Skepticism softens
Dionne, E.J. Jr.
the political philosopher William A. Galston wrote enthusias- mains a much greater passion than either sharing or expanding tically of President-elect Bill Clinton's use of communitarian ...
...It would 1991, Caterpillar's UAW work force had helped boost prosimply move the struggle into Caterpillar's factories...
...Voter turnout kept dropping...
...Yet I suspect that communitarianism's come the problem of voluntary association inherent in the broadhope of marrying a liberal sense of self-determination with some er liberal vision it embraces...
...At a time when "self-directed work "How will it play in Peoria...
...is a question corporate chief- teams" and "employee involvement" have become the watchtains and the American labor movement are asking as they watch words of world-class American manufacturers, Caterpillar no the bitter struggle...
...He is blessed Back in 1988, it was said frequently-and not just by by the fact that expectations of government have fallen so low Republicans-that since the 1992 election marked the first time that merely changing the direction of the country and its mood that a majority of the votes would be cast in the suburbs, 1992 may be enough to guarantee him popularity...
...George Bush ran 10 million votes Clinton's margin ignores the 19 million people who voted for behind his 1988 showing and an astonishing 16 million votes Perot and ignores the message they were trying to send...
...When democracy needs refreshment, it turns to America Aside from Clinton's skillful use of rhetoric, I see little ev- first...
...In fact, from 1988 until late The UAW ended the strike insisting it hadn't lost...
...In the end, I susThe idea that a church or any other organization might exert pect that we come to share moral sentiments when we share insome self-evident moral claim on anyone is hard to square with stitutional commitments, and not the other way round...
...But at the moment I just don't see many ourselves as free to choose even our most basic associations...
...In 1992, Bush's margin in these tion against government, and that it could be appeased and ap- states shrank to 330,000 votes: 11.59 million for Bush, 11.26 pealed to with the sort of antigovernment slogans that million for Clinton and 4.3 million for Perot...
...But a particular Republican coalition, built come from Western Europe, where the same democratic disaround a particular set of issues, is gone...
...They want contract...
...As strikes force thereafter...
...isting jobs...
...while making no commitments to the size of Caterpillar's work The UAW struck Caterpillar in November 1991...
...paign was that it gave voters a degree of control over the political This destroyed what Republicans thought was the "lock" on agenda that they had not enjoyed before...
...Caterpillar wants workers to pay a small (recently published in paperback by Touchstone), writes about monthly premium and use specific providers...
...UAW ductivity over 30 percent and saved the company close to $50 Secretary-Treasurer Bill Casstevens announced workers would million by aggressively participating in Caterpillar's highly tout"work to rule," slowing production and creating product short- ed quality program...
...As PAUL BAUMANN David Carlin writes in this issue, an "institutional identity" is archaic in a mobile and achieving society such as ours...
...The economic differences bethat politics can be important, useful, even exciting...
...But we are tween the union and company aren't insurmountable...
...The most striking fact about the 1992 cam- been a similar mistake to downplay Nixon's far narrower tripaign was thus the utter collapse of the Republican coalition umph over Hubert Humphrey in 1968...
...In 1992, Clinton (with help divisive at the same time, a neat trick...
...Fites insists he'll never agree to those demands...
...It wasn't an idle warning: lar and the UAW had dueled fiercely from 1955 until the early Caterpillar took job applications, which arrived in the thousands, 1980s, company and union relations had steadily improved since and promised to start hiring a new work force in early May...
...terest-group liberalism offers a "`third' way of conceiving gov- Clinton has been something of a genius in bringing togethernment and policy...
...DIONNE, JR...
...belief in democracy's capacity for self-correction...
...And exactly on the hill," a "beacon of liberty," an experiment and an exwhat are our "shared moral sentiments" about the family...
...Indeed, the outcome It savages overtime, by giving the company the power to put of the one-year-old struggle between the United workers on a flexible schedule, which will make weekend work Auto Workers (UAW) and Caterpillar Inc., the and ten-hour days routine...
...politics for the Washington Post...
