COMMENTARY / EXCERPTS : In ‘88, Victory Will Be Thrill Enough

Like drunks deciding to go on a last bender before going on the wagon, Democrats in Atlanta divided their time between praising sobriety and drinking their favorite brand of demon rum, old liberalism. Finally they put themselves in the care of a temperance preacher, Michael Dukakis.

The Democrats have had two conventions. Now the country has the task of deciding which one represented the real Democratic Party: the convention that ended Tuesday, or the one that ended Thursday.

Four years ago the crescendo of the Democratic National Convention came early, in Mario Cuomo’s keynote philippic. He pleased the hall full of Democrats by intimating that Democrats had cornered the market on morality--not merely on prudence or imagination or competence. His was the voice of the virtucrat, saying: If you disagree with us you are not merely mistaken, you are morally obtuse and not nice. Dukakis’ is the voice of a man who is frequently faulted for lack of passion, but at least he lacks the passion of moral pride. He may have intellectual hubris, but not the especially insulting vanity of the virtucrat.

George McGovern, recollecting in tranquility the turbulence of the Democratic Party 16 years ago, recently said that a mistake of the anti-war movement was in calling the Vietnam War “immoral,” not merely imprudent or disproportionate or otherwise mistaken. This, McGovern now says, told people: If you disagree with us, you are immoral.

The two conventions here, recollected in tranquility, will pose this question: Which one--the one celebrating compassion liberalism or the one anointing the spokesman for competence liberalism--did the Democrats really mean?