A Democratic Revival?

I remember a time when the Democratic Party stood for a future of hope and optimism. What distinguished it from its Republican rival was an energetic belief that regardless of the difficulty of any challenge before us, as a united people, we would find a way to conquer it.

This was the Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy. But since then, the Democrats seemingly have found hope an inconvenient impediment to a series of far more technocratic concerns. Arguably, the Democrats lost their hopes around the time that Johnson publicly and emphatically refused to run in 1968. With that decision, even their own leader, the President of the United States, seemed too tired of life to promote the interests of progress. And so there was a sense of deflation, as if air were released from a balloon. In inflationary times, this was doubly vexing.

When Nixon beat Humphrey, it was only the beginning of a long decline for the Democrats on the national level.

Skipping over the obvious case of Carter, whose malaise-ridden legacy ended appropriately enough with a fiasco in a desert both literal and figurative, the next and most recent Democratic President tried to recapture the bright sense of a better future -- even the campaign theme song spoke of a tomorrow that would "soon be here". But his two Presidential terms, too, ended in a degree of failure.

So, what is to be learned from this thumbnail history of America's "other party"?

The lesson is obvious: Avoid malaise. Avoid negativism. Avoid criticism for its own sake.

Present a hopeful tomorrow for the people to consider. Give the people what they want.

Ronald Reagan, a Republican who was once a Democrat, knew what the Democrats have forgotten: It is far better to lead with hope, than with despair.