Moving Toward the Middle

The trouble with the Democratic Party is that to many voters its national leadership appears to be no more than a collection of shrill special-interest groups. Just look at the way the Democratic National Committee has not merely tolerated but officially recognized seven different caucuses, representing business, women, blacks, Hispanics, Asian-Pacific delegates, “liberal- progressives” and even homosexuals.

That, at least, is the bitter complaint of some of the party’s prominent elected officials. Their solution? To form another caucus, of course, this one composed primarily of Southern and Western white males and operating outside, if not in opposition to, the National Committee.

To be sure, that is not the official logic of the Governors, Senators and Representatives who have organized the Democratic Leadership Council. Their stated purpose “is to move the party back to the middle,” in the words of Florida Senator Lawton Chiles, by developing centrist policy positions. In their view the party must shed its ultraliberal, antibusiness, soft-on-defense image if it is ever to win back the voters who have been defecting and, in particular, if it is to enter future presidential elections without almost automatically forfeiting the electoral votes of Southern and Western states. To accomplish that, say council promoters, requires an organized group arguing within the party for positions favoring economic growth, a strong defense and a tough stance against crime.

One Democratic congressional staffer sympathetic to the council candidly calls it “an anticaucus caucus.” Many Democratic leaders sneer that the group is trying to cure the party’s excessive factionalism by introducing still more factionalism. “You can’t rebuild something that is split by splitting it further,” says an official of the AFL-CIO, which suspects that the council is out to reduce labor’s influence in the party. South Carolina Senator Ernest Hollings calls the group “divisive and harmful.” Others suspect that the council is likely to become a vehicle for the 1988 presidential ambitions of some of its founders, notably Virginia Governor Charles Robb and Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt.

The criticisms have been accompanied by some blunt pressure. AFL-CIO officials warned that the labor federation might reduce its support of Democratic congressional candidates if the council was formed. Later, the 28- member California Democratic House delegation caucused and, says a participant, “virtually ordered” California Congressman Tony Coelho, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, to stay out of the group.

Coelho complied, and he was far from the only dropout. Though the council had counted more than 40 elected officials as potential participants at the start of last week, only 23 would let their names be included in a formal list of members that the group issued a few days later. At week’s end Robb, Jim Blanchard of Michigan, and Bruce Babbitt of Arizona were the only Governors remaining of ten whose names had appeared on preliminary lists (among the dropouts: Bob Graham of Florida, Bill Clinton of Arkansas, Richard Lamm of Colorado). Ohio Congresswoman Mary Rose Oakar announced that she would have nothing to do with the council, even though it had listed her as a member. Her defection left the council with no female members, a fact noted caustically by Connecticut Congresswoman Barbara Kennelly. Said she: “Forget it, gentlemen. I refuse to take it seriously.”

The council nonetheless has to be taken seriously. It still includes such party powers as House Majority Leader Jim Wright, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin and Georgia Senator Sam Nunn, an influential voice on military policy. Even two blacks, House Budget Committee Chairman William Gray of Pennsylvania and Missouri Congressman Alan Wheat, have joined. Their presence indicates that discontent with what is often regarded as weak and divided leadership by the National Committee has spread far beyond the ranks of Sunbelt whites.

But it is Sunbelt centrists who feel the greatest need for change; right now, they dare not identify themselves with the national party image. One example: in a number of states, popular Democratic Governors would seem to have the best chance of defeating Republican Senators who will be running for re-election in 1986, but the Governors are reluctant to try. Fred DuVal, an adviser to Arizona’s Babbitt, explains that a Governor can present himself to voters as being independent, but “when you run for the Senate you can count on losing eight to ten points (in popularity) just because you become identified with the national party.” Chiles asserts bluntly that he won three Senate races in Florida only because “I ran away from the party.”

Liberals retort that the council is all too likely to give its members a vehicle to continue running away from the party. They fear the council will undercut the efforts of Paul Kirk, who was elected National Committee Chairman last month, to unify the Democrats. Kirk has made no secret of his desire eventually to disband the caucuses on the National Committee. As a first step, he intends to sit down with the caucus leaders soon and urge them to tone down the particular demands of their groups.

Now that the council has been formed, its leaders and the National Committee are making the appropriate public noises about cooperating. “We will be very supportive,” says Gephardt; indeed, according to Robb, the council has + reserved an ex officio seat for Kirk should he care to join. Kirk for his part promises to put Gephardt and Babbitt on a policy council that he intends to form within the National Committee. Even so, the Democrats would be left with two bodies seeking to set policy and arguing about how to unify the party. In other words, they are acting like Democrats.