Connecticut Post: Fear and Courage "A Call to Arms"

Yale grad's book call to arms for Dems
By Joe Meyers
Perfectly timed for reading and pondering during the heated run-up to the 2008 presidential election, Glenn Hurowitz's new book "Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party" (Maisonneuve Press) shows how fearful poll followers like Bill Clinton and Tom Daschle moved their party away from the progressive politics of Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.

The Democratic organizer, and strategist -- and 2000 Yale graduate -- will be returning to Connecticut for book events in Stamford and New Haven next month.

Hurowitz's book is a call to arms for disenchanted Democrats, who lost heart after the compromises of the Clinton presidency and the weak presidential campaigns of Al Gore and John Kerry.

Although Hurowitz deftly critiques the Clintons, Gore and Daschle, he also shows how Democrats who stuck to "unpopular" positions, such as Paul Wellstone and Nancy Pelosi, managed to build rather than lose support, despite relentless attacks by the Republican opposition.

The book documents how stands on individual issues do not make or break any candidate because, Hurowitz writes, "voters tend not to have strong opinions about even the most contentious issues of the day. This is the dirty little secret of every poll and focus group.

"If you ask people their opinion on an issue, most people will give it, or make one up. Many people will even offer opinions about issues that don't exist," Hurowitz adds.

The writer points out that in one University of Cincinnati study, "more than 30 percent of people could consistently be persuaded to give an opinion on fabricated bills such as the 'Agricultural Trade Act of 1983.' " The book goes on to point out that "it's common for 50 percent of voters or more to be unable to correctly identify candidates' issue positions even on big issues like war, abortion, health care."

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By sticking to his guns and not hiding his progressive intentions, the late Minnesota senator Paul Wellstone "repeatedly defied the high priests of the Politics of Fear -- casting high profile votes against welfare reform and the Iraq War when the polls and the pundits predicted that those votes would doom him. Instead, he found his support surge as voters responded positively to his courageous stances, even when they disagreed with those stances."

Hurowitz's chapter on Bill Clinton is subtitled "Gutless Wonder."

Although he entered office on a wave of excitement among progressives, Hurowitz writes, Clinton immediately began wavering on individual issues such as gays in the military and flip-flopped in a more personal way when he backed away from his own appointees Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood after controversy erupted over their immigrant nannies.

"Dropping Wood for acting legally -- and then gratuitously exposing her brief work at a Playboy club -- once again made Clinton look like he was not only afraid of standing up for himself and his people, but willing to embarrass them to protect himself," Hurowitz writes.

"Capitulation after capitulation was gradually forming a clear image in the heads of the public, Clinton's friends and especially his enemies," the author adds.

"He became the man who would always blink first, who would abandon his friends in vain attempts to appease those who hated him. With his personal and ideological friends worrying that Clinton would push them overboard to avoid even the smallest fight, they became more and more reluctant to rally to his cause or even work closely with him. And his enemies learned that no matter how far you pushed, it was almost impossible to find a bottom line."

In a recent phone interview from Washington, D.C., Hurowitz said it was a challenge to get his timely and exhaustively researched book in stores just as primary season was beginning.

Although the book is critical of a few particular poll-driven Democratic leaders, Hurowitz balances those chapters with positive accounts of the rise of MoveOn.org -- the new power of the Internet in politics -- and the success of Pelosi.

"I wanted it to be relevant to primary season but I also wanted it to be something you could read months from now and still have relevance," the writer noted.

Hurowitz uses polls in his own work and sees their importance for political operatives but believes they are misused in terms of producing "waffling" on individual issues from week to week and month to month.

"It is always useful to know the pulse of the general population but you have to remember that on a lot of issues people don't have strong opinions and on many issues they are uninformed," he said.

"Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party" has gone into a second printing in hardcover and Hurowitz said that after the 2008 race is over, he hopes to do some updates on the material for a paperback edition next year.

Glenn Hurowitz will talk about "Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party" on March 6 at 6 p.m. at the Yale Bookstore, 77 Broadway, and on March 13 at 7 p.m. at the Barnes & Noble in the Stamford Town Center, 100 Greyrock Place.

For information on the New Haven event, call 777-8440 and for the Stamford signing and reading, call 323-1248.