It's My Party, Too: Whitman Gets Moderately Combative, Moderately Partisan
Written: Mar 17 '05 (Updated Nov 25 '08)
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Pros: interesting tale of a strong and sometimes sensible woman
Cons: doesn't kick butt, doesn't name names
The Bottom Line: Christine Todd Whitman's first pass at announcing her Presidential campaign is really pretty average political fare; too often partisan where honesty is needed.
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| scmrak's Full Review: It's My Party Too Magazine |
It probably comes as no surprise that some people are convinced that the Republican Party has been co-opted by a coalition of right-wing groups, an alliance many believe dominated by religious fundamentalists. After all, there's been plenty of hand-wringing about the GOP's rightward shift in the halls of the ACLU, AFL-CIO, NEA, and NOW for well over a decade. It might, however, come as a surprise to find that this same shift alarms people closer to the center - and it's especially surprising to learn that they're on the right side of the political spectrum. There are those who voice concern, however - and one of those voices is Christine Todd Whitman (former New Jersey Governor and W's first chief of the EPA). Whitman has most recently spoken out in her 2005 book, It's My Party Too: The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America.
Christine Todd Whitman has had, one might say, impeccable Republican credentials from the get-go: after all, her parents first met at the 1932 Republican convention. Whitman herself has attended every convention since 1956, when she was only nine years old, and has tirelessly worked for the GOP since graduating from college in 1969. Her first boss, in fact, was Donald Rumsfeld, in Nixon's Office of Economic Opportunity. She broke into elected office in local elections in New Jersey, first running for statewide office against incumbent Democratic Senator Bill Bradley in 1990, losing a surprisingly tight race. She was elected governor in 1993, defeating the incumbent Jim Florio - the first woman governor of New Jersey, the first candidate to defeat an incumbent governor in modern New Jersey politics, and the first Republican elected to statewide office in decades. She was tagged by George W. Bush to head the Environmental Protection Agency in 2001, a position she resigned in 2003.
Whitman, one might say, seems to have the chops...
Her book shakes out into seven chapters wherein Whitman details her political philosophy, peppering it with anecdotes culled from her years in office and her life growing up in a "red" household in a "blue" state. She comes out swinging in "Does Right Make Might?", complaining that a small but vocal minority of "social fundamentalists" has seized control of the party she loves. According to Whitman, these ultraconservatives control the party platform and have been known mount primary challenges against their more moderate brethren, well-known Republicans such as Senators Olympia Snowe (ME) and Arlen Specter (PA). Her dire prediction is that dragging her party to the extremes will alienate the centrists that make up most of the country, and the Democrats will seize control in much the same way that Reagan Democrats began the shift in power a generation ago.
In "Whatever Happened to the Big Umbrella?" Whitman spins the life and times of a Jersey Girl growing up Republican - her parents were longtime party activists who knew Rockefeller and Goldwater, and Christine was involved in the party from an early age. Major changes in the party, she opines, date back to the Goldwater era, when the party splintered into moderates and ultraconservatives. Now, she believes, a minority wing of the party imposes social-issue litmus tests on candidates, sarcastically calling those who (like Whitman) are "too moderate" RINOs - Republicans In Name Only. The big umbrella (or tent, or whatever) seems to have precious little room for moderates these days - and that space keeps on shrinking.
"The Party Within the Party," as Whitman calls it, is the social fundamentalist wing. In particular, the inner circle is concerned with overturning Roe v. Wade, but it has other agenda items as well, including a Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage. As a pro-choice Republican, Whitman has suffered much abuse at the hands of this wing of the party. Says she, however, it is those Republicans who have forgotten their party's fervent belief in reducing government's intrusion into the private lives of its citizens.
For some forty years, the African-American vote has pretty much belonged to the Democratic Party; a sea change that came about with Civil Rights legislation. Fifty years ago no white southerner would consider voting for a Republican and no black southerner (those who could vote) would consider voting against Lincoln's party. Now's the time, Whitman believes, for "Reclaiming Lincoln's Legacy."
