Recently in Progressivism Category

"When T.R. spoke of 'swollen fortunes' and 'malefactors of great wealth,' socialism was a genuine force in American politics, perceived by many to pose a serious threat to the social order. When T.R. first called for a 'graduated income tax' in his 1907 State of the Union, he was proposing a measure that the Supreme Court had ruled unconstitutional. Indeed, the federal income tax struck down by the Court wasn't even 'graduated,' or progressive; it was a flat-rate tax." One from a few days ago that Ted at The Late Adopter just reminded me of: As Slate's Tim Noah aptly points out, John McCain can either continue to decry Obama's purported "socialist" tendencies, or he can continue to claim Teddy Roosevelt is his hero, but he cannot plausibly continue to do both.

At the very least, it would seem McCain, what with his coterie of lobbyist attendants, has either never read -- or is flagrantly ignoring -- TR's "New Nationalism" speech: "There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done" (See also one of my favorites: "The prime problem of our nation is to get the right type of good citizenship, and, to get it, we must have progress, and our public men must be genuinely progressive.)"

"For eighteen long months, you have stood up, one by one, and said enough to the politics of the past. You understand that in this election, the greatest risk we can take is to try the same old politics with the same old players and expect a different result. You have shown what history teaches us -- that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn’t come from Washington. Change comes to Washington. Change happens because the American people demand it -- because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time. America, this is one of those moments."

The end of the evening, of course, featured Senator Obama's historic nomination speech and, as you all already know, he absolutely knocked it out of the park. [Transcript.] As I said in my first post, I thought it "powerful in its can-do faith in America and devastatingly effective in its evisceration of the GOP," and I'll stand by that. In fact, in a week of excellent speeches, I thought our nominee's address was the one that came out on top.

Sen. Obama's speech succeeded on several different levels at once: It worked as a lofty restatement of central American principles and a concise explanation of what differentiates Democrats from Republicans. It provided hard policy details for those ambivalent about the word "change," and it threw red meat to the faithful -- and food for thought to the undecideds -- by going after John McCain on issues across the board. Speaking of which, Obama's tone toward McCain was note-perfect: Polite enough to the man, Obama was utterly dismissive of his lousy ideas and his endless shilling for Dubya, and he fired a warning shot across his bow about any further attempt to wallow in the usual Republican "patriot games." In fact, Obama's speech preemptively made much of the GOP's usual grab-bag of insinuation and slander, sure to be in full evidence next week in Minnesota, look patently ridiculous. When McCain announced his veep pick yesterday -- more on that textbook case of bad judgment in short order -- I noticed the podium read "Country First." After Obama's speech last night, that old dog's looking a little lame.

Coming into Thursday night, I thought the best line uttered, in terms of the history books, had come from President Clinton's Wednesday speech: "People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power." (The Ann Richards memorial runners-up: Bob Casey's maverick-sidekick skewering of John McCain on Tuesday, and Al Gore's recycling bit) But Obama's speech was filled with great quotables. For example:

"And it is that promise that forty five years ago today, brought Americans from every corner of this land to stand together on a Mall in Washington, before Lincoln’s Memorial, and hear a young preacher from Georgia speak of his dream. The men and women who gathered there could’ve heard many things. They could’ve heard words of anger and discord. They could’ve been told to succumb to the fear and frustration of so many dreams deferred. But what the people heard instead -- people of every creed and color, from every walk of life -- is that in America, our destiny is inextricably linked. That together, our dreams can be one. 'We cannot walk alone,' the preacher cried. 'And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.' America, we cannot turn back."

And so on. What's more, Obama's speech wasn't only a address for progressives, but a progressive address. It didn't just offer up a litany of policies and goodies aimed at buying off consumer-voters (tax cuts and free prescription drugs for all!), but called Americans to rally to their individual and collective responsibilities as citizens of the republic. It didn't talk much of rights and choices, as contemporary liberalism so often does, but emphasized "the American promise" as a shared ideal that binds us all together. He didn't get bogged down in the soul-deadening, technocratic rhetoric of policy proposals, but used American history and "the American spirit" as the unifying narrative and common tapestry of our entire national community. When it came to our most divisive and contentious issues -- abortion, gay marriage, immigration -- Obama's speech didn't just pick a side and lob grenades at the cultural opposition, but tried to engage and draw out principled conservatives onto neutral ground, without compromising on the positions themselves.

I've made the case several times here that, for whatever reason (in part, I think, his background in community organizing -- Jane Addams came to similar conclusions in her own time on the streets of Chicago; for another, I think the progressive ideals of the Social Gospel have survived better in the African-American church than they have in our secular democratic politics), Sen. Obama seems to understand and call back to real progressivism like no other presidential nominee we've had since RFK. This, thankfully, hasn't been lost in the move toward the general election.

So, in other words, I loved the speech. And, as I said the other day, actually being at Invesco Field for its delivery was an experience I'll never forget. I know some people may just find this naive, but after listening to Obama on Thursday night, and after living through all the corruption and incompetence of the last eight years, I refuse to imagine an America that would in good conscience pick John McCain and everything he represents over Barack Obama in two months. That is not my country -- We are better than that, and we cannot and will not turn back.

A busy day traffic-wise here at GitM: In a speech before the Knesset today, Dubya compared Obama to Sen. William Borah of Idaho (and not in complimentary fashion, although that case could be made too.) Here's GWB: "Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is –- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Now, as it turns out, Sen. Borah was the subject of my undergraduate thesis and features prominently in my dissertation. So, notwithstanding the self-serving idiocy and sad invoking of Godwin's Law in Dubya's words, I do want to take a moment to defend Sen. Borah, before -- just as Philip Roth Cheneyed up Burton Wheeler -- he disappears down the memory hole and is reinvented as simply a kneejerk reactionary. (I know Dubya brought him up to bash as a weak-kneed surrender-monkey, but I've also read several left-leaning comments out and about today that make note that Borah was a Republican, and thus belongs in Dubya's camp. He really doesn't.)

