After the Democrats had held their meetings and kept their cool last weekend, the party`s national chairman, Paul Kirk, put out a statement hailing his colleagues for having done precisely what he urged them to do last year.
Recalling that he was the one who first proposed the kind of platform the Democrats adopted here, Kirk called the result ”a positive alternative to platforms of the past . . . a short statement of principle all Democrats can run on in November.”
Sounded pretty pleased with himself, didn`t he? Well, in this case, he`s earned it. Party chairmen usually toil in deserved obscurity, but this might not be a bad time to point out that Paul Kirk is having a very good year.
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In 1985, Kirk was the reluctant choice of Democrats to head a battered, broke political organization that was less a party than a collection of constituencies, each so intense about its own agenda that winning elections seemed a low priority.
Today he presides over a party that still has some money troubles, but in which the various factions have put aside their differences in pursuit of winning the biggest election of all.
Kirk didn`t do this all by himself, but he helped. And he did it by simply doing what he said he`d do, even after being told it could not be done. One thing that could not be done was to reduce the independent power of the constituencies, each of which was organized into a ”caucus,” with each caucus demanding and usually getting official recognition. Kirk promptly unrecognized most of them, telling them, in effect: If you want to have a meeting, we`ll provide a room, but that`s all. The predicted squawking lasted about two days.
The next thing that couldn`t be done was to tell organized labor what to do or what not to do. Three years ago, Kirk asked union leaders not to endorse a presidential candidate before this year`s primaries. Unaccustomed to being lectured, the labor chiefs fumed, and muttered privately that the only impact of Kirk`s challenge would be to make it even more likely that they would back a candidate.
They didn`t. Maybe they didn`t less because of Kirk than because no contender caught their fancy. No matter. In politics, it`s results that matter, not motives.
Then there was the platform. In December, Kirk gave a speech suggesting that the 1988 Democratic platform be ”an open letter to the American people” rather than a ”laundry list” of specific promises. Never, screamed the organized constituences-women, unions, civil rights groups, environmentalists, peace activists, et al.
Never lasted until last Saturday evening, Mountain Time, when the Democratic Platform Committee finished work on a final platform draft about one-tenth the length of the 1984 document and devoid of most items on the political-ideological laundry lists.
Kirk has succeeded by being the two things many doubted he could be:
independent and tough. One reason some Democrats opposed him when he sought the party`s chairmanship was their suspicion that his secret motive was to further the candidacy of his one-time employer, Sen. Edward Kennedy.
Even had Kennedy run, having a friendly party chairman would not have made much difference. But if Kirk had a secret motive, it was not to further someone else`s cause but to create his own, to shake the image of being somebody else`s man and becoming, at 47, entirely his own.
As to toughness, he demonstrated it the night of his election, when Jesse Jackson walked up to him and said he had ”violated the sanctity” of the black caucus by refusing to pressure one candidate for vice chairman not to challenge the caucus` choice for the job. Resisting the temptation to make fun of the absurdity of using the word ”sanctity” to describe anything in politics, Kirk looked Jackson right in the eye and said, ”It was a fair election.”
Jackson and Kirk are still not the best of friends, but their dealings are at least cordial, and no one has accused Kirk of doing anything to hurt Jackson`s campaign, or to help anyone else`s.
No political victories are complete, and Kirk has had a few setbacks. Perhaps for reasons of his austere, almost aloof, manner, he has annoyed some of the big fund-raisers in California. He will never win any oratorical contests and even senior members of his own staff sometimes find him confusing.
A party chairman is not a real success until the presidential election is over and his party`s candidate has won it. Paul Kirk cannot win the election for Michael Dukakis. This time, though, the Democratic candidate has a party structure that will help him more than hurt him, and for that Dukakis has Kirk to thank.