I'd have been a Republican.....

..if I had been active in politics in the 1850's. Those guys had all the progressive ideas and they had recruited the best guys from the Whigs, Democrats and "Know Nothings".

It's weird. Then we went through the industrial age and the democrats were the ones with new views about how Gov't could legitimately help people (To all those of you who have drunk deeply of the Fox/Rush Kool Aid: Yeah, I understand we could have a great polemic discussion about whether they were "right". Let's not. That's not my point here). That sort of pooped out in the seventies. Then Democrats came to stand for more decency in Gov't--probably, more accurately, less indecency. It was sort of "Vote for me because I'm not Nixon!".

Then the GOP got Newt and the Dems got the DLC. Democrats run for office trying to convince people they weren't really democrats. Republicans run for office on the premise that Gov't doesn't work then, once elected, set out to prove they were right (with apologies to P.J. O'Rourke for the paraphrase). That's pretty much where we are now.

Are the Democrats where the Whigs were in about 1854? Do they need to blow themselves up and and find an identity and a new set of unifying principles? It's close. Just for example, Tom Vilsak has been running for president for about a year. Great Guy, Compelling Story. But has he laid down a marker about how a Vilsak presidency would make us better? Has he said what the general approach to foreign policy in a Vilsak administration would be? Has he said how he'd deal with nuclear proliferation in Korea and Iran? Has he taken a position on tariffs for Human Rights/Environmental international outlaws like China? No. That's typical of my party right now. With no dream, we're just contrarians. We're doing the impossible. Making gasbags like Rick Santorum and Saxby Chambliss look like real leaders.

We will probably do pretty well in the Senate in '06. That will mask the problem I'm talking about here. There is danger in that. Like the Whigs, there is danger to the democrat party in fooling itself. Election tactics are no substitute for a National Strategy.

At the State Level, we control both houses of the General Assembly, and not without some skill in the leadership positions. Of course, we inherited crippling debt from "Build Illinois/Illinois FIRST" Republican giveaway programs which were designed to purchase votes from Illinoisans by using the citizens' own money and thereafter to have the citizens grandchildren pay for them. So we have no money and are in no danger of getting any time soon. Still, what is the "signature" of this legislative period? I can't discern an overriding principle. We just sort of show up and get by. Sure, everybody responds to the lobbyists. That is not a leadership principle. It's a constant, just background noise. To my friends who are lobbyists, it's not a personal criticism. You know better than anyone else I'm right.

Sure, Illinois is a blue state and that's all fine. Imagine how good the democrat party could be, statewide and nationwide, if we had a set of principles that could excite people and to which our legislative and chief executive candidates could commit. We'll keep having successes. That is more a measure of the quality of our opponents in the large races that our own skill or value. Still, if we don't state some goals that working mothers and IT workers and small businessmen can get their arms around, we run the risk of being the next Major Political party in U.S. history to "Whig" itself.

Long before it was a popular song, my Dad used to say "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything." He was talking about people but the same thing holds for institutions. My party doesn't have long to get this right.