Forget National Polls: Just Look to Columbia

In 2005, the Columbia College Student Council began inviting Commencement speakers for 2006. First, it invited Illinois Senator Barack Obama. When he declined the offer, CCSC invited a Clinton, albeit the former President rather than the New York Senator. He declined, too. Finally, they invited Arizona Senator John McCain, who accepted. Out of all possible candidates, Columbia students chose Obama, Clinton, and McCain. Ironically, so have primary voters a mere two years later. What a coincidence.

Too bad CCSC did not put its money were its mouth was and invest in the Presidential primary futures markets at the time. It would have made a fortune. Yet unknowingly picking primary candidates two years in advance is not the only way that Columbia students have demonstrated that they are in tune with the national political environment.

Two years before Obama skyrocketed to the top of Democratic nominees, for instance, a group of Columbians were tapping into the same post-partisan rhetoric that has lifted the Obama campaign. These students founded a publication called AdHoc, or “Columbia University’s Progressive Magazine.” Choosing the label “progressive,” they sought to distance AdHoc from more traditional political labels like “liberal.” Its first edition summarized this choice: “For us, being progressive means focusing on issues rather than politics, facts rather than rhetoric, and above all giving a voice to those who often do not have one.” Obama’s campaign is built on this same post-partisan message. While he has repeatedly rejected the liberal label, Obama accepted a different one in 2008, declaring himself a “progressive.”

Yet while AdHoc claimed to move beyond traditional politics, a thorough inspection of its first edition suggested that its writers were simply repackaging traditional liberal policies. With this in mind, I dismissed the magazine at the time, complaining that a debate focused singularly on a left-leaning platform and appealing only to a self-described progressive audience would not be able to provide the post-partisan unity its founders sought. Fast-forward to politics today, where, in the face of Obama’s rhetoric, critics are also asking how Obama intends to bridge partisan divisions with a uniformly leftist agenda. Pundits have equally pointed out the difference between Obama’s distinctly partisan voting record and his post-partisan rhetoric.

More than two years later, it could be said that AdHoc failed. Far from a driving force in some kind of post-partisan Columbia politics, the number of issues it publishes has dropped to just one so far this year. If polls were taken on campus, I would wager that few know the magazine exists and that even fewer have actually read it. I will not speculate about what this apparent failure to deliver post-partisan change on Columbia’s campus says about Obama’s ability to deliver change on a national level through a similar progressive message—but I certainly could.

In truth, despite Obama’s claims to be progressive, it remains to be seen how much his ideology really differs from his current rival. Indeed, the plans outlined by Obama and Clinton thus far are virtually identical, leading analysts to argue less about their ideological differences and more about personal leadership qualities, like who is better prepared to answer an early-morning phone call.

Diverging ideologically from the current Democratic consensus, of course, can be political suicide. As evidence, look at Hillary—the party still does not forgive her for her vote to authorize the war despite her return to the party’s anti-war consensus ever since.

The same test applies at Columbia. I distinctly recall a 2003 Spectator column expressing the author’s frustration that, despite his staunch previous support for Democratic causes, a single column he wrote supporting the Iraq War quickly led others to cast doubt on his Democratic loyalties. In 2002, before the Iraq War, then-sophomore Jen Thorpe similarly tried to defend her own liberal credentials, lamenting that “leftists on this campus ... have the dreadful misconception that someone who supports the war [on terror] could not possibly be liberal.”

Republicans on campus do not have such litmus tests. Indeed, I often disagreed publicly with my fellow Republicans while at Columbia, particularly on issues important to social conservatives, and yet I was still elected President of the Columbia University College Republicans. Never once to my knowledge was my party loyalty or ability to lead questioned because of these differences.

Since FDR, the Democratic Party has claimed to be the Party of the Big Tent. Yet if the presidential primaries and Columbia politics are any guide, it seems that the days of ideological diversity in the Democratic Party are long gone. Similarly, by nominating John McCain, a man who has bucked Republican Party orthodoxy on issues ranging from immigration to campaign finance reform, Republicans have demonstrated on a national level that they are as tolerant of diverse opinions as the Republicans on Columbia’s campus.

As a wise man once said, “If you and I always think the same thing, one of us has stopped thinking.” Yet thinking, or at least thinking independently, is apparently a huge liability in today’s Democratic Party. Once upon a time, this was not a case. As recently as 1992, the Democratic Party could still claim to be the Party of the Big Tent when a young Arkansas Governor named Bill Clinton won the Democratic nomination while bucking the liberal consensus on issues like welfare reform. How times have changed.

The author is a member of the Columbia College Class of 2006.