However wrong he was about Hitler in his final years, and obviously he was very, very wrong (although not perhaps as wrong as George Prescott Bush), Sen. Borah is neither the apostle of appeasement nor the GOP stooge that Dubya and folks pushing back would respectively make him out to be today. With La Follette and Johnson, Borah was one of the leading progressives in the Senate for decades, and one of its strongest civil liberties advocates in the years after World War I. In fact, if Dubya wants to ponder aloud the words of Borah, may I suggest the following?

Another personal plug: As part of the online rollout for a new edition of Walter LaFeber's The American Century, I recently composed four brief classroom essays on various 20th century events, as evaluated from a 21st century (re: ruthlessly presentist) perspective. In case anyone's interested, they've now gone live: The Versailles Conference | The Military Industrial Complex Speech | The Tet Offensive | A Second American Century? Now, that's edutainment.

"Remember, Jeannette Rankin was elected before women could vote. So who says men don't vote for a woman?" Resorting to a blatant gender pitch once more, Sen. Clinton name-drops Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, the nation's first female representative. (She also took hold of the recent Kinsley meme: "'Do you realize how much longer it takes for me to get ready than my opponents?" Clinton said. 'I think I should get points for what I do, plus having to spend so much time getting ready.'")

Just to set the record straight, Jeannette Rankin was a committed pacifist who not only led the "Jeannette Rankin Brigade" to protest the Vietnam War late in her life, but voted against American entry into both World Wars (and was the only person to vote against entry into WWII.) So, their common womanhood aside, I think it's safe to say Rankin would be thoroughly disgusted by Clinton's record on Iraq and Iran, and might well roundly reject the comparison.

"'This convention,' wrote H.L. Mencken, the most famous reporter of the age, is 'almost as vain and idiotic as a golf tournament or a disarmament conference.'" Those political junkies out there pining for a brokered convention, be careful what you wish for: The WP's Peter Carlson reminds everyone of the 1924 Democratic Convention in New York, which stalled out between Al Smith and William McAdoo before finally deciding on Wall St. lawyer John W. Davis, who in turn lost to Republican Calvin Coolidge and -- in twelve states -- Progressive Robert La Follette. (For the longer version, see Robert Murray's The 103rd Ballot. Which reminds me, having spent the day myself in 1924, it seemed a strange confluence to find this staring back at me upon my return to 2008.)

A disaster for the Democrats that year, the "unconventional convention" did at least provide choice grist for political wags then, and has ever since. "This thing has got to come to an end," Will Rogers pleaded well into the nine-day stretch. "New York invited you people here as guests, not to live." (Rogers also noted on the day of the infamous KKK resolution that it "will always remain burned in my memory as long as I live as being the day when I heard the most religion preached, and the least practiced, of any day in the world’s history.") When William Jennings Bryan, after days of thundering himself hoarse, wheeled around to support the final Davis ticket (which included as a sop to the Bryanites his younger brother in the veep slot), one reporter quipped: "If monkeys had votes, Mr. Bryan would be a champion of evolution."

And then there were the snafus. The Carlson piece talks about the Democratic decision to broadcast the convention on the newfangled radio, which turned out be a public relations catastrophe for the party. And there was worse. The Texas delegation -- aghast that they shared a block with St. Patrick's Cathedral and a city with Wall Street and the House of Morgan -- had to be talked out of burning a cross. And when the convention band tried to appease their southern guests at one point by striking up a "Dixie" song, they obliviously settled in on "Marching Through Georgia." Speaking of the Civil War, progressive Republican Hiram Johnson quipped once the Democratic ordeal was over, "How true was Grant's exclamation that the Democratic Party could be relied upon to do the wrong thing at the right time." (Let's try not to live down to that assessment this year, please.)

From Senator Obama's impressive victory speech in Wisconsin this evening:

"The politics of hope does not mean hoping things come easy. Because nothing worthwhile in this country has ever happened unless somebody, somewhere stood up when it was hard; stood up when they were told – no you can’t, and said yes we can.

Yes we can reclaim that dream. Yes we can heal this nation."

The progressives are back!

Hello, all. So...can you guess who I'm supporting in Tuesday's NH primary?

In any case, now seems as good a time as any to plug some GitM spinoffs I've recently put together, if anyone is interested. First up, if you usually come here just for the movie reviews, I've created GitM Reviews as a separate review site (although -- don't worry -- they'll always be posted here first.) Second, if your interest was piqued by any of the entries on civic progressivism of late, I've also created Small-R Republic as a central clearinghouse for that information. (Again, everything will be either posted here first or linked to as written.)

Both of these are projects I'm only starting to develop online, but they're enough off the ground that they can bear page views and/or advice from the regulars. (Also, while I've refrained from putting advertising here and plan to continue to, I may decide to put up ads on GitMreviews...so if anyone has had a particularly good or terrible experience with an ad provider, please let me know.)

(Obama silhouette pic via a friend/colleague at Peasants Under Glass, where we talked about some of the following in the comments.)

Something is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones? Let's go back a few days to Friday, just after Iowa, at the 100 Club Dinner in Milford, NH: "What you need to understand about the dinner and the venue is this: it was supposed to be a Clinton room." The Clinton advance people had secured the best tables at the front, so all the formidable Granite State luminaries who've backed Hillary could show their strength, and show the Iowa upstart how things work in "independent" New Hampshire. Meanwhile, the Obama voters had been shunted to the back of the room, far away from the podium, the cameras, and the action. All well and good...except it didn't work out that way. The legions of Obama voters surged to the front just before his speech and, by most accounts, blew the Clinton operation out of the room. "'I'm really worried about him,' said [Beverly] Hollingworth, a member of the state's Executive Council and a former state senator, as she headed for the door. 'Other people have been working their whole life for change, and have made good progress. This is just rhetoric.'" And you know something is happening here, but you don't know what it is. Do you, Mrs. Hollingworth?

