Politics for Tomorrow?

...Green takes an ahistorical view of Vietnam...

...He deplores Reagan's moves in Central America but does not persuade us that his party is finished with the likes of Lyndon Johnson, who sent the Marines into the Dominican Republic...

...I don't mean to be harsh on Green, who is not the enemy...

...It was Kennedy, not Nixon, who began our military involvement in Vietnam...

...Since this is exactly the approach that has failed us, isn't it reasonable to expect at least a discussion of something along the lines of Britain's provision of legal drugs for the addicted...

...Reagan was elected by just over 25 per cent of the electorate...

...I am haunted by history...

...Methadone clinics, after all, do no more than provide a drug that is virtually identical to heroin except for the high, and hence acceptable to our Puritanical society...

...Liberals need to be reminded that the major parties are proud of their "bipartisan" foreign policy, which means there is never a real choice...

...Green begins with a faulty analysis, for in examining Reagan's victory he fails to discuss one of its most important aspects: Reagan won no mandate in an election in which barely a majority, the lowest turnout in a long time, bothered to vote...

...But that common ground is not quicksand...

...Winning Back America looks at the basic problems with Ronald Reagan's program, lays out a "majority program for the next generation" that covers twenty-seven "issue areas," and concludes with the strategy and tactics Green believes can turn the program into actual policy—in other words, he tells how to win elections...

...When Green, in a final chapter on strategy, tells us that the first step toward winning back America "is agreeing that the Democratic Party is an essential vehicle for change," he forgets that almost half of the eligible voters are not persuaded that any party is the vehicle for change, in fact are alienated from the electoral process...

...In the course of doing all this, Green documents the Reagan disasters with quotes, facts, and statistics, all of which are on target and useful...

...is to push for an arms control treaty that limits the ability and inclination of the Soviet Union to light the short nuclear fuse" (emphasis mine...

...Green's approach to foreign policy is unsettling...

...I have never met Mark Green but had heard good things about him...

...Green, by cheerfully turning the reality inside out, violates history and affirms public fears that already help fuel the arms race...

...But surely the reality is that our problems are grounded in the economic, political, and cultural systems from which both parties spring...

...Mark Green, in sparing himself a meditation on the problems of his own party in the past, is far from persuasive that it can be a genuine instrument of change in the future...

...It is all well and good to talk about better direct mail campaigns, but that cannot substitute for political analysis...

...As an example, a reader might expect that one of his twenty-seven "issue areas" would have dealt with the gay and lesbian community, but there is no reference to a body of men and women who make up at least 5 per cent of the population and feel deeply threatened by Reagan and the Moral Majority...

...He approvingly quotes a Democratic Party leader who has written that the disorganization of the Democratic Party that began in 1965 had "not been noticed because we had the Vietnam war consuming our attention...

...Looking back at it, I realize those endorsements from six white males should have told me this was a book for orthodox liberals...

...It is well written, but it breaks little new ground and takes few risks...

...Mark Green approaches American politics as if our problems were located in one of the two major parties, and our salvation in the other...

...I don't mean to focus on drugs or homosexuals (and certainly not to link them) but just to look at two subjects of great controversy which Green sidesteps...

...If you are an orthodox liberal, this is a marvelous book...

...That danger has always come from the United States (starting with Secretary of the Navy Francis P. Matthews under Harry Truman, who publicly urged a "preventive nuclear war" and did not get fired...

...What liberals need is not just an analysis of the Reagan errors, which become more obvious by the hour, but an analysis of what has gone wrong with a political process that offers us a choice of Nixon or Humphrey, Ford or Carter, Carter or Reagan...

...The Soviets are guilty of a great many things, and I am unpopular in some circles on the Left for being so persistent a critic of Soviet policy, but one thing the Soviets have never done is threaten to "light the short nuclear fuse...

...In his chapter on crime, Green suggests that up to 50 per cent of street crime may be due to drugs—but he proposes nothing except the outlay of more public money to suppress the drug traffic...

...I approached his book with the assumption that aside from the necessary nit-picking expected of reviewers, I would be happy to endorse it...

...As one who believes in the electoral process, I am not happy about this, but any serious discussion of how to "win America back" had better begin by facing it before we start arguing which party is the "essential vehicle...

...But if you are looking for a way to win back America from the corporate and military structure, this book isn't any help...

...Winning Back America reads as if it is Green's manifesto for his next try for public office...

...In these times he and I— and many other Americans—need to find common political ground, some way to bridge disagreements rather than emphasize them...

...David McReynolds (David McReynolds of the War Resisters League was the Socialist Party's candidate for President in 1980...

...Discussing strategy and tactics, Green notes the technical errors of the Democrats (they have failed to use direct mail effectively) but he does not ask why President Kennedy authorized the Bay of Pigs, formed the Green Berets, and went beyond President Eisenhower's limited commitment to South Vietnam by sending in military advisers...

...Mark Green is thirty-six years old, has written nine books (three with Ralph Nader), and last year made an unsuccessful run for Congress in my Manhattan district...

...Green gives us no political analysis of what pushed Carter from a pledge to work for zero nuclear weapons and a reduced military budget to a call for sharply increased military spending...

...As a socialist, I am skeptical of programs for "economic democracy" that leave the means of production in private hands, but to pursue my skepticism here would be to go off on an ideological feud, not to review a book...

...He argues that "the way to enhance our national security...

...It was Truman, not Nixon, who bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki (even as Japan sought a truce...

...We can't change the political life of America without a real debate...

...Certainly the book comes well endorsed—the back cover carries blurbs by Senators Ted Kennedy and Gary Hart, Ed Asner, Tip O'Neill, Ralph Nader, and Studs Terkel...

...This treats a criminal chapter in American history as if it were an act of God or an accident of geography—anything but the result of political decisions made by Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson...

...His consideration of economic democracy is offered as a kind of modification of capitalism and his comments are worth exploring...

...And it was Kennedy who gave us the Cuban missile crisis...