WE ARE NOT FAMILY
KRISTOL, WILLIAM
WE ARE NOT FAMILY by William Kristol Chicago MARIO CUOMO’S SPEECH Tuesday night fell far short of his performance in 1984. Its impact on the convention fl oor was dwarfed by Jesse Jackson’s...
...The president concluded his endless building of an unnecessary “bridge to the 21st century” by reassuring his fellow Americans that “you are part of our family...
...And on and on until we get to (and this is underlined in the offi cial text): “it takes a President...
...For this claim is the theoretical foundation of the nanny state...
...It takes teachers...
...Instead, we are all dependents...
...Clinton drew out the implications of this statement...
...Two nights before, while reiterating her “it takes a village” trope, Mrs...
...She acknowledged that “of course, parents, fi rst and foremost, are responsible for their children...
...Bill and Hillary Clinton...
...That has always been the heart of the matter...
...Its impact on the convention fl oor was dwarfed by Jesse Jackson’s oration a few minutes earlier...
...But the economy is pretty good, the country’s at peace, and Bob Dole isn’t going to be a better candidate on the hustings than Bill Clinton...
...To have a chance to win, Republicans need to meet head on the Mario Cuomo/ Hillary Clinton challenge and engage the debate on a fundamental level...
...Doing so would give them a chance to win this election...
...Mario Cuomo is right...
...The claim that the nation is “one family” is the heart of the matter...
...That is the heart of the matter...
...For if the nation is a family, its citizens are mere children, needing continued guidance, hectoring, and even discipline from...
...That will always be the heart of the matter...
...And even if Bill Clinton has proclaimed the era of big government to be over, his administration is more committed than ever to an era of busybody government— to the nanny state...
...It’s asking a lot of a political party to address so fundamental an issue in a presidential campaign...
...they need to argue that civic virtue disappears in the nanny state, and they need to show that it can fl ourish in a self-reliant America...
...That “takes a family...
...Republicans need to explain just why a nation cannot be and should not try to be a family—why this corrupts both the dignity of the nation and the integrity of families...
...It’s not enough to respond with the soundbite, “It takes a family...
...they need to explain how the institutions of civil society are crushed if the space between family and government is obliterated...
...And then, three sentences later: “It takes Bill Clinton...
...Nor does it take “business people...
...This was made clear last week by both the president and Mrs...
...But Cuomo, more than any other speaker last week, did succeed in highlighting a fundamental difference—perhaps the fundamental difference—between the two political parties: “The Republicans—this now, this now is the most important idea of all, in all of this welter of sophisticated notions, in all of this quarreling and quibbling politically, keep your eye on the one big idea...
...It takes business people...
...we can’t even begin to fend for ourselves, let alone govern ourselves...
...Just as important, it would lay the groundwork for the more complex task of protecting the institutions of a free society from the attempted encroachments that would surely mark a second Clinton term...
...The nation-as-family eviscerates the understanding, fundamental to a free society, that we are self-governing citizens and responsible adults...
...It takes clergy...
...Clinton...
...No, it doesn’t...
...The Republicans are the real threat to the most fundamental of all the ideas, the idea that this nation is at its best only when we see ourselves, all of us, as one family...
...How should Republicans oppose the claim that “it takes a village...
...Nor does it take Bob Dole...
...But, she went on to say, parents aren’t enough “to raise a happy, healthy, and hopeful child...
...But this amazing rhetorical progression suggests why the doctrine of the nation-as-family is so pernicious...
...They need to make the case for the limits of government action...
Vol. 1 • September 1996 • No. 50
