Theodore C. Sorensen was a principal counsel, policy adviser and speech writer for President John F. Kennedy. He was born in 1928, son of progressive Republican parents in the thoroughly Republican state of Nebraska. That year his father became Nebraska’s attorney general. Whenever not active in politics, Ted Sorensen practiced law. In 1996 he published his eighth book, WHY I AM A DEMOCRAT  (New York, Henry Holt,  246 pages, $20).

When my wife and I moved to North Carolina in October 1990, we had usually voted absentee (thanks to 30 years in the U.S. Foreign Service), had never belonged to a political party or voted in a primary election. Before deciding whether to join a party, we attended a candidates debate in Asheville organized by League of Women’s Voters. We also went to almost every available political rally of any party. Looking at my own strengths and weaknesses, I eventually made my party choice by answering two questions. Shall I join the one major party and try to strengthen fiscal discipline in the compassionate? Or shall I join the other party and work to increase heart in people who already know the value of a dollar? 

Theodore H. Sorensen in WHY I AM A DEMOCRAT sketches central positions on which most Americans agree. He also presents other goals, means and methods about which most Republicans and Democrats sharply disagree with the other party.

Both major parties resemble each other in that they fight wars, “floods, inflation, sleaze, the influx of illegal immigrants, narcotics, and terrorists and the waste of government money.”  Both  parties oppose teenagers having babies, excessive dependence on foreign oil and  having America’s armed forces undertake tasks peripheral  to the national interest (p. 5). Neither party wishes things to remain precisely as they now are. Both  believe that wealth should be redistributed. Republicans and Democrats alike seek to reform welfare. Both, according to Ted Sorensen, want a balanced budget. Both denounce crime. Both parties want citizens to have good health care and retirement security. Neither wishes excessive government bureaucracy and red tape (p. 7).  Both parties work within the written U.S. Constitution. Neither is plotting revolution or anarchy. 

Towards the end of WHY I AM A DEMOCRAT, Theodore Sorensen lays out ten defining positions of the Democratic party: 
 

• (1) Government’s job is more than just to get out of the way of private interests. 
• (2) Some problems, created or made worse by an unregulated market, are best solved by  government. 
• (3) The federal government must work to reverse the decline of real wages and other workers’ benefits, seeing to it that workers receive their fair share,  reducing the gap between rich and poor. 
• (4) Equal opportunity for all citizens is impossible without federal affirmative action in education and employment.
• (5) Devolution of power to states and localities is good in principle but cannot entirely replace national policy-making and national standards. 
• (6) Presidents Reagan and Bush created our huge national deficit. Democrats must, therefore,  assure that the poor, the elderly, the unskilled and the ill do not now pay for Republican budget-busting. 
• (7) Law and order are strongest when the nation attacks the causes of crime by strengthening gun control and assuring equal access to courts.
• (8) Families are strengthened through economic opportunity, not by  breaching the wall between church and state or by diminishing personal choices and privacy. 
• (9) The U.S.A. is but one part of a larger world. The U.S. Government must lead in international organizations such as NATO and the UN. Democrats reject “protectionism, unilateralism, and fiscal isolationism.” 
• (10) Government’s first duty is to the “little people.” The government ought to be there for people too poor to afford their own lobbyists, for ordinary citizens and for underdogs. (see pp. 224-226) 

Mr. Sorensen criticizes the Democrats for not living up to the performance standards (including fiscal responsibility) of his hero, President John F. Kennedy. 

First, he urges the Democratic party to “conduct clean and constructive campaigns (p. 212).”   Democrats should just say no to negative campaigning. Candidates should promise nothing which cannot be delivered. “Let the Republicans fight among themselves on the ‘cultural and religious’ issues about which they are so passionate while the Democrats focus on the major economic and social issues that are far more relevant to the daily lives of ordinary people (p. 217).”

Second, Sorensen recommends that Democrats “sharply define our differences with the Republicans.” (p. 222) The Democratic party has to make it clear where it stands on issues. Democrats must not become all things to all people, shifting stands with every new poll. Nor should Democrats simply say “me, too” to popular Republican positions. The party can never out-Republican the Republicans. We Democrats, argues Sorensen, should vigorously attack Republican positions, but only if Democrats have something better to offer (p. 223). And that “something better” is given in the ten points listed above.

The Democratic party must regain its glory as “the party of new ideas,”  and “not only new ideas but big ideas...” (p. 227). To be trusted by the American people, the Democratic party must also have “not only a program but a soul...unshakeable core convictions.” (p. 231) Democrats must proudly remind the voters of Wilson and the League of Nations, of LBJ’s war on poverty, Jimmy Carter’s Panama Canal treaties and the social vision of Bill Clinton (p. 232). 

Theodore Sorensen concludes by predicting  solid victories for a back-to-the-basics Democratic party which every day demonstrates three virtues: conscience, courage and compassion. “Hope and renewal.  That is what the Democratic Party offers. That is why I am a Democrat.” (p.234)

Mr. Sorensen’s book is well written.  Its positions are passionately but lucidly stated. Sorensen sharply contrasts Democratic party  and  Republican party.  When, however, I think of Democrats and Republicans whom I know, then Sorensen seems to overstate the big-government activism of most Democrats while not doing justice to Republican conscience and compassion. But difference of opinion is what  makes a horse race.  And an election.

-000-

for Asheville TRIBUNE