In Search of Progressive America

Introduction

Toward a Second Coming?

Michael Kazin

During the final year of the reign of Bush and Cheney, the era of conservative dominance also appears to be stumbling toward an end. No administration has been so unpopular since the early days of disco. And the fall of Richard Nixon in 1974 was due primarily to the Watergate scandal, not to the accumulation of disastrous policies stretching from the levees of New Orleans to the streets of Baghdad. When his Texas protégé campaigned for president in 2000, Karl Rove predicted the GOP would hold power for decades to come. Clever activists on the Right would weld a durable majority by keeping taxes down, turning Social Security into a private concern, welcoming immigrants who rejected unions, and returning abortionists to back alleys. But that brave new political world was strangled in its cradle in 2006 when the Democrats recaptured control of Congress.

Behind the Right's collapse lay a sea change in public opinion. Nearly every poll taken after the 2006 election found that most voters agreed with views liberals had long advocated. Solid majorities favored: a big hike in the minimum wage, government-mandated health insurance for every American, stronger gun control laws, sex education programs that talk about condoms as well as abstinence, laws that would make it easier for unions to organize, and using diplomacy instead of war to combat terrorism. Writing for the Nation, Rick Perlstein composed a little ditty about the polls: You suspected it all along, Now it just might be true: Most Americans think like you.¹

But it was far from clear that progressives, the mildly inclusive term now favored on the broad Left, were ready to take charge. The New Deal era—those golden years of reform from the early 1930s into the mid-1960s—began with a similar collapse by a similarly dominant Right. President Herbert Hoover and the Republican majority in Congress did not foresee the Great Depression and failed to mitigate the suffering it caused. But Franklin D. Roosevelt and the crusading liberals who followed him to Washington did not change the nation simply by reminding Americans that their opponents were clumsy and callous. A few years after defeating the GOP, liberals accomplished two goals essential to birthing a new governing order in a democratic state: a compelling, easily understood program and a broad, dependable coalition.

Neither Democratic politicians nor the activists who pressure them from the Left has demonstrated that they know how to repeat that performance. Until they do, there will be no second coming for progressive America. The pols need to turn the change in public opinion, which is hopeful but dormant, into a dynamic vision of how the government can help ordinary Americans lead more secure and more prosperous lives. The activists are long on righteous anger but short on the hard work of reaching people who neither attend protest marches nor routinely click around the blogosphere. Neither group has figured out how to tether optimistic talk about an emerging Democratic majority composed of young professionals and Hispanics as well as more traditional liberal groups to an agenda that could unite them all. And every domestic problem takes second billing to the unending war on terrorism that George Bush launched from Central Asia to Guantanamo Bay. As long as the globe seems full of people who want to kill you, progressives who argue for tolerance, negotiations, and fair trade will probably remain on the defensive.

The ten essays in this book seek to address the current state of promise and discord in two profoundly simple ways: they explain the environment, at home and abroad, that confronts progressives, and they propose thoughtful ways to change it. The authors earn a living in a variety of ways: two are journalists, six are academics, one works on Capitol Hill, another helps run a think tank. They are not of one mind about the future. Some argue that a move to the left will gather speed; others are skeptical, pointing to continuing barriers thrown up by powerful ideas and structures. But each writer is a politically engaged intellectual who offers big ideas and meaty details that readers of any ideological stripe should take seriously.

The collection begins with three sober evaluations of the United States in world affairs and the impact of the world on American minds, progressive and otherwise. Matthew Yglesias reflects on the tortured stances leading Democrats have taken since the attacks of 9/11 and wonders if any standard-bearer for the party will be capable of questioning the arrogant premise that led the United States into Iraq. Andrew Bacevich challenges the notion that U.S. power abroad has been guided by a liberating ideal. Living up to those ideals instead of simply mouthing them to justify expansion would be, he asserts, the best idea in the world. Gary Gerstle puts the current conflict over new immigrants in historical perspective. He shows that the present furor over illegal aliens is just the latest episode in a debate about labor, race, and citizenship that is as old as the nation itself—and only legislative reforms that are both humane and practical can quiet it.

