A Second Opinion
Howe, Irving
I voted for Clinton, I was glad he won—if only because his victory brought to an end twelve dreary years of right-wing domination. Whatever our hopes or expectations, large or modest, regarding...
...Again, perhaps...
...What seems insufficient or evasive or wrong, we will want to criticize...
...The best thing about the election is that we enter a time of possibility...
...Whatever Clinton does that is liberal or even just humane, we will want to applaud...
...That this will bring with it a number of progressive measures is also likely...
...In that unhappy sense, he is very much a contemporary...
...This is a formula easy to announce, difficult to act upon...
...They are also rather vague...
...This noble sectarianism brought only isolation and defeat, since it ignored what both the unions and the liberals understood: that especially in its second term (1936-1940) the Roosevelt administration introduced measures that constituted an embryo welfare state improving the lives of millions of people...
...8 • DISSENT...
...People on the democratic left will have to be alert and informed, and critical...
...The role of stupidity in politics has never been sufficiently studied, and if it were studied, the Bush regime would be a prime instance...
...It is also, I suspect, a question for Clinton himself, an extremely able politician but a figure whose deeper commitments seem uncertain...
...The real political struggle in the United States began the day after the election...
...I want in this note to take up the question of how the democratic left will respond to the new situation—by democratic left I mean not only our own small voice but the stronger voices of labor, blacks, feminists, and so on...
...It is a struggle between the conservatives (including the floundering neoconservatives) who have, for obvious reasons, attached themselves to the Clinton camp and the less influential and weaker liberals and left-liberals who worked for Clinton in the election...
...It will tax our capacities, but could quicken our intelligence...
...but I see one tremendous difference...
...I am sure, at the least, that we will avoid the errors of the socialists in the 1930s...
...Roosevelt turned leftward in 1936 when there was a mass labor insurgency around the CIO, organizing millions of workers into a fresh and militant union movement...
...Such failures, to be sure, may have been due to his shrewd strategy for winning the election, and it may be, as some people close to him have hinted, that at heart he would want to go further...
...Whatever our hopes or expectations, large or modest, regarding the near future, we know at least that the focus of political debate has been shifted considerably...
...The very presence of the CIO, to say nothing of the pressure it could exert, helped Roosevelt tilt toward the social legislation for which he is rightly remembered...
...With some expectation tempered by a touch of skepticism, I wait to see what Clinton will or can do...
...Clinton kept stressing that he is a "new kind of Democrat" —code for saying he is not a traditional liberal...
...This may come to resemble, we are told, what happened under FDR, a master at juggling conflicts of interest and opinion...
...But whether the Clinton administration will be bold and tough enough to deal WINTER • 1993 • 7 with the deep-going and systemic problems of the American economy—which would entail not the abolition of capitalism but significant modifications along the lines some of us have labeled as neocorporatism— seems very much in question...
...But surely the kind of campaign he ran will have objective consequences...
...We may face, in the coming years, an opposite difficulty —that of becoming so caught up in the workings and rhetoric of the new administration that we will lose sight of the role the democratic left ought to play in America...
...Now things will be more complex...
...Perhaps...
...The unions have exerted a rather small influence in Clinton's campaign (except in a few midwestern states) and Clinton himself seems indifferent to unions or even the idea of unionism...
...When that happens, we will cheer...
...We opposed the Republican administrations in general and almost all their policies, especially on domestic affairs, in particular...
...That Clinton will introduce an activist administration I do not doubt...
...In the early months of the new administration there will be annulments of some of the more vicious and stupid regulations enforced by the Bush administration...
...About the plight of the cities and the ghettos he said very little...
...With much relief, I was happy to see Bush go...
...At present, nothing seems a likely equivalent...
...I mean the role of critical opposition, sometimes friendly, sometimes sharp, in proposing ideas and programs that challenge the status quo...
...They adopted a stance of leftist rectitude toward the New Deal, hammering away at the platitude that it was not socialism (which no one had claimed it was...
...anything beyond that is not now in question...
...We should acknowledge that some of the criticisms from the right have a point—for example, that he will probably not be able to put into effect even the relatively modest programs he advanced without raising taxes...
...It is a struggle for access and influence within—also outside—the new administration...
...During the Reagan and Bush years things were fairly simple...
...The Clinton economic proposals put forward in the campaign are not likely to be adequate...
...He has not won, nor did he seek, a "mandate" for radical reforms of the economy (which would entail policies within the elastic boundaries of a capitalist society...
Vol. 40 • January 1993 • No. 1
