A CONFEDERACY OF DEMOCRATS.(Brief Article)

The Democratic Leadership Council, which bivouacked at a midtown hotel for a "national conversation" last week, trailing a string of Presidential hopefuls and heavy elements of the political press corps, is perhaps the nerdiest of all political factions. It is brainy ("an idea factory," according to Congressman Richard Gephardt) and yet it also tends to be socially clumsy. Its national meetings, which seem to occur every third week, are usually marked by a contretemps, inevitably over something symbolic and sophomoric, often involving the roster of speakers invited--moderate Democrats, like many former social outcasts, have an unhealthy obsession with who should be in and who should be out. A decade ago, Jesse Jackson was invited one year, disinvited the next. This year, Al Gore--a charter member of the Democratic Leadership Council--seemed to disinvite himself. (He was in New York "on business," but somehow couldn't find time to pop over and give a speech.) The Gore deficit was accompanied by a decision by his former running mate, Senator Joseph Lieberman, of Connecticut, to admit that he wasn't very comfortable with Gore's populist "people versus the powerful" ranting during the 2000 campaign. Given the recent depredations among the powerful, the timing of Lieberman's confession was odd. Indeed, this was a subtext of the meeting: How would the pro-business D.L.C. deal with the renewed Old Democratic theme of anti-corporate populism?

The answer was embedded in the ancient D.L.C. mantra, first intoned by Bill Clinton, in Cleveland, in 1991: "Opportunity, Responsibility, Community." Responsibility was very big this year. Community, suddenly, was not: it has been purged from the official slogan, replaced by Security, which has the advantage of alluding to both national defense and financial security. In the event, the A-list orators spent more time wandering the highways and byways of Responsibility than they spent on Opportunity and Security combined. Corporate responsibility was the main theme, of course, and fiscal responsibility was prominent, too: the Clinton budget surpluses were contrasted with the Bush budget deficits.

The speeches weren't very memorable, but two were notable. The most courageous was delivered by Senator John Kerry, of Massachusetts. It was a broad attack on the Bush Administration's foreign policy, including a detailed military criticism of the Afghanistan campaign: "When given the opportunity to destroy Al Qaeda at Tora Bora, the President turned not to the best military in the history of man--this President turned to Afghan warlords who only a week before were on the other side. . . . We didn't close off the back-side mountain exit, we didn't maintain the initiative, and we allowed ...