Editorials

...But a president can set the tone and the direction of the national debate...

...It seems the column made a strong impression at America as well...

...Equally important, especially after more than a decade of benign neglect, has been Clinton's willingness to use the office of the presidency as a bully pulpit to call the nation's moral attention to the plague of crime, violence, and despair afflicting the poor...

...Significant doubts remain about Clinton and about the general efficacy of government...

...But at the end of his first year in office Clinton has shown himself to be a man of personal resiliency and formidable political determination...

...In heath care, as on questions of free trade, gays in the military, entitlement spending, and the host of other issues facing the nation, Clinton has demonstrated what some call political realism and others political expediency...

...Moreover, thanks to Clinton's rhetorical skills and obvious moral passion, realistic health-care and welfare reform finally have been put on the national agenda...

...having the best ideas in the world does not free you of the obligation to make difficult decisions...

...Admittedly, Clinton's performance in foreign affairs has been erratic...

...On the other hand, for those Democrats further to the left, the Clinton plan's reliance on private insurance companies is seen as capitulation to the status quo...

...If "The Last Word" in this issue (page 46) seems familiar to you, you're probably a longtime Commonweal reader...

...Similarly, and most important, whatever your view of the art of politics or the unfair distribution of wealth, it is clear to Clinton that any hope for a progressive politics must, should, and can include the middle class...

...Why can't we follow the single-payer model of Canada, they ask...

...3 In other words, in democratic politics people with conflicting interests must see those interests fairly represented...

...And other stuff...

...In his best moments—speaking in Memphis to black ministers about violence or insisting that universal health care is a moral imperative—Bill Clinton has promoted just the sort of democratic conversation we need...

...Wrenching economic and social changes have left tens of millions of Americans dissatisfied with the quality of their lives, anxious about the future, and distrustful of politics...

...Clinton's first-year record of legislative achievement, stretching from the budget-deficit reduction package to NAFTA, gun control, and national service, rivals that of any president in recent memory...

...It describes a particular temptation that can lead writers on public affairs (editors, too) to betray their best selves and their calling...

...For Americans with minimal skills, the new global economy promises little but unemployment and further marginalization...

...In a brief bio of Cogley appearing in an expanded 1986 edition of Cogley's 1973 book Catholic America, historian Rodger Van Allen writes that one of the Jesuit weekly's editors had the column photocopied and framed and hung it outside the door to the editorial board room at America House, where it stayed for many years...

...Much, we fear, is riding on Clinton's success in forging reciprocal ties between America's haves and have-nots...

...The bipartisan majorities Clinton marshaled in support of NAFTA and the Brady gun-control bill seem to be harbingers of the kind of nonideological coalitions needed to reshape the medical and welfare systems...

...As Clinton said in December to the Democractic Leadership Council (DLC), governing "requires the accommodation of various interests all across the country in the private sector and requires a partnership with people at the state and local level...

...Working-class wages continue two decades of debilitating decline...

...Seven months later the political terrain, while still uncertain, looks quite different...

...Doing something about the nation's increasing social and economic disparities won't be easy, nor is government itself necessarily the answer to these problems...

...As Thomas B. Edsall wrote recently in the Washington Post National Weekly Edition (December 6, 1993), a volatile mix of political and social instability and polarization lies just beneath the surface of American life...

...Could be this story is apocryphal (a present-day America staffer says the piece isn't on the wall now and nobody he consulted could remember seeing it), but it prompts us to grant universal permission to all writers and editors to put the column on their own walls, or into their heads...

...His solutions—government regulation here, some competition there, support for gays combined with respect for the military, etc.—seem designed to make everyone equally unhappy...

...Families, especially those at the bottom of the economic ladder, continue to fragment with devastating social costs...

...Civic order and peace are increasingly privileges only the well-to-do enjoy...

...The Last Word" will provide a home for short (roughly 750-word) essays, reprints of memorable pieces from Commonweal''s past, and, perhaps, longish passages from both old and new books that strike us as worthy...

...After the administration's "near-death" experience with the near defeat of the budget bill last spring, Clinton was written off by many as yet another Democratic president destined for failure in Washington, a predictable victim of Republican obstructionism and Democratic party factionalism...

...Only a politics of inclusion and hope will do that...

...A needed conversation Questions about his personal character, political conviction, and judgment dogged Bill Clinton during the '92 presidential campaign and followed him into the White House last January...

...Forging a national consensus for government action under these circumstances is a herculean task...

...We must fight their fight," Clinton said to the DLC of the Democratic party's need to win back the middle-class majority...

...We must give voice to their concerns...

...For example, the DLC thinks Clinton's health-care proposal, with its emphasis on universal coverage rather than tax credits for the poor, is too bureaucratic, too vulnerable to the Republican "more big-government" refrain...

...Maybe that's why they seem to be drawing reluctant support across a wide range of political tendencies...

...We must honor those basic values of opportunity, responsiblity, and community, of work and family and faith...

...Traditional Democratic voters, as the election of Republican mayors in New York City and Los Angeles suggest, are in fact more skeptical about the political process than more articulate cynics higher up the socioeconomic ladder...

...Let's have more of it...

...The piece is a column by John Cogley, first published in these pages more than thirty-five years ago...

...Edsall suggests that Democratic party elites, eager to embrace free trade and other market-oriented policies, are in danger of alienating the party's base among working- and lower-middle class voters...

...Indeed, Clinton's commitment to a wide-ranging political conversation in which all Americans have a voice is the most encouraging aspect of his presidency...

...Alternatively, you may once have been an editor of America...

...At the moment, no group or institution has mobilized the wrath and resentment of a major portion of the electorate," Edsall wrote...

...One of the more geriatrically enhanced members of the staff still remembers the response Cogley's essay engendered on first reading: a mix of admiration and concern (could this apply to mei...

...He worries that demagogic forces may come into play unless the legitimate needs of displaced and alienated Americans are met...

...Still, Clinton's devotion to his domestic agenda has largely paid off...

...And we say this despite our own deep aversion to Clinton's support of state-funded abortions...

...The president's growing popularity in public opinion polls would seem to suggest that Americans still have a tolerance for activist government...

...President Clinton, it would appear, knows that...

...ET CETERA A WORD OF WISDOM With Tryon Baldwin's toast to the "Sisters of Caramel" in the issue of December 17,1993, we launched a new occasional feature but for lack of space we could not introduce it properly...

...His response to the ongoing slaughter in Bosnia has been especially disappointing and the postcold war world may yet present problems, in North Korea or Russia, for example, requiring the rarest combination of diplomatic skill and moral courage...