Quote of the Week: Todd Gitlin
The New Liberal Agenda
By TODD GITLIN
...The Christian right's contempt for reason found a counterpart in the Republicans' contempt for government except as an occasion for plunder. Stanley B. Greenberg, the Democratic pollster, is surely right that Democrats have to push for accountability along with good governance. But liberals also have to fight back against the demonization of government. Bill Clinton did that more effectively than generally recognized, and it can be done again.
So we liberals are now poised to present ourselves as we are -- to start with, has pragmatic advocates of intelligence and thoughtfulness. As Dionne points out, that is more a continuation of Clinton's 1990s self-presentation as an opponent of the "brain-dead policies of both parties" than a radical departure. But it ought to be no small element of the liberal counteroffensive.
That said, it's worth restating the Princeton sociologist Paul Starr's point that "the exhaustion of conservatism is not tantamount to a liberal revival." The country is not conservative in the Bush-Karl Rove sense, but neither (excepting a scatter of ZIP codes) is it liberal in the Dennis Kucinich sense.
As I argue this month in my new book, The Bulldozer and the Big Tent: Blind Republicans, Lame Democrats, and the Recovery of American Ideals (Wiley) -- following valuable research by Scott Winship, a graduate student at Harvard University -- public sentiment tilts toward the progressive side on domestic policy though not necessarily (at least as of 2004) on foreign and security policy. For the foreseeable future, liberals will need to cohabit with more conservative (though rational) elements in a big tent.
By TODD GITLIN
...The Christian right's contempt for reason found a counterpart in the Republicans' contempt for government except as an occasion for plunder. Stanley B. Greenberg, the Democratic pollster, is surely right that Democrats have to push for accountability along with good governance. But liberals also have to fight back against the demonization of government. Bill Clinton did that more effectively than generally recognized, and it can be done again.
So we liberals are now poised to present ourselves as we are -- to start with, has pragmatic advocates of intelligence and thoughtfulness. As Dionne points out, that is more a continuation of Clinton's 1990s self-presentation as an opponent of the "brain-dead policies of both parties" than a radical departure. But it ought to be no small element of the liberal counteroffensive.
That said, it's worth restating the Princeton sociologist Paul Starr's point that "the exhaustion of conservatism is not tantamount to a liberal revival." The country is not conservative in the Bush-Karl Rove sense, but neither (excepting a scatter of ZIP codes) is it liberal in the Dennis Kucinich sense.
As I argue this month in my new book, The Bulldozer and the Big Tent: Blind Republicans, Lame Democrats, and the Recovery of American Ideals (Wiley) -- following valuable research by Scott Winship, a graduate student at Harvard University -- public sentiment tilts toward the progressive side on domestic policy though not necessarily (at least as of 2004) on foreign and security policy. For the foreseeable future, liberals will need to cohabit with more conservative (though rational) elements in a big tent.
posted by Faithful Progressive at 8:05 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home