We sang Bob Dylan and Joan Baez songs by the fire while downing whiskey, beer and even — in our youthful foolishness — sangria. If you couldn’t play the guitar, you were expected to chop wood.
Will, our bearded hippie host, had gone to college with me and now was a low-paid aide to liberal Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. I was a cub reporter at conservative newspaper Human Events.
“You and I,” Will said one night in mid-2001, leaning towards me as we sat on adjacent tree stumps, “we’re not so far apart.”
I laughed. “We couldn’t be further apart, Will. You’re almost a socialist, and I’m to the right of most Republicans.”
“Here’s how I look at it, Tim,” he refilled my bourbon. “I’m so far Left, and you’re so far Right, that we’ve fallen off the edges. We’ve been forced to walk the plank. And now we’ve met — under the boat.”
With far-left Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders entering the Democratic presidential contest, it’s a good time to recall that a lot of good meetings happen under the boat.
As conservatives on Capitol Hill fight to kill the Export-Import Bank, they have exactly one Democrat on their side — Sanders.
As liberals have led the charge to rein in the NSA, their congressional allies are not the left-most Republicans — no, moderate Lindsey Graham is their biggest enemy here. The Republicans most in agreement with the civil-liberties Left are the ones branded as extremists — Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Michigan Rep. Justin Amash.
Conservatives often hold Democrats in disdain proportionately to their left-ness. This is a mistake, in my view — it’s almost backwards.
For one thing, there’s the question of character. The far-left liberals are more likely than the centrists to be men and women of principle. Their principles may be mistaken, but they are more likely to do what they believe is right regardless of the political consequences.
Plenty of moderates in both parties are principled, too. But as a rule, the center is populated by opportunists, corporatists and political windsocks, unwilling to stand on principle lest they end up on the losing side.
K Street runs through the political center of American politics, and doesn’t have much intersection with the Left or Right edges. Check the rosters of the downtown D.C. lobbying firms, and you’ll see all the ex-congressmen and senators who were praised in their time as bipartisan centrist dealmakers: Evan Bayh, John Breaux, Bob Bennett, Bob Dole and Ben Nelson, just to name a few.
The Russ Feingolds and Tom Coburns of Washington don’t land on K Street.
Here’s a telling statistic about Sanders: He has been on Capitol Hill since 1991, but only six of his former staffers populate the “Revolving Door” database at OpenSecrets.org. By comparison, Hillary Clinton — who entered national politics 2 years later, and electoral politics 10 years later than Sanders — has 71 former aides in the database. Former Sens. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., each have 40 former aides on the Revolving Door list.
To come back under the boat for a minute, look at former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint — only 3 revolvers from his office, and only one of them is an actual corporate lobbyist. Retiring Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn’s office produced only eight revolvers in 16 years, while Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt’s House and Senate offices have produced more than twice as many in 18 years.
We shouldn’t pretend the differences under the boat don’t exist. Bernie Sanders’ idea of government’s role is atrociously large. His view of individual liberty — on economics, on guns, on religious freedom, political speech — is horribly constrained. The differences are huge and serious. But because there’s real principle there, real debate is possible.
When Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., died in a 2002 plane crash, Bob Novak was my boss. Novak, in his column after Wellstone’s death, lavished praise on the late progressive champion, who like me and Novak openly opposed the Iraq war. Wellstone was the only vulnerable Democrat in 2002 who voted no to the war resolution.
Novak told Wellstone he was his “ideal Democratic candidate,” Novak wrote in his column. “Wellstone shot back that I was looking for a loser.”
Maybe, on a subconscious level, I like Sanders and his kind because they aren’t as electable as the more centrist, more corporatist Democrats. But if Americans mean what we say about politicians — that we want them to be honest, to not be beholden to special interests, and to act on principle — then guys like Bernie Sanders, Tom Coburn and Mike Lee are the guys who deserve more power.
Who knows? From under the boat, maybe we could orchestrate a mutiny.
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Sunday and Wednesday on washingtonexaminer.com.
