by William Bradley
With the need to press the reset button on American politics all too evident, liberalism finds itself moribund, befuddled by new challenges, dominated by backward- and inward-looking groups.
What is needed is not a liberalism that merely responds in dusty fashion, which is to say, the reactionary left. And not a liberalism that merely acquiesces as it looks to personal advancement, the Clinton caboose. But a living liberalism that steps beyond the traps of past glory, particularism, and careerism to identify and confront the true challenges of the times.
Many on the left blame its collapse on Bill Clinton. That's too convenient. The truth is that the left, product of earlier eras, grew ossified, clinging to past glories and present occupations even as the challenges changed.
The most significant challenges to our society and ecology in this accelerative age flow from radical capitalism. Driven by new technologies and globalizing capital and markets, decoupling firms from the communities in which they emerged, radical capitalism produces tremendously innovative products and sheer schlock, empowering a new elite based not in America, but the Global City.
The reactionary left provides a counterweight of sorts. But it also exudes an aura of special pleading, providing little sense of a path forward.
The left has decisively lost the present. And its glorious past, long clung to, is over. Which leaves the future. And a four-step program for moving from the old liberalism to the new:
(1) Abandon Particularism. Single-issue and "identity" politics, particularism, has been a refuge for many. But simply promoting the agenda of a particular constituency obviously fails to speak to a majority. And particularist agendas are co-optable agendas, as any shrewd center-right pol can tell you.
(2) Reject Careerism. Sometimes we forget, amidst the seduction of money politics, that it hardly matters if our friends have neat titles if they're not making a difference. And neat titles have a way of disappearing.
Brilliantly networked left-liberal FOBs like Manhattan's Harold Ickes and Santa Monica's Derek Shearer assured all their contacts of Clinton's essential progressivism. After ramrodding his re-election from the White House, Ickes had to learn from news reports that his good friend had cast him into political Siberia. Top economic advisor turned ambassador to Finland Shearer was already in an equally arctic locale.
(3) Focus on Corruption. As Jerry Brown's 1992 presidential campaign warned, American politics in this corporatized robber baron era is up for sale. The reactionary left ignored this because of its ties to the Demosclerotic Congress, with the AFL-CIO actually deluding itself into believing it could win a spending battle for control of Congress. The liberals of the Clinton caboose had to invent a new set of blinders to ignore the Cashola Camelot before them. (Clinton again claims to champion reform, but unlike other "top priorities," it has no White House point person.)
(4) Embrace Change. In his near-miss presidential campaigns of the 1980s, Gary Hart argued that the New Deal was not akin to the Ten Commandments. FDR was neither God nor Moses, but an inspired experimenter. What was written in stone was not the New Deal's form, but its ideals.
Simply preserving the programs of the past won't win the future. A living liberalism must define a new social compact that recognizes the underlying realities of radical capitalism, respects its possibilities, and reins in its excesses. Sophisticated business leaders should see their own interest in this.
Global economic integration is inevitable and, in some ways, desirable. What is not inevitable is its acceleration, which puts a serious downdraft on many incomes and is largely due to political decisions.
In reforming the social net and in forging a new social compact, government must be not a parent, as in the old liberal metaphor, but a partner. And not a partner to those with pricy lobbyists and party "trusteeships," but to all Americans. n(William Bradley has been an aide in several political campaigns and writes the New West Notes newsletter.)