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The Democrats’ Anxiety Joan Swirsky
For the current crop of Democratic presidential candidates, it was bad enough that last week the Dow surpassed 10,000. Fueling their anxiety even further is Saddam Hussein's capture Saturday by America’s heroic fighting forces. They barely managed to choke out words of "support" for the tyrant’s capture before they launched into their best advice: Now is the time to embrace the United Nations and countries like France, Germany, Russia and also "our friends" in the Arab world that all failed and continue to fail to support our efforts, either financially or militarily, to end the regime of the guy who was just pulled out of his rat hole. What a brilliant suggestion! Especially from people who claim Jewish ancestry but seem to have no problem with Saddam’s $35 million largesse to Palestinian homicide bombers, the virulent anti-Semitism flourishing in France, or the consistent and historical hostility of the United Nations to the state of Israel. It’s not pleasant to watch people suffering from anxiety. You see their angst and wish they’d see their doctors. But that’s not what the presidential wannabes – along with the unannounced candidate, Hillary Clinton – do. Rather, they rationalize their anxiety over the popularity of their arch-nemesis, President Bush, by propounding their quasi-ideological visions of a better day for our country when it returns to a highly taxed, poorly defended nation. In a recent interview with The Houston Chronicle, Sen. Clinton said that the president’s "radical" administration was attempting to undo the "central pillars of progress in our country during the 20th century." Surely, she suffers not only from anxiety about the future of her party – and her own and her husband’s monetary control over it – but also from amnesia, conveniently forgetting that her husband caved in to the career terrorist Yasir Arafat, emasculated our military, ran from Somalia and fought welfare reform until a Republican majority put poor people into business instead of onto government dependency. And that her own socialist health-care scheme was repudiated by every state in the union! The fact that President Bush has succeeded in achieving the first Medicare reforms in 50 years makes her the perfect candidate for any number of anti-anxiety medications. Also anxiety-ridden is Sen. John Kerry, who can’t understand why invoking his Vietnam days doesn’t give him credibility when he opposes the war in Iraq – which he voted to support and then changed his mind when his opponents gained on him. Poor Kerry, in a recent magazine article, devolved into using the "F" word toward the president. High anxiety here. Howard Dean appeared to be confident about becoming the presidential nominee, but his endorsement by Al Gore – who the Electoral College deemed the loser in the last election – revealed his own deep anxiety. Why else would he have solicited the endorsement of the one man on the planet who represents what this country is not about – i.e., allegiance to a flawed president, a loser to that man’s paltry legacy and an embracer of the people who no longer consider themselves "victims" of a bad system or an unresponsive government. Anxiety also fueled the candidates’ rush to claim their Jewish heritage –that is, before the press revealed what they’d been concealing for so long. Kerry, who passed himself off as Irish for years, says that his father was Jewish. Dean’s wife is Jewish, but he calls terrorists from Hamas "soldiers" and insists that America should not "take sides" in any war between terrorists and, say, a democratic state like Israel. Clark came out of the Jewish closet only this year, after years of camouflaging his roots. And the non-candidate Hillary claims that some distant relative-by-marriage is Jewish, hoping we’ll all forget that during her husband’s ignominious tenure she hosted any number of known terrorist groups in the White House and placed a hearty kiss on the cheek of Yasir Arafat's wife immediately after she had pronounced that Palestinian children were being poisoned by Israeli troops. At this point, it’s safe to say that every word from every Democratic candidate for president should be seen for what it is – an expression of terminal anxiety. They know they’ll be rejected by the American public if they embrace our enemies, as they’ve already done by questioning the rationale for getting rid of today’s version of Hitler or Stalin, and when they stick to their mantras – "bad economy, bad war" – they know they’re not credible, even to their left-wing supporters. So, what’s left for the lefties? Other than folding their tents (I suppose they’ll object to this expression on the grounds that it may offend a Bedouin here or there), about all they can do is, as Ann Landers used to say, "wake up and smell the coffee." This would require them to re-evaluate virtually everything they stand for: reductions in military spending, higher taxes, abortion on demand, unions – the list of last-century issues goes on and on. Other than that, it is certain that the hapless Democratic candidates face the anxiety of sleepless nights, obsessive ruminating, physical aches and pains or uncontrollable jitters. My advice to Dean and Kerry and Gephardt and Hillary et al.: Change your tune! If you can’t do that, see your doctors!
Joan Swirsky is a New-York-based journalist and author who can be reached at joansharon@aol.com.
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