Next, Todd Gitlin and Andrew Rich examine the struggle to control the messages of politics. The mainstream media, Gitlin makes clear, lean neither left nor right. Like plants, they always stretch toward the flickering light of conventional wisdom. The much touted netroots can shift that wisdom to their purposes, but only if progressive bloggers adopt a cunning strategy. Rich examines the growing influence of think tanks and finds that most liberals in this world see themselves quite differently than do their counterparts on the Right. Conservatives gleefully fight a war for their ideas, while progressives only want to do responsible research. But the latter, Rich suggests, don't have to choose between making strong arguments and thinking hard about the best solutions.

The four essays that follow call for major changes in domestic policy grounded both in history and common sense. Ezra Klein lays bare the true costs of Bush's reign: a stronger government for the rich and a weaker one for everyone else. Liberal Democrats, he maintains, have an excellent opportunity to point out the costs of that hypocrisy and to craft economic populist alternatives. Dean Baker outlines an ambitious agenda of such proposals—from decent retirement plans to paid leave to universal health insurance. The building of a welfare state as beneficent as those in Northern Europe may not be impossible after all. Karen Kornbluh offers a creative way to update the most popular and enduring achievement of the New Deal: social insurance for the aged and the unemployed. Why not provide family insurance, flexible benefits for the millions of one- and two-earner couples with children who are now left out of most social programs? This is not, she points out, just a matter of extending help to the young and those who rear them. It would also make for better parenting and a happier labor force. But such ambitious policies, Nelson Lichtenstein reminds us, are unlikely to be enacted unless the labor movement can revive its numbers and political clout. He explains how conservatives, in and out of government, have sabotaged the laws that once gave unions a fair chance to organize and argues that publicizing such outrages, ideally through congressional hearings, is essential to curbing them.

Finally, I offer a brief history lesson about the time when Christian activists were found more often on the Left than on the Right. In the twenty-first century, the waning of antagonisms based on gender and race may allow progressive believers to gain a wider audience for issues about which they care deeply—from fighting poverty to protecting the earth. After a long era of secular liberalism, it would be ironic if William James's yearning for a moral equivalent of war led back to the Prince of Peace.

The impetus for this volume came from friends in the transatlantic Left. During the fall of 2007, the directors of the Wiardi Beckman Stichting—the think tank of the Dutch Labor Party (Partij van de Arbeid)—organized a large conference in Amsterdam, In Search of Progressive America. Speaking at the gathering were several of the contributors to this volume as well as leading intellectuals and politicians from the Netherlands. The Stichting also published a yearbook, in Dutch, to accompany the conference.

I am grateful to Frans Becker, Rene Cuperus, Menno Hurenkamp, and Katherine Kirk for inspiring the dialogue and for giving us wise and stimulating advice about framing our ideas for a European audience. The Dutch Left faces some of the same problems—among them, hostility toward immigrants and a welfare state under attack—as do American progressives. But the Partij van de Arbeid has long been either the first or second leading force in the government of that nation, and so its partisans have much to teach us about the promise and perils of holding power.

More than sixty years ago, in the midst of history's bloodiest war, the New York daily PM declared its credo in the phrase: We are against people who push other people around. Twenty-first-century progressives would do well to keep that faith in mind and in their hearts. It remains the core of what it means to be on the liberal-Left. But they should also steel themselves to make the difficult choices that can lead to electoral triumph, if not a second New Deal. Only a countervailing power that is both visionary and pragmatic can end the dominance of the bullies of the Right.

Chapter 1

Democrats and the World

Matthew Yglesias

When I was growing up in New York City, the view to the south of my parents' apartment was dominated by the World Trade Center many blocks away. Towering above the rest of the landscape, they hogged the scene—as they did so many other views throughout the city—to such an extent that it was easy in some ways to forget they were there. On some level, they hardly seemed worth remarking upon; it was too obvious and they were too big. Now, of course, the buildings are gone, but their significance has grown enormously. And yet, they relate to the political scene in much the way they once related to the view, in such an obvious way that it hardly seems worth pointing to. Nevertheless, it is worth saying clearly that the factor underlying American politics in the twenty-first century has been the great trauma of September 11, 2001, and the attendant return of foreign policy and national security issues as major subjects of political debate after a decade-long absence.

The importance of this issue's return is hard to understate. Accusations that the Democratic Party was soft on Communism were a staple of Cold War politics, and a seemingly effective one. John Kennedy secured election despite this charge in 1960 primarily by attempting to shift to Richard Nixon's right on the subject of U.S.-Soviet relations, complete with bogus charges that Dwight Eisenhower's administration had allowed a dangerous missile gap to emerge.

