Playing Politics

My family isn’t a political family, but since I can remember, our dinner table conversation revolved around current events of day. Over the past years, this has brought up some rich dialogue and some heated arguments that make me feel more Italian than I probably am. Which is a welcome side-effect of the debate.

This interest bubbled over one spring afternoon in Washington DC when I was 17. My AP Government teacher, Mr. Sanderson, brought my class to the capital to understand the federal government a little more clearly. I still remember going to the NRA and listening to their young PR man explain to us the important personal and constitutional merits of owning a firearm. Being a young New Jersey liberal who’d only used firearms at summer camp, I found his reasoning for owning an M-16 as pockmarked as a duck on the wrong end of a shotgun blast. In a what I can only imagine was some hormone-induced rage, I took him on in front of the class and felt that I legitimately held my own (which actually wasn’t too hard because he’d gone way too far into the realm of ridiculous). I visited the NRA headquarters again a couple years back and found myself to have a similar experience, except this time I let my high school students take on the work of debate as I sat back and tried to take the whole line of reasoning seriously. That said, my actual opinion on firearms is much more nuanced than “anti-gun” but I do think the NRA could do with some much deeper and more critical thinking on what they are actually trying to say/do/enact with their lobbying work.

Where am I going? Right, so as my interest in politics and policy grew, I later found myself living in the capital and visiting representatives, attending congressional hearings and generally living it up with a gentle case of Potomac Fever. So though I’m far removed from the mid-Atlantic, I felt quite at home when I spend an afternoon in Taipei visiting the party headquarters of the DPP.

The DPP founded in 1986 (can you imagine such a young political party?) largely as part of a response to the long-term rule of the KMT, the party in power since the arrival of Chiang Kai-Shek (this was following the communist revolution in China that finally succeeded in 1949). With the Republic’s Army on his side, Chiang rolled into Taiwan and quickly asserted dominance over the small island while setting a up a ruling party that governed with martial law for many years.

The emergence of the DPP took significant courage on the part of founding members. They took their initiative forward in a time of political persecution (Though its rarely mentioned, I’ve met two former political prisoners in Taiwan, one of whom was beaten into disfigurement for writing a pro-democracy editorial in the 70’s). The main objective of the DPP was to establish a democratically-elected Yuan (Congress) which was finally accomplished in 1991. They worked in a green-coalition for many years to counter the strength of the well-entrenched KMT party. Their rise to power climaxed in 2000 when they took a majority in the Yuan and their party leader, Chen Shui-bian, took the presidency.

It was a fascinating time to visit with the party and the two young leaders who met with my team for the afternoon. At the moment, the party is going through a major reorganization following the filing of massive money-laundering and corruption charges against the former president (who finished his second term in 2008). In the fall-out of the scandal, the party suffered dramatic losses in the 2008 election and its once-strong majority has dwindled below 25%. With major ground to recover, big changes are underway and we got to hear about them first hand.

The meeting was a good one. I found the representatives to be loyal to their cause but open and frank about the challenges facing their party. After all, the best way to face a problem is to acknowledge it outright. I found this promising. But one couldn’t help feeling in the middle of a major political battle. The DPP currently runs as a party against the ruling coalition of the KMT. They continue to paint a picture of the KMT through a filter of its anti-democratic policies of the past. They use fear as a major weapon in their fight, identifying KMT actions (such as recent coziness with China and a crackdown on a recent demonstrations) as a signal of a return to the more authoritarian structure they employed in previous decades. It’s fairly obvious that it’s the strategy of a group with its back against the wall – fairly passive and not very creative in terms of a proactive agenda. It’s a disappointing for a party that’s demonstrated real strength and potential in the past.

At the same time, the DPP takes up a fairly bold stance on matters of independence, China, UN status and membership in the World Health Organization. But with the country swamped in a faltering economy, issues of international standing are secondary to more immediate matters of crisis.

As a marginalized minority, it will be curious to see whether or not the DPP can become a relevant player again. When I asked about the ability to work with the KMT, the feeling did not seem particularly good. The DPP spends a lot of its time painting the KMT in a negative light and while politics does make strange bedfellows, the villainizing culture within the DPP seems to be quite strong. The party seems stuck between moving forwards with real initiatives and still being stuck in a paradigm that essentially disappeared in 1991.

Their opinions on international status are important and have a fair amount of backing in Taiwan. As pressure on the Taiwan Strait is likely to increase in the coming years, the DPP will have its say on the matter of whether or not Taiwan maintains its current “undecided” status with China, works towards a formal reunification with China or makes a claim for complete independence. In that pivotal discussion, I hope that it’s a party free of its long-term resentment and one that thinks more about what’s right for the whole island rather than its own power.

I wonder if we are doomed to the power politics of democracy. What I saw here was the same I’d expect from visiting Democratic or Republican headquarters in the States. Will we ever move into the so-called “post-party” politics that could liberate our thinking beyond simple paradigms and move us towards broader thinking on what is necessary for the people by the people instead of what’s best for the party?