Centerfield

Along those same lines, there's a new book out called "The Price of Government" -- by the same guys who brought you "Reinventing Government" a few years back.

I read a little bit of it in the bookstore, and was extremely impressed.

Here's the Amazon listing.

I think Pearlstein's essay and the entire thrust of the Boston Review is to move the Democrats away from the DLC-type centrism to more traditional progressivism. This is a battle that is going to consume the Democratic Party over the next few years because the liberals are no longer content with the centrism that has come to dominate the party.

I agree with much of what he said--I do think there is a place for the Dems to distinguish themselves from the GOP. Kerry's problem is that he is twisting himself into a pretzel not to be too different from the Republicans. The pendulum has swung so far toward lower taxes and reduced government that I think people are ready for the pendulum to return. But I think the progressives think there is nothing to learn from centrists and they essentially think of us as Republicans-lite. It's as if the last thirty years did not happen, as if the economy has not changed. All we have to do is restore the lost heritate of Democrats. In a later response to comments on his article, Pearlstein says that "conservative ideas are bad." So much for tolerance and willingness to learn.

Sometimes I wonder if what we're up against is that certain issues have been demagogued so much (e.g. taxes and government) by the far right and their 'arguments' were uncritically accepted by so many Americans, that it will require some sort of jolt to pull the discussion back to realistic terms.

(I'm obviously having a very pessimistic day!)

It's an interesting article - thanks for the pointer!

Right at the core of this article is something he totally failed to prove with his numbers:

"And what do Americans say they want? According to the pollsters, exactly what the Democratic Party was once famous for giving them: economic populism."

Being afraid of big corporations and out-of-control CEOs does not economic populism make. Economic populists only did well after the Depression. For all his fooling around with peripheral numbers, have we had an economic populist in office as President since 1950? No. And it's not because people haven't tried. And no, it wasn't just McGovern, either. McGovern proves nothing, since he was arguably picked by Nixon. But the fact is that economic populism is unpopular even among Democrats. That's why Dean and Kucinich have gone nowhere.

Though I think he is right about the need for some big ideas. But, you know, "the era of big government is over," that was a big idea.

P.S.: We need NEW ideas. Populism is an old idea. He wants Boeing to go back to the tried-and-true 707!

Jon Kay needs to learn to read. The model is Airbus's dominating superjumbo, not the 707. And he needs to learn to work around his ignorance: at least to read LBJ's campaign speeches in 1964; or see a video of the first Nixon-JFK debate in 1960--or even Stevenson's in '52 and '56,both of which are in book form--if he believes Democrats don't win on economic populism.

What part of Greenberg's findings that 75 percent of his respondants (of all political identifications) want guaranteed healthcare, or his astonishing rankings of issues voters called important or very important, did you skip.

Usually it's only conservatives who enter debates from such a position of ignorance.

Rick Perlstein

Rick, thanks for visiting. But I find it offensive that you take the time to do so in order to accuse one of our posters of ignorance. Especially when you so blithely described Michael Dukakis's "career of slashing budgets and tax cuts" in the essay Greg cites.

I have lived in Massachusetts my whole life. I don't remember this. In fact, this description of MD is pretty close to a blatant lie if you genuinely think budget cutting and tax cuts is an accurate representation of MDs career.

Take it up with Sid Blumenthal. The quote is from PLEDGING ALLEGIANCE, 285. "I don't remember this." This is exactly one of the points of my essay. People misremember what the Democrats ACTUALLY did, because they've been punked by Republican propaganda.

I'll be checking with Sid on this, but I trust his reporting.

Rick,

Even if you're right, there's no reason for such a gratuitous cheap shot. I'm so sick of the nastiness from political junkies-right or left.

Another bug in my bonnet about why Republican propaganda seems to be accepted as gospel at this site. We need "decentralized and flexible" government programs, you say. New Deal programs were for the most part radically decentralized. Read the monograph BOLD RELIEF, for example; it was almost all administered locally. The problem with the Great Society, the reason the main War on Poverty program failed, was an obsession with "community control."

I'm not saying these programs are perfect, or any kind of template for what we need now. But it is very, very important in making policy judgments to have available accurate information about the past, not policized stereotypes.

I'll try to check back to continue the dialogue, but if anyone wants to discuss this directly I'm at perlstein@aol.com.

Rick