Fast forward to this morning, where George Stephanopoulos held his usual This Week roundtable at the site of last night's Manchester debate: Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts, George Will, and Donna Brazile. For his part, Will seems to be among the "national greatness," "Morning in America" civic conservatives -- such as Peggy Noonan and particularly Andrew Sullivan -- who've responded to Obama's candidacy, and see elements of their beloved Reagan in his crossover appeal. (No doubt anti-Hillary schadenfreude is playing a considerable part too.) Brazile, who worked the comment desks at CNN on Iowa night, had already said her piece last Thursday, and didn't add much this Sunday morning.

But those venerable dinosaurs of the Beltway punditariat, Cokie Roberts and Sam Donaldson, were virtually beside themselves that the Insider candidate seemed to be going down in flames, and soon proved themselves absurdly in the tank for Clinton. Cokie sneered at the constancy of Obama's youth appeal: "Young people, as much as we'd like to see them active in politics, are notorious for not showing up when you need them." She then went on to parrot Clinton's most recent talking points. (Consider "It's a lot of talk, when the reality is, change will happen," or "She embodies change just by being the first woman who might be elected president.")

Donaldson, meanwhile, got bogged down in a wish-fulfillment metaphor about the old champ wearing down the young hotshot (i.e. The Hustler, with Obama as Fast Eddie and Clinton as Minnesota Fats) and huffed and puffed with aggrieved authority, "I agree with Bill Richardson, experience is not a leper!...She's the only one who brought up the economy, did you notice? Anyone could've said look, we may go into a recession here, there's hard times. Only Senator Clinton -- with her experience, if you will -- managed to bring it up!" (You heard it here first, folks. Obama is too inexperienced to have considered the possibility of a recession.) "We're always looking for the non-candidate, the non-politician, and we'd think that'd be great, Donaldson intoned. "But, George, when you have a toothache, most of the people here go to the dentist that's drilled teeth for a long time, I think that's where the country could turn out." (Note here that it's Edwards, not Obama, running the standard outsider-against-the-Washington-ramparts campaign that Donaldson is decrying.)

Now, on one hand, who cares what Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts think? Not only are they so completely invested in the Beltway power structure that it's in their very marrow, but they've been living the sheltered life of the television Green Room for decades now. (So, it seems, has ABC's Charlie Gibson, who showed last night during the Manchester debate that he thinks a two-academic family makes $200,000 a year. Uh, Charlie, try $3,000 a class.) As I know from considerable personal experience, the higher echelons in Washington invariably turn up their noses at candidates with outside-the-Beltway appeal, and tend to view them as interlopers worthy of ridicule (or, if they catch a spark, vitriol. At its most extreme, this is how you get Senator Clinton angrily exclaiming in 2000 that killing Ralph Nader "might not be a bad idea.") In short, Sam and Cokie, like countless other members of the Washington media machine, see themselves as bastions of the Beltway order, keepers of the flame, and they don't like any provincial outsiders upsetting the established status quo. All the more reason why Obama is causing them great consternation: "You've been with the professors and they all like your looks. With great lawyers, you have discussed lepers and crooks. You've been through all of F. Scott's Fitzgerald's books. You're very well-read, it's well known. But, something is happening here, and you don't know what it is..."

On the other hand, if we peel away their affronted Beltway dismay about Obama's upstart candidacy, Sam, Cokie, and Mrs. Holllingworth's views speak to arguably the biggest open question about the Illinois Senator's broad-based appeal, and the one demographic factor that most threatens his winning New Hampshire, and the nomination: the generation gap. Pulling up the Iowa numbers again: "Among all caucus-goers under age 45, a smashing 50 percent supported Obama, compared with just 17 percent for Edwards and 16 percent for Clinton. Among those under 30, Obama went even higher, to 57 percent. Among seniors, by contrast -- nearly a quarter of participants -- it was Clinton 45 percent, Edwards 22, Obama 18." Obama pulled young voters out in droves in Iowa, and I think he shows every indication that he can do it again in New Hampshire and beyond. Still, as Cokie snarkily reminded us, older voters are consistent voters. And, allowing that individuals mostly defy easy groupings and follow the dictates of their conscience, the Boomers as a generation are clearly not sold on Obama just yet. So, what's going on here?

Part of it, I think, was explained by Andrew Sullivan a few months ago in the Atlantic Monthly: "Obama’s candidacy in this sense is a potentially transformational one. Unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America -- finally -- past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us...If you are an American who yearns to finally get beyond the symbolic battles of the Boomer generation and face today’s actual problems, Obama may be your man." Senator Obama has since furthered this line of argument himself, telling Newsweek's Joe Klein that he aims to move past "the dorm fights of the '60s." To younger voters, the culture wars that raged from the sixties to the nineties just don't resonate. They seem like ancient history. To older voters, who lived through the experience and witnessed time and time again how low today's GOP will sink in their pursuit of power, this past isn't dead. It isn't even past.

This is why, Sullivan continued in the Monthly, Clinton's methodical (some might say calculating) persona and incrementalist approach doesn't seem to rankle older voters nearly as much as it does those under 45. "[S]he has internalized what most Democrats of her generation have internalized: They suspect that the majority is not with them, and so some quotient of discretion, fear, or plain deception is required if they are to advance their objectives. And so the less-adept ones seem deceptive, and the more-practiced ones, like Clinton, exhibit the plastic-ness and inauthenticity that still plague her candidacy. She’s hiding her true feelings. We know it, she knows we know it, and there is no way out of it." To many older liberals and progressives, who've experienced one dismal setback after another since the heydays of the New Frontier and Great Society, the Clintonian brand of cautious pragmatism often seems the only viable approach to moving the country forward. Put simply, you get burned enough times, you stop using the stove. This time, irony isn't the shackles of youth, but of their parents.