Once in office, both Kennedy and his successor Lyndon Johnson appear to have successively deepened America's military involvement in Vietnam in large part out of concern for political appearances. Jimmy Carter narrowly took the White House in 1976 at a period of public disgust with Republican scandals, but then lost it four years later in no small part due to his perceived weakness in confronting the Islamic revolution in Iran, and a Soviet Union that was seen as on the march in Africa, Latin America, and even Central America.

With the Cold War over, the situation radically changed. In theory, the fact that George H. W. Bush's administration witnessed extraordinary foreign policy achievements should have been a major asset. Under his watch, Germany had been reunified as a NATO member, the Soviet Union had dissolved, and the United States had—in the face of opposition from most Democrats in Congress—successfully led a broad international coalition to defeat Saddam Hussein's army and drove the Iraqi military out of Kuwait. Instead, the close of the Cold War proved to be an enormous problem for the Republican Party. Bush's Democratic challenger, Bill Clinton, not only had a sign reading It's the Economy, Stupid in his campaign headquarters, but his staff wasn't shy about letting journalists know about it. With the country mired in a recession, Clinton folded Bush's mastery of foreign affairs into a critique of him as an out-of-touch elitist, a leader too busy hobnobbing with Mikhail Gorbachev and François Mitterrand to understand the real facts on the ground in the United States.

Thus began the politics of the 1990s, the period during which the majority of the most prominent political consultants on the Democratic side achieved their positions of prominence. The extent to which foreign affairs dropped off the political radar during that period has made it difficult for Democrats to respond effectively to the post-9/11 period. A generation of liberals who saw their greatest successes in the 1990s has convinced itself that that era—after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when foreign-policy questions were less important—was normal. During a period of postelection commiserations in 2006, three friends on the Hill outlined the Democrats' path to resurgence, but they did so with a crucial qualification: It would happen only after the salience of the security issue declines. Rereading John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira's popular book The Emerging Democratic Majority after the 2004 election, I noticed the same thing. The majority was repeatedly prophesied to emerge when memories of 9/11 fade, or equivalent formulations. But while memories of the attacks are likely to fade (and indeed have to a reasonable extent), the salience of the issue isn't going anywhere. A study by Democratic pollster Mark Penn has shown that public interest in world affairs reached a low point in the 1990s not seen since the Great Depression. Democrats can hope that it happens again, but hope is not a plan. Besides, history suggests that it will not. The Clinton years were highly unusual; foreign policy has consistently been a prominent element of presidential campaigns since America's emergence as a major world power in the Spanish-American War and will probably continue to be for the foreseeable future.

At a minimum, foreign policy is all but certain to play a large role in the 2008 elections, just as it did in the midterms of 2002 and 2006 and in Bush's successful bid for reelection in 2004. To see what role this is likely to be, it is instructive to turn back the clock to the politics of the immediate aftermath of September 11, the fall and winter of 2001–2. In light of 9/11's enormous significance, captured in the cliché that 9/11 changed everything, it's worth observing that there's a sense in which very little actually changed that morning. Unlike the dawn or twilight of the Cold War or Adolf Hitler's rise to power, the destruction of the World Trade Center did not signal an important change in the objective security environment faced by the United States. The loss of life, though horrifying, was not in and of itself nearly large enough to constitute a serious challenge to America's stability or prosperity. Nor did anything that happened that day actually alter the risk of terrorist attacks directed at the United States.

Rather than a change in the objective situation, 9/11 marked the beginning of an enormous psychological change on the part of the American people. The events of 9/11 created a situation in which the American public was receptive to listening to big ideas about America's role in the world and the nature of the global security situation. Previously, people had largely tuned such debates out, but in late 2001 and early 2002 they were prepared to listen. What's more, certain ideas expressed at the time swiftly became widely entrenched and difficult to dislodge down the road. The Right seized advantage of the opportunity to frame issues in a way that was highly favorable to its existing policy preferences, but spectacularly ill-suited to the actual situation. The Left, by contrast, tended not to seriously challenge the Right's view of events.

As the country prepared to devise a strategy for combating Islamist terrorism, the sensible thing would have been for the nation to immerse itself in actual empirical information about the nature of the problem. Instead, early twenty-first-century America tended to take refuge in a series of shopworn and self-flattering clichés. Notably, there was massive resistance to any serious effort to