Democrats Lose as Democracy Wins

Democrats Lose as Democracy Wins

John L. Perry
Tuesday, March 8, 2005

Having prophesied woe and disaster abroad, the loudest calamity-criers within the Democratic Party leadership are now caught in a contortionist's pretzel of their own manufacture.

These are their options:

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Acknowledge and join in celebrating the very policies of President Bush they so recently scorned and condemned with such certitude.

Or find fresh barnyard excrement to throw at each successive success of the president's foreign policy.

The latter option is their natural inclination. What else when they've no foreign policy of their own to offer that won't bring down guffaws from the balconies? But they don't really dare go there.

There's no in-between room for them to stand, without slipping and falling in their own muck. So they have to choose.

Our Lady of Triangulation

Hillary Clinton was the first among them to smell disaster in the wind. She dusted off sort-of-husband Bill's sextant and began steering a course several degrees starboard. Oops, too far! Then larboard just a tad. Then starboard again. It's enough to make a lady a little sea barf-ish.

Her gyrations were noted by her natural leftist loonies with dyspeptic dismay and by the saner inmates with drop-jaw disbelief. Nothing old, it would seem, is new again in the Democratic asylum.

It's got to gall the Democratic left no end to witness all that's going so well abroad since George W. Bush's second inauguration and, under Condoleezza Rice, the return of adult supervision in Foggy Bottom.

Before the unprepared, leftist news media could take measures to thwart her with their usual libel, the new secretary of state had charmed Old Europe by her relentless tour of its capitals.

Within a matter of weeks after the liberation of Iraq, the Iraqis were taking control of their own country – of all things! – the first time ever via authentic elections.

With Yasser Arafat at last officially pushing up daisies, the Palestinians decided, why not, to give honest elections a try. How else sit as equals at the peace table with the Israelis?

Observing those horror shows next door, the Iranians began muttering concessions about foreswearing nuclear weapons. No one believes them, but Tehran began to get the point.

This was made a little more clear to them by France and Germany and, on the sly, by Russia after Bush talked a little Texas to them on his own European tour, with Condi at his right hand just to show he meant business.

The boss of Egypt, who could see himself left standing on the corner selling pencils, announced it might be dandy to try a few free elections there, too.

Even the Saudis took what was for them a giant step in the general, awkward direction of actual elections – men only, of course, but at least they wear skirts.

Feeling unnoticed lately and a little on the lonely side, the nut case in North Korea decided he wanted to play six-hand poker after all.

Meanwhile, in the background was the eye-popping example in Ukraine of just plain folks not taking nyet for an answer and getting their own for-real elections and their own elected president.

That was all it took for the long-suffering Lebanese, who have been used for decades as a doormat by Syria. They, too, committed democracy in public.

Get out of Dodge, Bush told the geek of Damascus who can't seem to find his right shirt-collar size. That reminds him, said geek, he'd been meaning to move his occupying soldiers closer to the Dodge city limits. Not good enough, Bush said. All the way out, and their secret-police goons with them. And now. Not in the next movie.

To be continued ....

But you get the picture, even if Howard Dean, Teddy Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi and what's the guy's name from Nevada still don't get it.

The picture is that something's shaking, something big. And it's all to the good. Democracy, or at least a first sip of the elixir, is blowing in the wind across the sands of Old Islam and assorted outposts of tyranny.

Those in this country (see the usual suspects identified above) who predicted calamity, quagmire, disaster, defeat and all those good things they were in their heart-of-hearts hoping like hell would happen were suddenly reaching down around their ankles for their underwear.

Where'd He Come From?

Just the opposite from ruination is taking place. And every kid on the block knows who the new kid on the block is who made it all start to happen: George did it. Along with some fine young men and women in uniform, not all of whom would return.

If he's not careful, George W. Bush is going to go down in history as the Abe Lincoln of the Muslim Street. What he has set off is nothing short of the beginnings of an Islam-wide demand for democracy. Who would have thought?

This is the cruelest cut of all to what's left of the Democratic Party. Wasn't it supposed to be the historic chalice of all revolutionary movements? Except of course for the Civil War and the early civil-rights movement, where old times there are not forgotten.

No Wonder They're Sour

How dare a Republican – George W. Bush of all Republicans! – snatch their rightful place in history away from them like this?

This leaves them with only two possible roles: Join Bush in the revolution of enslaved peoples or become reactionary counter-revolutionaries, hell-bent on rolling back the tide of history.

They probably feel like frustrated kids at summer camp being told: "Clean minds, clean bodies ... take your pick."

Left Holding the Snipe Bag

In what must seem to Bush-haters here at home as a gross sell-out, Old Europe's press – the very same Henny-Pennys who said the sky would fall if the United States set foot in Iraq – are now beginning to write, not always with good grace, naturally, that ... gulp ... maybe the cowboy had it right all along. Copycats in the American leftist media are dutifully copying.

Yes, the cowboy did have it right. And he still does.

Bush has got it. His home-country haters still don't got it.

What ain't they got? They ain't got squat.

Poor babies, rotating over and over on the spit of their own impalement.

John L. Perry, a prize-winning newspaper editor and writer who served on White House staffs of two presidents, is a regular columnist for NewsMax.com.

Read John Perry's columns here.

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