The sheer fact of Clinton and Obama's presidential candidacies, I think, also plays a part in the wide generation gap. The great liberal and progressive victory of the Boomers, one that merits them the moniker "greatest generation" just as readily as fighting WWII does their parents, is the sweeping and (for the most part) successful cultural transformation of race and gender in American life. This is not to say that racism and sexism don't continue to fester in America, both individually and institutionally -- Of course they do, and they're all the harder to root out for having gone underground. But, thanks to the civil rights revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s, younger people tend to view race, gender, and other issues of identity as much more fluid concepts than most Boomers do. While many older voters still possess vividly etched memories of separate drinking fountains, grotesque sexism in the workplace, and fire hoses trained on children, Generations X, Y, and Z grew up sharing a multiracial consumer culture of MTV, The Cosby Show, hip-hop, Tiger Woods, Eminem, etc. Similarly, I think it's safe to say that people under 50 are much more likely to have had a female boss at one point or another. (Counting 'em up, I've worked under more women than men, and I doubt I'm in a slim minority on that point.)

Put simply, and while being careful not to overstate the case, categories like race and sex just don't seem as defining to the youth of today. Boomers fashioned this new world through blood, sweat, tears, and sacrifice, but -- like Moses at the Promised Land -- they can't enter it as readily as their children and grandchildren. This is part of the reason, I think, why, anecdotally speaking, older columnists seemed so much more taken aback by Obama's victory in lily-white Iowa. This also partly explains why Clinton seems to enjoy the strong support of older women. They remember a considerably lower and less permeable glass ceiling -- and the considerable struggle it required to break it -- while many younger women seem to more readily presume (as I do) that sex isn't really a barrier to the presidency anymore.

Now, the response to an older Clinton voter to all of these arguments thus far might be something along the lines of "Just you wait...We know better than you, sonny. Obama may seem like a rock star, but we can see there's no substance to him." But, it doesn't do any dishonor to older voters to suggest in return that maybe this is the moment to forsake a lifetime of dashed hopes and bet on the possibility that the time for a new, expanded progressive coalition has finally come. This is not an easy thing to do. As accomplished and dedicated a reformer as Jane Addams, part of a progressive generation for which I have great empathy, couldn't bring herself to vote for Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, and she was not alone.

Still, there's something strikingly dismaying about watching Clinton and other members of her generation dismiss Obama's message as merely "false hope" (a particularly vicious phrasing) and empty rhetoric. This is the same generation who recoiled from the tested, experienced establishment candidate in 1960, despite his considerable national security credentials, and flocked to the young, hopeful standard of Camelot. This is the same generation who, buoyed by the words of Dr. King, swelled the ranks of the civil rights movement, and who -- disgusted by the continuance of a badly thought-out war overseas -- was inspired by the moving oratory and surprising crossover appeal of Robert Kennedy.

Those leaders were all tragically taken from us, of course, two of them forty years ago this spring and summer. It's maddening to think of how the past four decades might've played out had we the opportunity of their continuing leadership and inspiration. And it's been a long time, far too long, since we've seen anyone on the left who can be mentioned in the same breath as those fallen leaders without hyperbole. But, look at those Iowa numbers again. Maybe, just maybe, that wheel has finally come full circle. Maybe, Senator Barack Hussein Obama is the real deal. Maybe he's the candidate who can transcend the sad political paradigm we've been operating under since 1980 and bring about that long overdue progressive realignment. We've only seen one caucus, of course, but the game moves fast in 2008, and all the indicators seem to suggest he's got "it." If you're not going to stake a chance on him now, what, then, are you waiting for?

I started this entry with a Bob Dylan song. I'll end with another, one I listened to on Friday for the 1,000th time and "heard" like it's the first time. (It sounds completely different when unburdened for a few moments by the ironic punchline of the years after 1968.) If it seems like GitM has become all-Obama, all-the-time since last Thursday, well, there's a good reason for it. Right now, I truly believe we're standing at a crossroads moment, one that could all too easily become evanescent, another missed opportunity in a political lifetime that doesn't offer many of them. But if, on Tuesday, New Hampshire nurtures the spark set in Iowa last week, and Nevada and South Carolina kindle the blaze, we could be looking at a full-fledged progressive wildfire across the nation come SuperduperTuesday. So, to the older voters -- and to any voters -- who, for whatever reason, may be harboring doubts about Barack Obama, give him another look. We're at the first hinge of 2008, and what we do in the next few days and weeks will echo profoundly throughout the next several years of our governance. The old road is rapidly agin', y'all. So please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand, for the times, they could be a-changin'.

An Early Round Knockout...

...or a new Democratic Frontrunner?

Barring a split decision of some kind, we should have our first real sense of how Election 2008 will all shake out by late this evening. Obviously, it seems somewhat bizarre to choose our two presidential candidates -- a full eleven months before Election Day -- solely by who can best navigate the byzantine complexities of the Iowa caucus system. But the cycle being as accelerated as it is, and with money, name recognition, and the post-Iowa press bounce playing the roles that they do, it's hard to see any other Democratic candidate gaining enough traction between now and Super Duper Tuesday (February 5) to stop Senator Clinton should she win tonight. And -- given her high negatives -- it's almost as hard to envision how Clinton might be able to come back should she definitively lose Iowa and New Hampshire to Obama or Edwards. So, with that mind, it's seems like the last, best time to write up an primary endorsement. Now, as long-time readers might remember, I threw myself behind Bill Bradley in 2000 and tepidly endorsed Howard Dean in 2004, so the track record around here isn't too good. But, hope springs eternal, so regarding 2008...

THE REST OF THE FIELD:

Even if it is a bit unfair, the fact that no other candidate besides the top three is breaking the 15% viability threshold in the polls helps facilitate clumping them together like this. Still, in a perfect world, CHRIS DODD in particular would merit a closer look from voters. An experienced Senate progressive who's stressed the importance of universal service, Dodd would likely make a fine president. But, for whatever reason, Dodd never established the media presence to be a true contender in 2008, and he goes down as the top of the second tier.

