In the late 60s and early 70s, there were more Progressives among The Democratic Party’s collection of presidential candidates than among that of The Republican Party.
Bobby Kennedy was thought to be a Progressive, but a tragedy stilled his opportunity to prove that one way or another.
Eugene McCarthy was to that time period what Dennis Kucinich is to today, a candidate for a nomination that he, his supporters and everyone else who’s paying any attention at all realizes he will never win.
George McGovern, one of the Progressives during that time, actually won the nomination, but, if I remember correctly, received the support of 1/50th of the states in the general election.
Even John Kennedy, who said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”, threatened the world with the ultimate devastation because a neighboring nation had the gall to decide that it would arm itself with a small number of the kinds of weapons possessed by the US en masse. What an irony if The Soviet Union did not back down.
And the “Ask not…” statement; was he telling all Americans not to ask for help in spite of the fact that they, through no fault of their own, may have needed help? Was that famous statement a statement of Libertarianism on some level?
I certainly don’t have the answer in either of the above cases. However, JFK is thought by many to have been a Progressive president.
Add to this that the largest step in the Civil Rights movement happened under a Republican president. No, Lincoln was not the Caucasian version of Martin Luther King Jr. We know that freeing the slaves was not Lincoln’s main reason for initiating The Civil War. Yet, without The Emancipation Proclamation, the progress of The Civil Rights Movement would have been held back by a number of years.
The greatest progress in keeping corporations in check took place under Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican president, and Title IX which gave women’s collegiate sports the same importance as men’s collegiate sports was passed during the Nixon administration. This begs the question, “Whence did the myth that The Democratic Party is the party of the people come?”
One place it came from was the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. What he did for Americans, with the exception of Americans of color, was more populist than what any other president did before him or has done since. FDR was no pacifist, however.
Do I think that The Republican Party is more progressive than The Democratic Party? Not in a million years.
What I believe is that there’s not “a dime’s worth of difference between” The Republicans and The Democrats. I’ve received some very “strong disagreement” when I’ve previously written that statement, but there is no way that it can be proved that Clinton or Obama will be a progressive president. In fact, based on their slick, weaselly approach to questions concerning Iraq, either Clinton or Obama could keep us in Iraq for 100 years. McCain’s just been more honest about being unethical.
In truth, Republican candidates admit that they’re dicks during their campaigns while Democrats speak like Progressives but turn out to be dicks once they’re elected. Witness the consequences of the 2006 elections.
In many of my articles, I reference the person who I believe is the very best radio talk show host that I’ve ever heard and I still listen to him daily. I’m not sure that I agree with his rendition of the difference between Conservatives and Progressives.
Thom Hartmann has said on many occasions that the difference between Progressives and Conservatives is that Conservatives believe that people are innately evil and Progressives believe people are innately good.
Yet, Conservatives, especially Libertarians, claim that people should be trusted to do the right things. They claim that, without regulations, people and corporations will increase employment in the US, will do their best, through competition, to satisfy the customer, that pharmaceutical companies will find cures for everything because their profitability will depend on it. Naïve claims, at best.