...er his party, but it remains to be seen whether a "third way" This is a complex argument and it can be too easily over- exists...
...If Republicans are to temper that we have experienced is taking hold...
...They used that power the South, which had been one of the most important building effectively...
...It is for him to restore our shrunken or disappearing margins in their suburban bastions...
...borhoods, are hardly the crucibles of identity they were even I hope Clinton proves me wrong and that Galston is right on forty years ago...
...end to a political debate that has become stale and irrelevant...
...On the most neuralgic to have lost that feeling of exceptionalism...
...The company canto withstand the union in-plant campaign, it'll have shown that celed it in September 1992...
...No less than classic market capitalism, interest-group poliideas and rhetoric ("New Covenant," etc...
...If Clinton's cabinet appointment process is any in- democracy was decaying at home...
...Our liberal faith and sense of self compelling idea of the common good is finally sentimental- demand that all social relations, from marriage to religion, be more a symptom of what we have undoubtedly lost than a re- freely chosen and freely terminated if so desired...
...The social and moral strength of traditional institutions-their ability to sustain re- SKEPTICISM SOFTENS lationships, solve problems, and care for their own-is under- CAN AMERICANS LOVE POLITICS AGAIN...
...Worse yet, the contract guts future Peoria-based construction equipment giant, will set the tone for jobs, by offering six-year job security for the current work force, U.S...
...margin dropped from 63,000 to 16,000...
...But if the UAW wins, shop floor strategies might to govern from than his 43 percent of the vote would suggest...
...That may or may not be the result of the UAW's counter Other companies are likely to learn the lesson, says University thrust...
...bered such cooperation...
...blocks of their ascendancy...
...We are all liberals now, and that means we see these questions...
...In 1992, Americans learned again and benefits aren't the problem...
...I hope he's right, but I wonder...
...shared moral sentiments" on the horizon...
...that the last two decades unleashed will take more than one elec- The company is offering $39,915...
...Just as behind Ronald Reagan's 1984 performance...
...In the eleven states of the Old The fundamental mistake Bush and the Republicans made Confederacy, Bush had defeated Dukakis by 4 million votes, was in assuming that this anger was purely and simply a reac- 13.5 million to 9.5 million...
...In Macomb County, the virtually all-white Detroit subvoters determined to throw incumbents out, bums and nonbums urban areas where many ethnic Reagan Democrats live, Bush's alike...
...Though Caterpilunion worker who failed to return...
...played out with little notice...
...its long-held position on health insurance benefits, wants to keep E.J...
...the political philosopher William A. Galston wrote enthusias- mains a much greater passion than either sharing or expanding tically of President-elect Bill Clinton's use of communitarian it...
...Families and churches, not to mention neigh- liberalism seems capable of tolerating...
...sexual rights, or race...
...The federal government Like many predictions predicated on a strong Bush adminwas "gridlocked" as President George Bush and Democrats in istration, this one misfired badly...
...More to the point, the UAW says Caterpillar Then, dramatically, 163 days after the walkout began, the wants a union like those in Japan, where workers tend to sub12,000 strikers came back to work under a company-imposed ordinate their interests to those of the corporation...
...I have strong sympathy for the communitarian stood will only continue to erode the idea of moral consensus...
...The UAW's decision to send its members back came a company union," says one UAW local leader...
...Wayne County (Detroit), proving that it was possible for a Voter impatience with peripheral issues drove the candidates Democrat to win the inner cities and appeal to suburbanites as and the media alike back to basics-how to spur reasonably well...
...In Wayne County, to pick a particularly dramatic examwell-distributed economic growth, how to pay for universal health ple, Clinton increased the Democratic margin from 158,000 in care, how to train this generation and the next for actually ex- 1988 to 245,000 in 1992...
...Solving problems requires a more explicit and binding moral Communitarianism's hope for mediating institutions seems commitment-a firmer institutional identity if you will-than forlorn as well...
...granted in its 0LABOR'S METAMORPHOSIS...
...European votwin again, they need to rebuild both intellectually and electorally...
...The contract Caterpillar important as any in recent memory is being has imposed guarantees a two-tier wage system in coming years...
