Editorials
COMMONWEAL And they're off oters in New Hampshire are about to kick off the 1992 presidential primary season. New Hampshire Republicans can register a protest against President George Bush by...
...Dignity involves giving as well as getting, and it includes being held to standards and responsibilities which are within reach but stretch the muscles," McWilliams writes...
...Ronald Reagan's success was built on the ritualistic, indeed the narrative nature of presidential politics...
...More specifically, Democrats must recognize that the problem of taxes is the problem of welfare and the poor, and that its resolution cannot he simply economic...
...This will do two things...
...It is hard to decide what is more depressing, George Bush's grim warning that he will do "what I have to do to be reelected," or the spectacle of Democratic nominees falling all over each other to endorse Roe v. Wade...
...Second, establishing a sense of shared moral purpose will forge a cultural and political bond between many Americans who now see their lives as utterly separate, if not opposed...
...Democrats should preach it with all their heart and soul...
...He has guided the nation during the lowest period of growth since the end of World War II...
...President Bush has seen his popularity plummet as the economy stubbornly refuses to come out of recession...
...unlike the federal government, they must balance their budgets...
...We live in fractious times...
...Sadly, no Democratic nominee has reimagined the political center in a way that truly threatens the Republican lock on the presidency...
...To engage Bush in a significant debate about the future of America, Democrats must gain the trust of voters who are deeply suspicious of Democrat claims on behalf of the have-nots...
...Urged on by Ronald Reagan's anti-government rhetoric, Americans are content to pursue narrow and inevitably self-defeating agendas...
...A Democrat whose vision or personality can compete with the residual power of Reaganism has yet to appear...
...State intervention is no substitute for "the informal understandings that hold a community together," Lasch writes...
...4: 14 February 1992 Commonweal...
...Democrats are learning the hard way—ask Governor Jim Florio of New Jersey—that regardless of how equitably the burden is distributed, Americans do not trust government to spend money in ways that will solve the encircling problems of drugs, violence, and dysfunctional schools...
...He had a story to tell that helped Americans make sense of their lives, and he famously stuck to his script...
...24) and Christopher Lasch (p.25...
...Even with Republicans, led by President Bush, calling for dramatic reductions in military spending, the prospect is slim that voters will endorse any significant transfer of funds to social programs aimed solely at the disadvantaged...
...You cannot spend on social programs and balance your budget during a recession without raising taxes...
...Tom Harkin, the aggressive populist senator from Iowa, preaches the old-time New Deal gospel with fervid conviction...
...Voters must be persuaded before they can be recruited, and to be persuasive the loyal opposition will need to create a "narrative" that has a power greater than the sum of its political grievances against the status quo...
...Democrats, who need to make a strong case for government activism based on an appeal to common values, are in a weak position...
...State governments from California to New Jersey and Connecticut, faced with unprecedented costs and social obligations, are reeling under the ferocious resistance of their taxpayers...
...Threaded throughout these antagonisms, of course, is the explosive question of race...
...Democrats have abandoned these issues to the Republicans for too long...
...Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey, whose Congressional Medal of Honor promised to immunize him against Republican attacks on liberal timidity in foreign policy, is intelligent and personable enough, but unseasoned...
...Abortion rights, economic regulation, and tax reform must all take a backseat to the repair of these "informal understandings...
...Politics is the art of balancing conflicting, and often irreconcilable interests...
...Jerry Brown and Paul Tsongas round out the field...
...This is the wedge issue Democrats need if they hope to create a new presidential majority...
...If that fabled coalition of the working and middle class is lying dormant waiting only for a cheerleader, Harkin has yet to rouse them...
...States cannot cope...
...Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton has been anointed the frontrunner by the media, but his history of amorous indiscretion may prove insuperable, despite the dignified support of his wife...
...Worse, an emerging consensus among economists warns that the economy is in long-term decline...
...First, by imposing behavioral standards common to all citizens it will acknowledge the rightful place of the poor as equals, a place that Reaganism has obscenely ridiculed...
...We are in trouble...
...This cynicism and frustration favor the Republican attack on government and taxes...
...An egalitarian civic life built on a sense of common moral obligations remains a powerful American idea...
...Homelessness, street violence, unemployment, and the health crisis have reached epidemic levels in some cities...
...Suburbanites want nothing to do with the cities or the poor, cities regard the countryside as unused landfill, government employees think taxpayers are selfish, taxpayers think government employees are spendthrifts and lazy...
...Reagan cynically succeeded in curtailing federal spending on social programs by cutting income taxes and piling up the national debt, thus handcuffing federal spending for the foreseeable future—and beyond...
...Yet we seem bereft of the political will needed for the task...
...In this regard, we suggest the nominee pay attention to Wilson Carey McWilliams (p...
...The globalization of the economy, the loss of well-paying manufacturing jobs, and the crisis of American schooling suggest that dramatic political action is needed to galvanize the nation...
...In providing for the poor we must also make reasonable demands upon them—for work, schooling, and yes, sexual responsibility...
...For many Americans this recession threatens to resist any mere cyclical improvement...
...Casual public trust I rests] on the mediating structures (family, churches, neighborhoods) that encourage trust...
...A significant portion of the social welfare burden has shifted to the states, Commonweal 14 February 1992: 3 with predictably dire consequences...
...Among the Democrats little is predictable...
...New Hampshire Republicans can register a protest against President George Bush by voting for the nationalistic, if not xenophobic, Patrick Buchanan...
...A decade of Reaganism has left the nation deeply polarized...
Vol. 119 • February 1992 • No. 3