Senator JOE BIDEN has run a much better campaign than I ever expected, particularly given his dismal performance during the Alito hearings and his "clean and articulate" flub out of the gate. Indeed, Biden has shown a nuanced understanding of global issues and an impressive command over the foreign policy domain, and he has distinguished himself in debates with wit and (surprisingly enough) brevity. If he is inclined to take the job, I expect he'd make a fine Secretary of State in the next Democratic administration (although he may face some competition from the likes of Richard Holbrooke, particularly if Clinton wins the nomination.)

His considerable record notwithstanding, BILL RICHARDSON has never made a positive impression on me this election cycle. He has scowled his way through debates (when he wasn't capitulating to Clinton), he's shown himself to be a practitioner of the Dubya Fratboy school of leadership (nicknames, backslapping, etc.), and I've yet to hear anything from him that seems even remotely inspiring. In a way, he's been the Fred Thompson of the Democratic side -- the theoretical Dark Horse candidate who's been a total non-starter. At any rate, the fact that the New Mexico Governor can't even break the top three in nearby Nevada suggests his presidential bid isn't long for this world. (For what it's worth, he's apparently asked his supporters to back Obama in the caucuses.)

As in the 2004 cycle, DENNIS KUCINICH has been a breath of fresh air on stage -- he's the one (semi-viable) candidate who unabashedly refuses to join his colleagues in the protective camouflage of GOP-lite centrism. (This is no small feat given how reflexive this knee-jerk "triangulating" tendency has become among Dems in recent years.) Still, even he recognizes that Iowa will not be kind to him, and has also asked his supporters to vote Obama. So, (MIKE GRAVEL notwithstanding, I suppose, although, despite his impressive record of service, he never seemed much more than a novelty act), that leaves the Big Three:

HILLARY CLINTON:

Senator Clinton is a smart, tough, and formidable leader, and although the presidential merits of her experience as First Lady has lately been called more into question, no one can deny that she's a battle-tested veteran of the partisan wars of the 1990s, or that she's the candidate most accustomed to the vicissitudes of the GOP attack machine. She'd make a very good president, particularly compared to George W. Bush and any Republican running.

Still, I've already described my major concerns about Clinton's candidacy here, here, and particularly here, so if you'll permit me to quote from that last entry, my issues are thus: "[1] She's thoroughly lousy on campaign finance reform, to my mind the issue that bears on virtually all others; [2] she apparently didn't have the wherewithal or leadership instincts to realize the Iraq war was a terrible idea in 2003 (it didn't take all that much to figure it out, particularly when you figure how much more information Clinton had access to than we did); [3] her view of centrism is apparently to act like Joe Lieberman every so often; and [4] most of the nation has already decided for various reasons that they don't like her." Once you factor in her unseemly corporate backers, her woeful view of human rights versus national security, her recent campaign missteps and tribulations, and the dynasty issue to that list, I find it hard to get very enthused about Senator Clinton's candidacy.

If 2004 taught us anything, it's that the electability issue is a bit of a canard. We picked John Kerry because we believed he was more "electable" than Howard Dean, and that may have even been true. But can anyone name a single state that Kerry won in the general election that Dean wouldn't also have carried? All that being said, given her very strong negatives, I do think Senator Clinton is not only the least "electable" of the Big Three, but the only candidate -- in either party -- who could manage to reunite the fractured GOP this cycle. It may not be her fault, but she will invariably bring out the wingnuts in force to vote against her. I'd even go so far as to say that the GOP is banking on Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee. It's the best possible outcome for them, and they know it.

And given that the leadership Clinton offers is the same unambitious and uninspiring blend of triangulated-to-death DLC centrism practiced by her husband, why even take the chance? This is not to say Bill Clinton was a bad president, not at all. Given the times he was working in and the low-down, unprincipled miscreants he was often forced to contend with, you could even say he accomplished amazing things, once he got his sea legs. Still, we are now at a moment when the Republican party is in rout. The conservative movement which began in 1964, coalesced during the 70's and 80's, and gave us the likes of Reagan, Gingrich, and Bush has now -- at long last -- been thoroughly discredited. Our nation has paid a heavy price for this realization, in both blood and treasure. Now more than ever, it is time for Democrats to shake off the protective camouflage and step into the sunlight. Put simply, it is time for change.

JOHN EDWARDS:

John Edwards is a candidate I've always thought highly of and, indeed, I voted for him in the NY primary in 2004. While he got off to a shaky start this cycle, Edwards -- arguably the candidate with the most to win or lose today -- has improved considerably over the past few months. In fact, I probably agreed with him more than any other candidate onstage in most of the debates. He was often the only person to suggest that the current system is fundamentally broken, and that stronger lobbying and campaign finance laws are needed to cleanse the taint of money from our political process and to make it responsive again to the needs and aspirations of everyday voters. As I said in the two long posts on progressivism several weeks ago, I agree -- as many progressives did a century ago -- that the unchecked influence of vast sums of money in Washington is arguably the central political problem facing our republic. Countless terrible decisions made by this administration, and by their Democratic counterparts in Congress, flow directly from the sad fact that dollars speak louder than people. And all the 12-point policy proposals in the world on health care, taxes, education, whathaveyou, won't change a thing until this underlying problem is recognized and rectified. To my mind, Edwards should be applauded for ringing the alarm bell loudly and strongly. (Not for nothing has Ralph Nader endorsed him.) If this argument carries Edwards all the way to the presidency, the result would almost assuredly be good for the country.