...When they had Hitler and on issues such as abortion, crime, welfare, feminism, homo- Stalin, we had Roosevelt and Truman...
...But politically and socially it means that susa public language that has few words for solidarity and perhaps taining any community of obligation or any organizational efeven fewer about the common good...
...else, understands the yearning for new departures and for an In the end, Bush lost ground for the Republicans everywhere...
...Japan and Germany were dication of how Democrats will govern, dividing up the pie re- working better than the United States, so we kept telling ourCommonweal 15 January 1993: 5 selves...
...At Caterpillar's Aurora facility, which accounts for only of California labor economist Harley Shaiken, and get tougher 5 percent of its $10 billion sales, the UAW claims the producCommonweal 15 January 1993: 7...
...I fear that the logic of liberalism as popularly undersimplified...
...Talk radio lines sizzled with the sounds of angry year...
...an ugly 205-day strike in 1982...
...If abortion is any indication, compro- At the beginning of the 1992 presidential campaign, we seemed mise is viewed as tantamount to betrayal...
...The civil rights and en- inaugural addresses regularly remind us, we are a "shining city vironmental agendas are problematic, to say the least...
...Galston thinks the tics holds that the whole is best served by the minimally recommunitarian critique of Reaganism and of rights-based, in- strained ambitions of its competing parts...
...They are no less impatient than we with a stagnating very well, especially against Bill Clinton, who had learned the economy and with the sense that national governments are inlessons of past Democratic defeats...
...The stakes are high...
...standably envied in a society where too many people experience "mobility" as the fall beyond institutional protections of any kind...
...Where WHAT THE ELECTION HATH WROUGHT the rub comes is in the ineffectuality of liberal institutions such as public schools or welfare agencies...
...nothing wrong with the Republican party that 10 percent in- One of the most striking responses to Clinton's election has flation wouldn't cure...
...But negotiations were an- executives, believes the company simply doesn't want the other matter...
...ening to permanently replace workers walking a picket line...
...And to judge from would herald a new round of ineluctable Republican victories...
...The company and union met periodically, but over union involved in its business...
...In 1988, for example, Bush Congress just kept throwing stuff at each other up and down carried rapidly growing San Bernardino County, California, by Pennsylvania Avenue_ Political campaigns were vacuous and 84,000 votes over Michael Dukakis...
...It would have tive government...
...Few picketers were arrested and Shaiken, who has discussed the dispute with several Caterpillar no great scenes of battle transpired...
...As campaign speeches and bility...
...After all, when they had kings and corrupt nobles, we had idence that the Democratic party is interested in moral consensus Jefferson, Adams, and Tom Paine...
...To focus only on that Ronald Reagan had built...
...Real problems facing from Ross Perot) carried the county by 8,000 votes...
...The union, in keeping with tion, and perhaps more than one administration...
...ers are no less worried than Americans about what the rise of In a radically transformed political climate, the old Republican the global economy and the end of the cold war means to the standby issues of race, "family values," and crime did not work future...
...ages...
...go it was hardly acrimonious...
...That envy accounts for much of communitarianism's appeal...
...Wages acting as probation officers...
...a great liberation, at least for those who can take advantage of If we are serious about pluralism, we may have to live with such freedoms...
...Galston, for our role in world history that the late hisexample, claims that such alchemy is evident in the civil rights torian Richard Hofstadter was once moved and environmental movements...
...Our political energies go into attractthe matter...
...He says the UAW, using the old practice of "pattern bargaining," tried to commandeer the company by demanding that it accept what rival Deere & Co...
...In DuPage the country went undiscussed, buried as they were under an County, where Chicago suburbanites provided Bush with his avalanche of contrived political advertisements about a char- Illinois victory margin in 1988, Clinton (and Perot) cut Bush's acter called Willie Horton and pollution in some harbor up in margin in half, from 123,000 votes to just 64,000 votes this New England...
...flict," he says...
...Healing the anger UAW is seeking a top maximum wage of $40,458 by late 1994...
...1991 contract...
