Act II, Winning an Election
Lemann, Nicholas
Act II, Winning an Election by Nicholas Lemann The day that I had my job interview at The Washington Monthly a new issue had just come into the office. In huge type, the cover said, CRIMINALS...
...If the Democrats can convincingly present themselves as the efficient provider of government services that the country badly needs, they'll instantly have made the case for themselves, and the constituencies will follow...
...The problem that nags the most right now is that the acceptance of The Washington Monthly's positions is limited to a fairly small group...
...One, which might be called the Sam Nunn theory, holds that the Democrats should become more conservative, especially on defense and foreign policy, and thus win back the South...
...thus every success of the government will have the effect of increasing Americans' faith in their country and each other...
...In huge type, the cover said, CRIMINALS BELONG IN JAIL...
...The specific point is that the government is not delivering on its basic obligations...
...Another, the Barney Frank theory, is that if the Democrats could rid themselves of a few exotic positions (such as the idea that criminals don't belong in jail) they would get the middle class back...
...The larger point is that the government can be a unifying force in a nation that badly needs to be unified...
...A generation ago, it was widely predicted that the national life was in danger of becoming too uniform, too conformist, too homogeneous...
...All this requires the magazine to work constantly at marrying its body of theory to examples from around the country...
...It's a sign of how much the liberal world has changed that at the time, February 1976, this seemed shocking to me—it was the kind of thing that you just couldn't say, even if it was true...
...Even more than the urge to avoid issues like crime and defense, the aspect of conventional liberalism that the magazine most disliked was its elitism—its snobbery and its mistrust of politics, which seemed rooted in a belief that most people simply weren't very bright...
...The 1988 presidential election was especially depressing in this regard, because George Bush, Nicholas Lemann, an editor of The Washington Monthly from 1976 to 1978, is national correspondent for The Atlantic...
...conservatives have been able to sell most people on the idea that liberals are powerful and contemptuous, the way bankers used to be in Thomas Nast cartoons...
...We were trying to make liberalism even better and stronger than it already was...
...The next great task for the magazine is figuring out how to bring about the political triumph of neoliberalism—and doing this will require completing the great piece of unfinished business in the establishment, which is overcoming its suspicion of democracy...
...Neoliberalism, in essence if not by its unfortunate name, would win in a referendum taken among journalists and policy analysts...
...The Kuttner theory seems to work only in hard times...
...So it's ironic, and sad, that The Washington Monthly's greatest success over the 20 years of its existence has been in influencing the liberal elite—not about elitism, but about issues...
...Nobody believes this any more...
...Actually, there is an encouraging historical parallel for the position of neoliberals today, which is the Progressives...
...They too proceeded from an interest in government to a mastery of politics...
...its 20-year-old ideas are still the right ones...
...Progressivism first flowered among journalists and reformers, and elected local and state officials before it was a force in national politics...
...It can provide a stream of examples that show what makes government work well, or not work well, which will provide neoliberals with the information they need to establish themselves as reliable operators of governments...
...All these theories have crucial flaws...
...Neoliberals are frequently accused of lacking a political base—except for journalists, it's often added with a snicker...
...The unpopularity of liberalism is obviously rooted more in "populism" than in substantive disagreement...
...It doesn't adequately protect the environment...
...Neoliberalism should now focus on making two main points to voters, one specific and one general...
...The chink in the conservatives' armor is their idea that all problems can be solved simply by paring away layers of government...
...Finally, according to the Bob Kuttner theory, if the Democrats ditch the social issues and fully embrace class- and constituencybased economic politics, they could build a workingclass majority...
...In retrospect the key to the Progressives' political success was not their clever stitching together of con stituency groups, but their ability to convince the country that it had social and economic problems, ranging from child labor to rotten meat to the despoiling of nature, that had to be solved by government...
...It can hammer away at the reserves of snobbery that keep its readers from devoting their time and attention to the political fortunes of neoliberalism...
...Liberal elitism and conservative presidential landslides are intimately connected...
...You can bet the rent that the next Democratic presidential candidate will point out that criminals belong in jail...
...The Nunn theory assumes that the South is winnable for the Democrats, which last fall's election results call into question...
...What is a magazine's place in this largely political mission...
...Neoliberals should make it clear that all of the specific tasks of government are undertaken in the cause of patriotism...
...It can try constantly, by providing examples from real life, to give humanity and urgency to the national problems that government should solve— to take them out of the statistical table and the seminar room...
...It doesn't keep cities free of crime...
...In order to restore vitality and intellectual honesty to liberalism, much of the psychic energy of the magazine in those days was devoted to raising all the points that liberals felt shouldn't be discussed because it would give the conservatives ammunition...
...If we can do this effectively for the next 20 years, we should be able to say that we've changed a lot more than people's minds...
...But it's still death on election day because of what comes after the "neo...
...The Frank theory takes away the Democrats' negatives without adding positives...
...unlike Ronald Reagan, is not a great political candidate, and seemed to draw his electoral strength mainly from tapping a reservoir of public distrust of liberalism...
...There are three prevailing theories about how to revive the Democratic Party in presidential politics...
...But the assumption was always that liberalism would remain the reigning creed in America...
...It can report on how neoliberalism is doing in the political world, providing an ongoing local politics field test of the agenda...
...It doesn't maintain the roads and keep the military in a state of readiness...
...We were not trying to move the Democratic Party to the right...
...It doesn't provide every child with a decent free education...
...On most public policy questions, the Eastern Establishment, such as it is these days, has come around to the positions this magazine has been advocating since its founding...
...Instead, what has happened is a splintering of the country by age, class, race, and economic activity, with each group looking out for its narrow interests and major national efforts nearly impossible to bring off...
...The Washington Monthly doesn't really need an infusion of new ideas right now...
...We were not ourselves moving to the right...
Vol. 21 • March 1989 • No. 2