Whitman grew up on a farm (sort of), and expresses a deep love for the land. In "This Land Is Our Land," she details the history of the Republican party and Conservation, from TR's establishment of the National Park System through the Nixon-era Clean Air Act (1972) to the Brownfields Revitalization Act of Bush I. As Whitman would have it, Republicans are the true stewards of the Earth and Democrats are just hangers-on.
"A Woman In the Party" details Whitman's experiences as a groundbreaking, glass-ceiling-busting Republican woman. She notes that she's always dismayed that so few women are elected to statewide office and that those who are elected are predominantly Democrats.
She concludes with a call to action for moderate Republicans in "A Time for Radical Moderates," and repeats her dire warning that the excesses of the social fundamentalists are taking their toll on the GOP. It's become harder to work within one's own party, and well-nigh impossible to work across the aisles. Whitman still has plenty of things she believes need to be done - lower taxes, reduce spending, and other conservative political icons.
So what's it all about, Christie? In truth, Whitman's text is about three-quarters stump speech for the Presidential campaign she will undoubtedly mount in 2008. It's a means of making her views - especially those core views that might keep Reagan Democrats interested in the GOP - known to the national electorate. She's moderate on social issues, more centrist than the average Republican on the environment, and just as staunch a conservative on the rest of the issues: Law and Order, Taxes, Deficits...
One of Whitman's failings is her delicacy when it comes to naming names. She's quite good at calling out Democrats and liberal causes, but often develops amnesia when discussing Republicans who commit equally egregious sins. Take for instance this pair of passages from her section on the environment:
"...The harsh assessment of the [Republican] party's record and stand on the environment is due in part to the ridiculously extreme rhetoric used by all sides in what passes for debate on environmental issues these days. Environmental groups in particular have attacked the Republican Party in ways that would be ruled out of order in any schoolyard in America. The once reasonable National Wildlife Federation wasted no time in demanding, less than three moths after he took office, that President Bush 'End [His] War on the Environment.' The Natural Resources Defense Council claimed that 'This administration, in catering to industries that put America's health and natural heritage at risk, threaten to do more damage to our environmental protections than any other in U. S. history.' The Sierra Club's bias is reflected in where they make their campaign contributions: They gave nearly five hundred thousand dollars to Democratic House and Senate Candidates in 2002 and less than twenty thousand dollars to Republican candidates. Is it any wonder Republicans find groups like these difficult to work with? Rhetoric like theirs is counterproductive - it gets in the way of constructive policy making."
Note that she specifically names three well-known environmental organizations - organizations that are relatively moderate, in fact. Contrast this with her forgetfulness in the subsequent paragraph:
"On the other hand, the rhetoric thrown around by many prominent Republicans certainly hasn't helped either. When the Republican chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee calls EPA's career staff - a group of people I found to be dedicated, intelligent public servants - 'a Gestapo bureaucracy'; or when the vice president remarked, shortly after being named to chair the President's Energy Task Force, 'Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy'; or when the Senate Republican leader defends the wasteful use of oil as a 'right' - it's no wonder why so many people today feel they have reason to doubt the party's commitment to the environment."
Since Whitman apparently forgot who those three prominent Republicans were, I'll tell you. In order, they were James Inhofe (R-OK), V. P. Dick Cheney, and Trent Lott (R-MS).
In short, Whitman spends about as much time reminding people that she's not some nasty liberal Democrat as she does talking about the dangers of far-right co-option of the GOP. Though she has an occasional kind word for a conservative Republican (e.g., Rick Santorum, R-PA), she almost never has one for any Democrat - the closest she comes to doing so is repeating Bill Clinton's mantra about abortion: "Let's keep it safe, legal, and rare." On the issues not covered here, Whitman is pretty much silent or doesn't say much. She gives lukewarm support to completing Bush II's task in Iraq while opining that we should have finished in Afghanistan first (in about as many words as I've used here). She says nothing about the unholy power of the NRA in her party, and very little about her ideas for social programs and education - except that she seems to like "No Child Left Behind." On most everything else, she's mum.
Mark my words, however, she'll announce in 2006...
Recommended:
Yes
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