...It was dead anyway," says one a major manufacturer can nullify the right to strike by threat- Aurora, Illinois-based Caterpillar worker...
...increasingly absolutist notions of the autonomous self...
...If Caterpillar manages longer has any formal participation program...
...just eight days after Caterpillar had threatened to replace any Thing is, the company almost had one...
...He hopes more dramatic po- to comment that ours was the only counlitical progress based "on widely shared moral sentiments" lies try which saw itself as starting with perahead in the areas of the family, work, and citizen responsi- fection and aspiring to progress...
...This has proved alistic appraisal of the fractious conditions we face...
...emplar...
...With a lot of help the vote for George Wallace in 1968 showed how mad people from Ross Perot, Bush ended up presiding over the end of a were at the Democrats, so did Perot's vote this year show how Republican presidential era that began with Richard Nixon's mad voters were at the Republicans, and at politicians in genelection in 1968...
...the exit polls, some 40 percent of the Perot constituency al6: 15 January 1993 Commonweal ready rather likes him, giving the new president a larger base with unions...
...No, the Republican party isn't dead...
...agenda, and some version of it is doubtless the best hope for And ultimately, I don't see how communitarianism can overthe Democratic party...
...We were glad so cultural issues, the pursuit of group self-interest remains the many other countries were turning to democracy, but sensed paradigm...
...If it had agreed to what Deere accepted, Caterpillar THE HIGH STAKES AT CATERPILLAR would have had to remain neutral if the union tried to organize the company's 2,000 nonunion factory employees, guarantee a specific number of union jobs, and give the union input on which jobs should be performed by outside suppliers...
...This was an ideological cona five-month period talks grew unfriendly and got nowhere...
...The latest round of anger was in- These numbers make the point that it is a mistake to limit deed a reaction to the failure of government, but this time around the meaning of the 1992 election to Clinton's healthy but hardit was a demand not for less government, but for more effec- ly overwhelming margin over Bush nationwide...
...price...
...Where choice is the first principle of social and po- ing and securing an always precarious loyalty-as Clinton's litical organization, moral inconclusiveness is the admission representational cabinet suggests-not solving problems...
...labor relations during the 1990s...
...And Perot's impact on the creasingly powerless to do much about it...
...The far from falling in love with politics again...
...Communitarians argue that we can achieve a common good W e Americans have such a heroic view of without sacrificing essential liberal prerogatives...
...characterized the Reagan era...
...In the meantime, Perhaps paradoxically, it was this angry mood, combined with Clinton increased the Democratic total vote in many of his party's and deepened by economic stagnation, that contributed to what traditional urban strongholds like Cook County (Chicago) and turned out to be a remarkably high-quality campaign last year...
...there's eral...
...But the real dispute arises out of a less tangible set of issues, which Caterpillar chief executive Donald Fites labels "the right REPORT FROM PEORIA to manage...
...Among the many values of the "talk show" cam- Finally, Clinton won back millions of white Southern votes...
...By many accounts, contest was to focus an election already driven by the econo- our Western European friends are positively jealous of our abilmy even more toward pocket-book issues, and toward the fail- ity to move so quickly to throw out a whole political generaures of "trickle down economics," which he attacked as fervently tion and start anew with a politician like Clinton who, if nothing as Clinton...
...blossom across the country, giving workers a new tool to exBut Clinton and "the system" are still on probation, with both press their aspirations as the strike weapon slowly loses its power the Perot voters and many of Clinton's more reluctant supporters Why has labor peace proven so elusive at Caterpillar...
...That, he insisted, would force the company to negotiate The animosity generated by Caterpillar's moves has cloba contract along union lines...
...But most alarming for Republicans in the long term were their Herein lies Clinton's opportunity...
...the current health-care plan, a package that doesn't require any E. J. Dionne, Jr., author of Why Americans Hate Politics payments from workers...
...That's a recipe for polit- fort over time is very difficult, for that requires making choices, ical frustration, but ironically we probably have little choice in not just praising choice...
...ut in the American heartland a labor drama as Now the UAW is backed into a corner...
Vol. 120 • January 1993 • No. 1