That being said, if I were caucusing in Iowa today, I would not be voting for John Edwards. Not because of any fault of Edwards -- he's my strong second choice -- but rather because I think there is one other candidate out there who shows more progressive potential. More on him in a moment, but, before I switch topics, here's the rub. As much as I admire Edwards for articulating the problem before us, I don't actually agree all that much with his solution to that problem. Put simply, Edwards is sounding the chord of populism, and populism is not progressivism. Populism speaks in a language of class, of insiders and outsiders, of haves and have-nots. Populism is often characterized by free-floating anger towards an elite "insider" cadre of some sort, and, while it's reductionist to group everyone together like this, populism has worked as well for Tom Watson and Huey Long as it has for Joe McCarthy and Ronald Reagan. It's a blunt instrument that despises elites of any kind and relies on and perpetuates an us-versus-them mentality among Americans. From everything I've seen of him in the debates and otherwise, John Edwards isn't really using the inclusive language of progressive citizenship to make his case. He's wielding the often divisive cudgel of populism. Now, if I have to pick a side, I'm obviously with the people against the oligarchs. And if this is the only way America will wake up and recognize the stench of legalized corruption, so be it. But I still think this nation will embrace civic progressivism along the lines I recently discussed, given the right leadership...

BARACK OBAMA:

If Edwards has been articulating the key progressive problem -- corruption in government -- then Barack Obama embodies the key progressive solution. Like no other candidate we've seen on the Left in nearly a half-century, Obama has the potential to restore Americans' faith in government and bring people back into the political process. Many skeptics among the punditry have derided Obama as a "hopemonger," but, to my mind, his optimistic appeal shouldn't be taken lightly. In a country where less than half of us vote anymore, anything that encourages people who have felt disenfranchised to look anew at or become enthused about our common citizenship is a godsend. In short, Obama -- young, thoughtful, intelligent, charismatic -- seems the only candidate with the potential to spark a true progressive revival. True, Obama isn't quite speaking the language of progressivism yet. But he's been veering closer to it than either Clinton or Edwards (Note, for example, the line quoted in his stump speech at the link above: "Americans all across the country are hungry for -- desperate for -- a new type of politics. Something different. A politics focused not on what divides us but on our common values and our common ideals." This argument that we are one people, all in it together and bound together as citizens by our commonalities, is the very warp and woof of civic progressivism.)

What goes for the nation goes for the globe. As Andrew Sullivan noted in his endorsement of Obama back in November, an Obama presidency single-handedly "rebrands" the United States in the eyes of the world. No other candidate running suggests so immediately and profoundly that we live by the democratic ideals we espouse, that we are a nation of diversity committed to individual flourishing, and that America is a land where anyone and everyone has the opportunity to rise to their full potential.

This holds true for our enemies as much as our friends (many of whom will be glad to see anyone but Dubya in the Oval Office.) As Sullivan put it, "Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man -- Barack Hussein Obama -- is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can."

Progressive potential and global symbolism aside, Obama has shown himself to possess the requisite talents needed to make an excellent president. As we all know, he was the only major candidate with the judgment to speak out against the Iraq War from the start. In debates, he's proven himself light on his feet and displayed a quick, voracious mind. (As Slate's Michael Kinsley put it, "When I hear him discussing some issue, I hear intelligence and reflection and almost a joy in thinking it through.") During his tenure in the Senate, he's shown a pronounced ability to work with people across the aisle, and counts among his friends and working partners such paleolithic conservatives as Sam Brownback and Tom Coburn. His Dreams from My Father testifies to a life of travel and experience that would serve him well in the Oval Office. And, unlike Senator Clinton, Obama has been a friend to campaign finance and lobbying reform, which remains crucial to any real change happening in the next four-to-eight years.

Now, obviously there are some lacunae surrounding Obama. He is a young man, and relatively new to national politics. He has admittedly been vague at times, and could have done considerably more these past few months, when given the nation's ear, to highlight the issues he finds important. There's a possibility -- maybe even a strong possibility -- that he'll end up a Tommy Carcetti-like president: a well-meaning reformer outmatched and buffeted to and fro by the entrenched forces arrayed against him. After nearly eight years of Dubya, Washington is pretty screwed up these days, and I'm not naive enough to think any one politician can undo all the damage that's been wrought in recent years. Still, given the Democratic field, my money's on Barack Obama. He has the potential to be a very special candidate -- the kind that comes around only once or twice a generation -- and I hope this evening sees the first of many successes for his campaign.

GitM votes Obama.

So, sorry to regale y'all with another long-winded, bloviating political post only two entries after the last one. But Ted of The Late Adopter asked an important follow-up to my comments on David Greenberg's Obama piece and public-interest progressivism, namely: "If FDR, Stevenson, the Kennedys all spoke with the rhetoric of citizenship, when did the Democrats stop? With Johnson? Carter? During the 80s while trying to oppose Reagan?" And, while trying to respond in the comment section, I apparently blathered on so long that I broke the site. ("Access Denied with Code 406....severity [EMERGENCY]") So, I'm posting my response as an entry instead (and there's precedent for this anyway, as when Scully and I discussed the space program a few years ago.) So, if you find this all ponderous and insufferable, feel free to skip down to the previous entry, where I raved on at equal length about Todd Haynes' I'm Not There (10/10!) And I promise to get back to more concise entries again soon...

Reagan aside, I do respectfully take issue with Greenberg's prior Slate piece comparing Obama to a long list of well-meaning losers, including Adlai Stevenson and Bill Bradley. Greenberg writes: "Obama exhibits other elements of this Stevensonian style as well. It's a style -- an ideology, really -- that links the quest for common ground with a language of enlightened reason. It disdains the passionate and sometimes ugly politics of backroom deals, negative campaigning, sordid tactics, and appeals to emotion. It extols sacrifice and denigrates self-interest...What he doesn't seem to understand -- as Stevenson did not -- is that democratic politics fairly demands a measure of thrust and parry, of appeals to self-interest, and of playing the political game. And so does being a good president."

I would argue that these constant appeals to individual self-interest is exactly what's what wrong with Democrats today. Put simply, our civic life has nearly wasted away, with devastating consequences for the Left in this country.The major operative question our politics seeks to answer today is not "How should we live?" or "What can we accomplish together?" but "Where's my stuff?" And, due to this narrow, limiting absorption with individual self-interest, lefty candidates of late have mostly based their proactive appeals on small-minded ideas like bribing elderly voters with prescription drug benefits and everyone else with tax cuts. That's it? That's all you've got?

