win again on national security, it will have to reacquaint itself with the idea of American virtue.
A Democratic exceptionalism would have two components: hard and soft. Hard exceptionalism implies rebuilding American military strength. The Democrats need to celebrate American military greatness while demonstrating how Bush has undermined it. To do so, they can offer several alternatives to Republican policies. While Bush argues that he has used all his powers to combat threats to America, he has gutted the department of homeland security. Democrats should restore funding for counterterrorism efforts in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and create a new domestic elite counterterrorism service. While Bush claims to value the US military, he has exhausted the army, which now has difficulty finding decent new recruits. The Democrats should propose an expansion of 200,000 soldiers.
None of this provides an answer to the Israel/Palestine conflict, nor the problem of Iran's possible nuclear programme, nor even when or how to withdraw from Iraq. But as the world has seen over the past two years, when the US no longer retains a credible military deterrent, actors from Iran to North Korea pursue policies that threaten their neighbours and the world. And when US military leadership wanes, the only alternative is UN or regional leadership—in crises ranging from Darfur to Lebanon to East Timor. UN and regional forces today are in a similar situation to the one they faced in the early 1990s: called into too many conflicts, overstretched and understaffed, and vulnerable to deadly ambushes (Congo) or unable to protect innocents (Lebanon, Darfur).
But in the Democratic worldview, hard exceptionalism should coexist with and reinforce soft exceptionalism. Just as the former can help to reassure Americans that the party will protect the nation's security, soft exceptionalism will address some of the root economic and social causes of global anger against the US. In exercising soft exceptionalism, the US can use its role as the indispensable nation to press other powers to promote development, democracy and equitable globalisation, so building America's own prestige and helping to guarantee its security.
President Bush does not understand the link. The White House's trade policies, for example, have been beholden to narrow domestic interests. A soft exceptionalist vision would offer economic hope to developing nations—through unilaterally eliminating US agricultural subsidies or offering the poorest nations duty-free access to American markets on a range of products. On immigration, this vision would combine tougher border security with incentives for illegal immigrants to become regularised. A Democratic energy policy would be based on a commitment to post-Kyoto climate talks and delivering new energy technology and innovation.
Finally, soft exceptionalism requires reclaiming democracy promotion from the Republicans. By linking the idea to Iraq, Republicans have created a backlash against groups in central Asia, the middle east and other regions that want to promote democracy. Iran is instructive here: by broadening the debate beyond the nuclear issue to Tehran's mistreatment of minorities, the Democrats can show how tough action against Iran fits a soft exceptionalist vision.
This vision must also be humble. In other words, the Democrats must position themselves as exceptional—moral and good—rather than exemplary. As Michael Signer notes, Bush promotes a kind of "vulgar exceptionalism" in which the White House refuses to make use of international institutions or apply to itself the standards it demands of Egypt or Iran. The idea of humility also resonates with Americans. From at least the time of Lincoln, American leaders have emphasised that the country's morality should be a humble one, that its role should be to make the world better without necessarily asking for specific rewards. Demonstrating that the US will again uphold the values it promotes abroad could be accomplished with a few high-profile actions, many of which would be popular at home. It could conduct open investigations of allegations of US abuse at secret prisons in eastern Europe, close the Guantánamo detention centre, and order a congressional investigation into how Guantánamo was created and operated.
One leading Democratic politician seems to understand exceptionalism: Barack Obama. And in a speech this summer, Senator Obama showed he was a man comfortable with the language of morals and values like no Democrat since Bill Clinton. Luckily for the Democrats, Obama could be their 2008 presidential nominee.
