The Democrats' V-Word

by David Corn

July 07, 2004

The rhetoric of values (and the self-serving speech references to God and country) has become par for the Republican—and Democratic—campaign course. But values are essentially what is contested in elections, and November 2004 will be no different. It's imperative, David Corn says, that John Kerry uses the values card when campaigning, and explain his positions in terms that appeal to Americans' sensibilities. Because, in the end, it's all in walking the walk—and the Democrats better get walking.

David Corn writes the Loyal Opposition twice a month for TomPaine.com. Corn is also the Washington editor of The Nation and is the author of The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers).

The New York Times had a page-one newsbreaker over the July 4th weekend. John Kerry, it seems, has been talking about “values.” The presumptive Democratic nominee had told an audience at a conference of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, “In the end it’s about values.” What’s more, the paper reported, Kerry had days before that “used the V-word no fewer than eight times” in a speech to Hispanic leaders.

Times correspondent Jodi Wilgoren was doing what political journalists love to do: pronouncing the discovery of a strategic shift. Kerry, she noted, was “increasingly adopting a traditionally Republican refrain to give his campaign—and himself—grounding and context in broad moral terms.” Her story had an impact—at least at Bush HQ. The day this article appeared, Vice President Dick Cheney felt compelled to declare that Kerry was “out of the mainstream and out of touch with the conservative values of the heartland.” But while it is true that GOPers have ceaselessly tried to wrap themselves in God and the flag—how many flag factories did Bush the Elder visit during the 1988 campaign?—the formulation deployed by Wilgoren buys into biased assumptions about values and the political parties.

Democrats have long talked about values. What were Jackson’s 1984 and 1988 campaigns about? (And don’t say, “just himself.”) He spoke eloquently about the plight of the underclass and urged Americans to recognize the hard work and the needs of those who change the bedpans at hospitals, who tend to the children of working parents, who work their fingers to the bone in chicken processing warehouses. Was that not about values? The late Sen. Paul Wellstone, an impassioned progressive, wrote on the first page of The Conscience of a Liberal, “To me the most important goal is to live a life consistent with the values I hold dear and to act on what I believe.”  During the primary contest, Sen. John Edwards, the Democrats’ new number two, decried the existence of two Americas—one for the privileged, one for the rest. Howard Dean called for injecting honesty and integrity into government. Are those not values? And Kerry talked—endlessly—about duty and service to the country, as he emphasized his Vietnam War record. He has also called for more effective stewardship of the environment, increased wages to assist the working poor, and a massive program to provide health insurance to those who lack ready access to medical care. Is not all of this values-driven?

When Wilgoren notes Kerry has been yapping about “values,” what she means is that he has—in her estimation—been speaking about values in a traditional sense. That is, sprinkling “God bless” into his public remarks. This is a limited definition of values. And Kerry’s “shift,” she observed, follows the example of Bill Clinton. But Clinton played a different sort of values politics. Adopting the rhetorical devices of a country minister, Clinton did try to exploit whatever Bubbaland cultural conservatism he could get away with. (Pollster/consultant Dick Morris famously noted that there was a Saturday evening Bill and a Sunday morning Bill.)  But in policy terms, Clinton mostly signaled his so-called values by proclaiming his support for welfare reform and capital punishment and other tough-on-crime measures. He adopted proposals favored by the right to show he was in sync with the supposed “values” of America.

But who is to say what the “values” of this nation are? That is what is contested in elections. In 2000, George W. Bush talked about “restoring” honesty and integrity to the White House. (Please, no guffaws.) Al Gore said he was going to “fight for you” against the powerful special interests that can corrupt government. (Again, no snickers.) More Americans voted for Gore. So are populist values the values of America? In his blast at Kerry, Cheney cited Kerry’s opposition to legislation to outlaw flag burning and late-term abortions as proof Kerry was divorced from American values. But in recent years the Supreme Court—hardly an outpost of anti-American nihilism—has overturned efforts to criminalize flag burning and late-term abortions.

Values extend far beyond Hallmarkian expressions of religion and patriotism. What values propel Halliburton, the company Cheney once headed, when it overcharges U.S. taxpayers tens of millions of dollars for services and supplies it does not provide? (Last week, NBC News, quoting Halliburton whistleblowers, reported that Halliburton was engaged in massive scamming.) What values influenced Cheney when he repeatedly dissembled about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the war? What values was he putting into practice when he cursed out a U.S. senator and then defiantly refused to apologize? (He must have forgotten his 2000 campaign pledge to “restore a tone of civility and decency to the debate in Washington.”)

Values are a tricky business in politics. The right cites “family values” when it obsesses over same-sex marriages. But its concern for the values of family does not lead it to support full funding of Head Start. In many polls, Bush scores poorly when asked whether he cares about the problems of “people like you.” That certainly is one measure of his values. If a politician is more attuned to the needs of HMOs than those of consumers, that indeed reflects his or her values. In the 1980s, the CIA, following the commands of the Reagan-Bush White House, worked with suspected drug runners in supporting the contras fighting the socialistic government of Nicaragua. One U.S. senator, despite harsh opposition from the White House and his own party, had the guts to mount an investigation of the connection between drug traffickers and the CIA-backed rebels. That was John Kerry. (This chapter in Kerry’s life story was something of an Oliver Stone-meets-Frank Capra episode.) Who demonstrated stronger allegiance to “American values”? The situational ethicists of the Reagan White House or the outraged senator from Massachusetts? (In another demonstration of his values, Kerry investigated the corrupt BCCI bank—a financial haven for international crooks, terrorists and intelligence services, including the CIA—even though this inquiry targeted and embarrassed prominent members of his own party.)

Today, Kerry is scheduled to deliver a speech entitled, “Restoring America’s Values to the White House.” But with or without the V-word taking center stage, values are at the heart of this election (as is usually the case). It is not only right for Democrats—progressive or otherwise—to promote, defend and explain their positions with appeals to values. It is imperative that they do so. Republicans have no monopoly on values. Yet they have done a good job of defining values on superficial terms favorable to them, and they have hornswoggled much of the media into accepting their facile definition. There’s more to values than self-serving references to God and country. If Kerry, Edwards and other Democrats can demonstrate that effectively, they will be closer to victory.