Can Democracy exist without Capatalism/Free market economy?
David Brooks does not think so......
(DAVID BROOKS: I covered the end of the Soviet Union and the beginning of Russia. That was different obviously, but it was totalitarian and this is totalitarian. There is no easy road from here to there. There is just none because people don't have political habits. They don't have a sense of property. They have been living their lives without any sense of that this is property -- of rule of law that there is a legitimate rule of law and I should obey the law the walk lights. That's all gone. )
Shields & Brooks Transcript http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/political_wrap/jan-june03/sb_4-11.html
JIM LEHRER: A pure politics question, the political pundits have been saying since the fall of Baghdad, and they've had three days to say this now, that any Democratic presidential candidate who voted wrong or who was on the wrong side, in other words, any peace candidate is toast as a result of this. Do you agree? You're a pundit. Both of you guys are qualified.
DAVID BROOKS: I'm three days behind. I'm not sure. I really am not sure because it could go terribly in which case Sean Penn will be president. JIM LEHRER: Let me write that down.
DAVID BROOKS: The problem the Democratic Party has is that 80 percent roughly approve the war, 17 percent disapprove of the war, and the core of the Democratic party is that 17 percent. You can't win elections with 17 percent. And the problem is not so much how things are going to look in 2004, who knows. The problem is there's a fundamental divide in the Democratic Party between the activists and the majority. 62 percent of registered Democrats support the war but when Edwards, Gephardt, Lieberman go out and speak, they're heckled by the core who oppose. And that's a divide over America's role in the world that is a fundamental divide in the party that somebody has got to solve.
JIM LEHRER: Mark.
MARK SHIELDS: Jim, I think that first of all this is not 1991. 1991 the argument that was used against, by Democrats opposing that war was that the body bags, the thousands of body bags that would come back. That didn't materialize in the war in 1991. And therefore could you say they were wrong. Democrats did win the presidency in 1992 over the president who had presided over that victory...
JIM LEHRER: To remind people, that was Bill Clinton defeated George Bush.
MARK SHIELDS: George Bush. That's right. This time, the criticism of the Democrats, the opposition was based upon what I considered to be two factors. The first was the diplomatic botching by the administration, which they faulted the fact, the isolation ended up acting unilaterally. And second it was the sense of what the implications would be, what the fallout would be both regionally and globally and internationally and what the consequences of our act would be? If it would unleash terrorism and things of this sort. In both cases, I think those are open to criticism and we don't know the answer yet.
JIM LEHRER: They're not toast, not yet - too early. You two pundits say the other pundits are wrong.
DAVID BROOKS: We will be talking for the next two years about how untoast they are.
JIM LEHRER: And we're just going to leave it there.
9:09:28 AM 
|
|
