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US Presidential Politics in 2004: Part I. Democrat Baggage

© Carey Goodman

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, not to the people". So states the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution. These twenty-eight words on three lines of text are not quoted often, but the Tenth Amendment is perhaps the most important component in the entire Bill of Rights. Those twenty-eight words contain the basis of the states' rights argument, the supreme protection of the legitimacy of state law, and the most vital check on the US federal government's authority. During the last half century the trend of US politics has been for strengthening at the federal level with less emphasis on the state level. As the 2004 election cycle approaches, those issues remain integral.

Forget the current opinion polls and the list of office contenders. Remember that sage advice of politics: Opposition parties do not win elections; governments lose them". Then grapple with this: The Democratic Party candidates should be as busy explaining their Clinton era politics as they will be explaining their views on current issues. In effect there is so much political baggage there that the Democrat campaign slogan probably should be: "We are not last year's Democratic Party".

'Tough on Crime?'

In 1993 Mr. Clinton introduced a crime bill that contained increased social spending to explore the "root causes of crime". This spending mostly funded "midnight basketball" programs for inner city The Democratic Congress passed the bill in the summer of 1994. But these "midnight basketball" games benefited political cartoonists more than they benefited any inner city community. Realizing this problem, by the 1994 election Mr. Clinton no longer used the words "midnight" and "basketball" together in the same sentence. The new mantra was "teenage curfews" which would apply to any unaccompanied youth under the age of eighteen.

The contradictions within these policies were best described in a political cartoon from the early summer of 1996. The cartoon shows a black youth and a police officer who attempts to arrest him. In the caption the youth tells the officer: "Hey man, I trusted you. First you tell me to play midnight basketball, and now you arrest me for breaking curfew".

Another cartoon makes the same point slightly differently. This one shows a teenager and two adults. The caption shows the teenager telling the adults: "Give me your wallets, and be quick about it. I have curfew in ten minutes".

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