What's The Big Idea?
Do progressives need better ideas – or better campaigns?
By Tim Fernholz, Georgetown University
Wednesday July 19, 2006
After the 2002 midterm elections, progressives realized that they were in trouble. Progressive candidates weren’t winning elections, and they didn’t communicate their ideas successfully. So they looked to history, particularly at the conservative movement that was trouncing them, to see why the right had succeeded where the left had failed. The outcome was a new dedication to institution-building (which included the creation of the Center for American Progress and, soon after, Campus Progress) and a search for what it means to be a progressive. Many argue that the movement simply needs more effective political strategy rather than new ideas—if progressives were communicating their ideas more effectively they would see electoral success—while others believe that new, bold ideas are required.
The latest product of this discussion is Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, a quarterly publication showcasing progressive thought and debate at length, but without the reporting mission of The Nation or The New Republic. The founding editors are Clinton-Gore speechwriters Kenneth Baer and Andrei Cherny. In their opening editorial, Baer and Cherny announce their goal: to create a forum for bold ideas, not political strategies or policy proposals. They consciously work in the tradition of National Review founder William F. Buckley, who melded the diverse conservative interests of the 1950s into the beginnings of modern conservatism. Buckley announced in his first issue that the conservative "stands athwart history, yelling Stop." Cherny and Baer, on the other hand, proclaim they " stand athwart history and yell, Forward!"
But do progressives actually need new ideas? Writing about Democracy in the Los Angeles Times, Jonathan Chait argues that progressives don’t need to update their credo, but rather they need to improve the quality of their candidates. The ideas, such as supply-side economics, that drove the conservative revolution were less important, in the end, than demographic trends, conservative strategy, and the personal charisma of candidates like Ronald Reagan, Chait writes.
But Reagan didn’t just appeal to historically more liberal voters with his charm; he appealed to them because he had a coherent vision of American greatness. So Democracy is right that progressives need big new ideas. The public policies of the center-left welfare state we defend so dearly—those that drove Franklin Roosevelt’s progressive coalition—need to be updated to face the economic and political challenges of the 21st century, and the micro-initiatives of Bill Clinton need to be brought into a macro-philosophy. As Baer told Campus Progress, "We can get under the hood and we’ll fix education. These are all the notes, but where’s the music? Where’s the vision?" To convince voters to support progressives, you have to explain to them how progressivism is a coherent philosophy not just a collection of policies.
Cherny, Baer, and their contributors do not yet have what Baer calls a "transformative idea." But they do have new ways of applying progressive principles; in their first issue, "The Progressive Case for Military Service" criticizes the anti-military tendency of the left since the Vietnam War. "The Wealth of Neighborhoods" develops the economic trend of employee ownership at the intersection of public and private life. More ambitiously, law professor Jedediah Purdy, no stranger to big ideas, offers an interesting analysis of the "new biopolitics" that will challenge the world in the coming century and proposes a novel solution; Michael Signer offers a grand, if vague, vision of a progressive foreign policy without the moral embarrassment of realism or the failures of neo-conservatism. The journal is not without its false notes, though, particularly in a poor review of Peter Beinart’s “The Good Fight,” which seems to agree with everything Beinart writes about liberal foreign policy without being willing to admit it.
What does all this mean in the aggregate? For starters, Democracy is dealing with new challenges progressively, and eschewing mere defense of the past. But more importantly, they are correcting a key problem of liberalism: that it can become an empty faith, merely a technocratic series of good government programs. Americans want more, and this journal joins those who would reinvigorate what Michael Tomasky recently called "civic republicanism" in The American Prospect: the ideas of national greatness and service to a greater purpose than self-interest. Democracy is also re-engaging with another institution that ranks with the military in its centrality to the American identity: religion. It is the breadth of these ideas that will create a powerful symphony of progressivism.
William F. Buckley did not have a "transformative idea" when he started the National Review. He was simply motivated to rebuild conservatism as a political movement. But as the magazine grew, it developed the platforms and ideas that became the foundation of the movement. Hopefully Democracy will continue to be a center of debate. Strong ideas are as necessary as strong leaders: "[Progressives] need new [voter] targeting, new technology," Baer told Campus Progress. "But none of that matters if you don’t know what you’re saying when you get to their door."
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Comments
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Definately read, “The Progresive Case for Military Service.”
It makes many a good point abou the need for Left Leaning Support of Our Military
— Michael Radtke - Jul 19, 11:40 PM - #Great opinions about this new journal—and good to know it’s getting read. For those who think Democrats need better ideas on how to shape a coherent worldview on national security, we would love your engagement over at the Truman Project—where we are trying to work out and articulate the deep ideas that ground a progressive national security worldview—www.trumanproject.org
— Rachel Kleinfeld - Jul 21, 02:49 PM - #Whats great about the democracy journals is that they allow for dialogue. And maybe we do need better ideas, ideas that bring better clarity and coherency to progressivism. Institution building is much more than the way we communicate or how we frame the dialogue, effective progressive insitutions and infrastructure aims to permeate our ideas into broader societal legitimacy.
— Simeon Talley - Jul 21, 04:17 PM - #You guys could start out with socialism is dead.
Then you might consider why lowering taxes on the rich increases government revenues (the old supply side bugaboo is working. Now)
Once you get economics right – a booming economy is better for the poor than a government program. Then you can delve into policy.
Things like a strong military. Ridding the world of despots etc.
The closest Ds come to all that is Lieberman. Who the party now fights. I’m a mildly R and I would vote for him for pres.
— M. Simon - Jul 24, 07:09 PM - #