As a result, more and more citizens are tuning out of the process completely. Without vision, the people perish. People find the grasping individualism at the center of politics today inherently unsatisfying, and they look for a deeper common purpose wherever they can find it. And, since Democrats too often can't stop speaking in uninspiring technocratic policy-wonk, a consequence of their limited vision and ambitions, voters have been inclining in recent years toward the GOP, who at least offer a flawed but workable story, often rooted in gung-ho nationalism and unpacked ideas like "Freedom, Yeah!", about who we are as a people. The story is everything (which is one main reason why I was drawn to American history in the first place.) To be successful, to be anything other than GOP-lite -- a pathetic state we've been floundering in for decades -- Democrats need to tell the nation a story about our shared history and our shared goals, and stop pandering to voters' immediate self-interest all the live-long day.

Greenberg may argue that civic-mindedness in a political candidate is the province of losers, but I disagree -- It's all in the telling. After all, it was the extremely popular John F. Kennedy who reminded us to ask what you can do for your country, and his slain brother RFK obviously talked a great game in that respect too.

In this piece, Greenberg also discusses the retreat from the "the Mugwumps' and Progressives' moral uplift in favor of a pragmatic approach" under FDR. (This is also the ground my dissertation covers.) And, yes, the broker-state model of governance honed by the New Deal worked for a long time. More importantly, the idea of interest-group pluralism it cultivated has had many critically important successes to its name, not the least the civil rights revolutions of the past few decades (although those too have a strong civic component -- MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech makes it explicit: "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed...And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true." This is not the language of self-interest but an appeal to a shared narrative as Americans.)

But I would argue that the enthronement of individual self-interest above all else in politics has reached its logical endpoint, and as a result our system is on the verge of falling apart -- half the country doesn't vote, money constantly bends the rules and everyone knows it, people are losing the inclination (or even the capacity) to act as informed, independent citizens. Indeed, you could argue Hillary Clinton's failure with health care reform in the nineties exemplified the problem with broker-state leadership: When setting out to confront the issue, the Clintons cut everyone in on the deal, from insurance companies to HMOS to the AMA, in true broker-state fashion. As a result, no reform at all was forthcoming.

This was mainly because, as I've said before, the individualistic/broker state model of liberalism has no theory for coping with corporate power -- It serves the wants, needs, and interests of consumers, what's wrong with that? But a civic-minded progressive would argue that there are more important goals than the sating of individual desire, that the government is an expression of our common aspirations and should be more than just a dispensing machine, and that undue corporate influence over -- and outright corruption in -- our political affairs in fact represents a dire threat to the republic and to our way of life.

The progressive idea of citizenship both offers and demands higher aspirations of people than the lowest common denominator of individual self-interest that both parties appeal to today. We're fast becoming a society where freedom is measured at best by what choices we make, but more often by what we can own as consumers. Progressives envison a society where freedom is also measured by what we can accomplish as citizens. Ultimately, freedom isn't a state of being -- it's a state of becoming, of improvement, of progress. A political candidate who could tap into this progressive vein, I think, could inspire people like they haven't been inspired by politics in a good long while. So, this is my crux of disagreement with Greenberg here -- I don't subscribe to the notion that common-good, public-interest progressivism is inherently a losing proposition. Quite the contrary.

Still, Greenberg's article does a solid job of delineating the origins of Obama's progressive appeal, and, at the very least, we agree that Obama is considerably more progressive than Clinton.

America. Land of the free, home of the obese illiterates? "We are doing a better job of teaching kids to read in elementary school. But once they enter adolescence, they fall victim to a general culture which does not encourage or reinforce reading. Because these people then read less, they read less well. Because they read less well, they do more poorly in school, in the job market and in civic life." An extremely frightening new study by the National Endowment for the Arts finds that, despite the best efforts of the First Lady (which I applaud) over the past seven years, Americans increasingly can't read so good. "The NEA reports that in 2006, 15-to-24-year-olds spent just 7 to 10 minutes a day voluntarily reading anything at all. It also notes that between 1992 and 2003, the percentage of college graduates who tested as 'proficient in reading prose' declined from 40 percent to 31 percent."

Uh, what?! How can over two-thirds of college graduates not be able to read "proficiently"? This is the type of dire news that demands a Sputnik-level response from our political leaders. “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both, as James Madison put it in 1822. "[A] people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives" Or, see Thomas Paine: "[I]t is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support," and that's what we'll be getting (more of) if this troubling trend continues. Not to get all progressive up in here, but education and citizenship are the lifeblood of the republic. Without them, the whole experiment falls apart.

"In The Atlantic's very first issue, in 1857, the magazine's founders -- an illustrious group that included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell -- declared that they would dedicate their new publication to monitoring the development, and advancing the cause, of what they called 'the American idea.' And for the last century and a half, the magazine has been preoccupied with the fundamental subjects of the American experience: war and peace, science and religion, the conundrum of race, the role of women, the plight of the cities, the struggle to preserve the environment, the strengths and failings of our politics, and especially, America's proper place in the world." To commemorate the magazine's 150th anniversary, The Atlantic Monthly publishes The American Idea, an anthology of articles which includes republished writings by TR, W.E.B. DuBois, Albert Einstein, John Muir, Helen Keller, and Vannevar Bush. (Alas, only ten of the included articles are online.)

