I confess that in spite of residing in Maine for almost 40 years, I am “from away.” I mean really “from away.” I hail from New Hampshire, and worse yet, it is from central New Hampshire. Indeed, pure Maine lore maintains one must be conceived, born and live in Maine to be a native Mainer. How can I possibly know anything about Maine, no matter how long I have lived here with that burden of birth to bear? There are some things, however, that transcend that significant and much battled boundary between the two states. People on both sides of that line have a general common sense historical understanding of what the Democratic and Republican parties are all about though they differ in degrees and extremes.

My understanding was nurtured initially in a small working class family in New Hampshire. My father was a mill worker. Street smart, but having no formal education (he did not graduate from high school), he had a clear, albeit simple, understanding of political parties. It was all tied up in his understanding of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal.

The Democratic Party, largely because of the New Deal, was the working person’s party. It was the party that put people to work, enacted Social Security, allowed collective bargaining. It was the party, my Dad often said, of the underdog. It cared for the “little people” by providing direct assistance from the government even if it meant deficit financing. In short, government had a role for my father’s political universe in providing for the welfare of its citizens. Some call this the “welfare state.” By the standards of other industrial, developed nations it is a very pale “welfare state.” No matter, let the moniker stand, and my father would add “it was a damn good turn that government cared for the welfare of the little guy! No one else did.”

Republicans, in this mill worker’s mind, embodied almost demonic qualities. In my Dad’s reckoning, Hoover’s party did not care about the poor. Their energy was focused on the business owners, the rich people. Government’s prime responsibility was to create an environment that supported the business community. The best way to do this was to keep government small, balance budgets, reduce taxes and depend on the wonders of the free market to address the needs of citizens. My Dad would have put it more cynically, laced with vivid expletives.

In foreign affairs, the delineations were less clear. Basically, however, Republicans tended to be more isolationists and Democrats were more international.

Over the years my understanding of the differences in the parties has grown somewhat more sophisticated but, alas, I must admit when all is said and done, I think my Dad had it pretty nearly right — in Maine as well as well as New Hampshire.

But, my fix on the political spectrum has been somewhat turned on its head in recent years. Clinton and Bush have not followed my Dad’s script for Democrats and Republicans. Bill Clinton ended welfare “as we know it,” and put a number of single moms off the rolls. He insisted on balanced budgets. He cut the deficit. He resisted international engagement in the Rwandan genocide and only reluctantly entered Bosnia and Kosovo. In a moment of connection to the Democratic party my Dad believed in, he had a go at comprehensive health insurance, but backed off quickly when successfully challenged by the Republicans and the insurance industry. Can you imagine FDR retreating so quickly – not my Dad’s FDR!

More confusing is the way in which George Bush is behaving. He has American soldiers engaged in a number of places — Afghanistan, Iraq and Liberia. The “War on Terror,” the 21st century analog to the 20th century Cold War as the organizing principle of foreign policy, may well justify incursions into a wide variety of axis’s of evil – Iran, Syria, etc. President Bush has brought the federal government into the education arena in unprecedented ways, even reaching deeply into the venerated principle of “local control” here in Maine. He has expanded government more than any 20th century president with the creation of a huge bureaucracy in the new Department of Homeland Security. Under the aegis of the “War on Terror,” the Patriot Act has made the government more intrusive in the private sphere than any time in more than the last 50 years. Most significantly, Bush has taken the budget surplus (fiscal conservatism?) of Democrat Clinton, and turned it into a very large deficit (big spending liberal?) in a short two years. It seems my Dad had it all wrong. Add to this the fact that Richard Nixon (remember him?) campaigned on universal health care and a guaranteed livable family wage, and it becomes really confusing.

Ed Muskie appears to have it wrong as well. He ascribed pretty much to my Dad’s perceptions. He once said, in the face of the revulsion from government programs in the post-Nixon, Reagan years, that citizens needed to be reminded of the many positive things that government did for people. He cited Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment compensation and programs of that ilk — government attending to the needs of citizens by direct involvement. For the most part Maine’s special brand of moderate Republicans would agree. I don’t think New Hampshire has such a political animal.

On second thought, I think my Dad and Muskie had it essentially correct. Democratic deficits have historically resulted from social programs, not tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the country. While both parties may currently rely more on government for policy that the historic party distractions might suggest, the different purposes of government action are still consistent with the understandings of my Dad and the perceptions of Muskie. Democrats in Maine, at least, still express their care for the “little person” through direct government social programs. Republicans still believe that government’s responsibility is to create an economic environment where the market works freely as the best way to ameliorate the condition of the “little man.” Senators Snowe and Collins, in the grand tradition of Maine independence, often offer a refreshing deviance from the party line in this regard. In spite of the “movement to the middle” on the part of both parties, there is still a difference in both Maine and New Hampshire between Democrats and Republicans. That difference is not too far off the mark of what Ed Muskie and my Dad concluded long ago in terms of political ends. The means may change somewhat, but the philosophy and the ends of political action remain the same.

The challenge nationally, in 2004 will be whether the Democratic party will have the courage to claim its roots.

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