"As political scientist Jacob Hacker has argued, the basic obstacle was nothing less than the government's failure to have adopted a comprehensive health insurance plan decades earlier. As a result, the system that emerged by 1994 entailed such a crazy quilt of private interests -- corporations, small firms, insurers, doctors, unions, HMOs, and so on -- that moving all Americans into a new framework without worsening anyone's situation had become virtually impossible." Slate and Rutger University's David Greenberg summarizes the history of health care reform, and of the epithet "socialized medicine." "[T]he idea of government-run health care dates to the Progressive Era. Originally called 'compulsory health insurance,' it enjoyed favor in the 1910s among many quarters, including the American Medical Association...But as the debate heated up, doctors began to worry that it would hurt their incomes, and they banded with business groups like the National Association of Manufacturers to oppose reform. American entry into World War I tabled consideration of the issue, and the postwar Red Scare, Starr notes, 'buried it in an avalanche of anticommunist rhetoric.'"

Well, it may seem like they've been going at it for awhile now...nevertheless, the first official Democratic primary debate was held last night, co-sponsored by the good folks at CNN and YouTube. [Transcript.] (As you likely heard, this gimmick this time was that the questions were submitted by Youtube users the nation over. All in all, they turned out to be a mixed bag, but no more or less cutting than the ones usually conjured up by George Stephanopoulos, Anderson Cooper, or some other venerable talking head of the moment. Still, not a single query on campaign finance reform managed to sneak through the vetters...so now, I kinda wish I had at least tried to submit one.)

And the verdict this time? Well, no one broke out of the pack as a result of their performance last night, which -- the talking heads tell me (hey, David Gergen's gotta eat) -- means a win for Clinton. But, as with the past few debates, I still find my position further solidifying in favor of Obama and Edwards, and against the Senator from New York. (My reasons have been put forth previously here and here.) In fact, the most irritating moment of the debate for me, and I'll admit that this'll be considered well beyond stupid and pedantic to most people, was Senator Clinton's butchering of the distinction between "liberal" and "progressive" to contort her way out of having to name herself the former. For what it's worth, the key element of a turn-of-the-century progressive was never "someone who believes strongly in individual rights and freedoms" -- that would be a liberal. Indeed, arguably the major flaw in the progressive movement -- until after WWI -- was its inattentiveness to individual rights and freedoms...hence, Prohibition, or, to take an even more sordid example, the proliferation of Jim Crow in the South.

But, more importantly, and this is what really irked me, Hillary Clinton has proven herself to be the least progressive of the Democratic candidates, in that she's been the most willing to get into bed with corporate interests time and time again. (And, for you historians reading this, yes, I'm calling shenanigans on Kolko.)

Ok, I'll concede, Clinton can't honestly be expected to deliver a comprehensive historical disquisition about liberalism v. progressivism in a 45-second debate answer. But, please don't chalk up my concern simply to being an aggrieved aspiring egghead just yet. (And, hey, speaking of parochial, Obama mentioned my hometown, Florence, SC, tonight, albeit not in a positive light. But I digress again.) The fact is, the differences between liberalism and progressivism do matter, particularly when you consider [a] how often politicians in our party seem confused, or even ignorant, about the Left's guiding political philosophies these days, and [b] how different a truly progressive presidential candidate would seem from what Hillary Clinton has yet offered us.

Most importantly, a true "modern progressive" would push campaign finance reform, ethics in government, and voting reform though the heavens fall. These are hardly central tenets of the Clinton campaign, to say the least. And, along with the obvious necessities of a sane, competent, foreign policy, accessible, affordable health care, and comprehensively reworked environmental and energy plans, a real "modern progressive" would also extol education, civics reform, universal (if not mandatory) service, community-building, a vast increase in arts and science funding, an end to child poverty...all ways to help renew the bonds of citizenship, to help encourage an active, engaged, self-governing electorate, and to help foster a new generation of Americans more attuned and responsive to the concerns of their fellow men and women -- here and around the globe -- than they are to the self-absorbed and increasingly inescapable dictates of rapacious consumerism and the corporate bottom line.

It's late, and I've clearly started soapboxing. Still, what I wrote back in 2000 here, before I came to Columbia, still holds: "I know it all sounds a bit academic and removed from reality, but, what can I say? This is where my idealism (or what vestiges of it that survive this election cycle) lies." Well, it's been a few election cycles since then, and in many other ways the years since have not been kind, in terms of progressivism or otherwise. I'd very much like to continue indulging in "the audacity of hope" when it comes to such matters -- I know it's way early in the game, and that we're probably still at least a good 3 or 4 "Macaca moments" out before this all gets decided. But increasingly, and particularly after listening to these debates thus far and the virtual Clinton coronation by the talking heads thereafter, other quotes often come to mind as well. For example: "Look for your friends, but do not trust to hope. It has forsaken these lands."

I'm not saying Clinton would make a terrible president -- Obviously, she'd be much better than the current fiasco of an administration. (But, as always, who wouldn't be?) But I do increasingly fear her tenure -- if it's marked by the same confused, wishy-washy and corporate-friendly Republican-lite "centrism" her campaign and the DLC have pushed in the past -- will make for yet another missed opportunity in terms of fostering real progressive change in this country. (And Senator Clinton, to get to the point: I know progressives. I've spent the past six years and change studying progressives. And, you, Madam, have been no progressive.)

"The issue: Feingold's recently signed campaign finance reform bill. Clinton, whose husband's leasing of the Lincoln Bedroom had helped inspire the new law, was accompanied by an attorney. The attorney's job: Look for loopholes, loopholes that would allow the Democrats to keep raking in soft money -- unregulated, unlimited contributions to the party coffers. When Feingold objected, Clinton scolded him like Empress Livia dressing down a courtier. 'You're not living in the real world,' she shouted. 'Senator,' Feingold responded coolly, 'I do live in the real world, and I'm doing just fine in it.'" Hey, Hillary...want to see what a real "modern progressive" looks like? Writer Edward McClellan reviews Sanford Horwitt's Feingold, a new biography of the Senator, for Salon, placing him in a long tradition of Wisconsin mavericks dating back to the inimitable Robert La Follette. "As Horwitt puts it, Feingold's campaign was in the tradition of La Follette's 'progressives, who "mostly thought of themselves as perpetual underdogs against the big-money interests.'"