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FOIA Number: 2006-0458-F
FOIA
MARKER
This is not a textual record. This is used as an
administrative marker by the William J. Clinton
Presidential Library Staff.
Collection/Record Group:
Clinton Presidential Records
Subgroup/Office of Origin:
Communications
Series/Staff Member:
Don Baer
Subseries:
OA/ID Number:
13425
FolderlD:
Folder Title:
["Assessing the Condition of American Democracy" Jan. 7, 1996 (Binder)] [1]
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�Withdrawal/Redaction Sheet
Clinton Library
DOCUMENT NO.
AND TYPE
DATE
SUBJECT/TITLE
RESTRICTION
001. bio
RE: Dates of birth, home address, and telephone number (partial) (1
page)
12/18/1995
P6/b(6)
002. memo
Benjamin Barber to President Clinton; RE: January 7 meeting (2
pages)
12/21/1995
P5
COLLECTION:
Clinton Presidential Records
Communications
Don Baer
OA/Box Number:
13425
FOLDER TITLE:
["Assessing the Condition of American Democracy" Jan. 7, 1996 (Binder)] [1]
2006-0458-F
dbl266
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�1
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•JCLOStiRES FILED 0V£RS1ZF ATTA WNTS.
�Nicholas Lemann
Although this may f a l l into the category of things you do
f i r s t and then talk about, what I think what the President should
pursue i s some domestic equivalent of the "Powell doctrine." That
doctrine, as you'll recall, holds that the American military was
devastated by Vietnam because i t was given an unfulfillable mis*
sion, and then unfairly blamed (reviled, even) for the mission's
failure. The solution to the problem was to take on only missions
with a super-clear and almost certainly achievable purpose; and
this has worked, in the sense that without Grenada and Panama and
the Gulf War, you probably couldn't have gone into Haiti and Bosnia.
Domestically, the overwhelming political and policy
reality i s that people think government always f a i l s , and hence
are unwilling to accept the idea that i f the society has a problem, government should solve i t . I'd say the source of the idea i s
another of the overreachings of Lyndon Johnson, the war on
poverty, which was actually pretty successful but has been
portrayable in a retrospect as a failure because poverty wasn't
eliminated. So far in the Clinton Administration, what appears
from the outside to be the response to this issue i s to try to
push universal programs that don't bear a poverty/race stigma:
health care, the earned income tax credit, national service.
I'd suggest a different approach, which i s to take on
small missions with a near-certainty of succesB, rather than launching large programs that would appear to have a middle-class constituency to provide political cover. Example: building safe,
�Nicholas Lemann
page 2 of 2
2.
decent housing for the poor, which i s something that people in the
field have learned to do very well in the decades since the highr i s e housing projects were built. I f you can do a few carefully
selected things right, an4 i f they're the kind of things that produce visible, tangible, camera-friendly successes, then the whole
perception that government doesn't work w i l l begin to turn around,
with enormous good effects. Don't, on the other hand, highlight
domestic missions that are unlikely to produce visible successes
(e.g. empowerment zones). The crucial variable isn't whether i t ' s
a poverty program or a middle-class program, i t ' s whether i t ' s an
undertaking that's likely to succeed in an obvious way.
The Democrats are always going to be seen as the party of
government, so the future of the party l i e s in being seen as the
party that can make government work, and solve problems that
everybody cares about.
�DEC 19 '95 13:59
P.2/4
/
Andrew Delbanco
Thoughts on the State of the Union
The key phrase of the 90s seems to be individual responsibility. The President rightly
stressed this theme during his first campaign and early in his administration, and thereby
touched a nerve with the American people, whose culture has always been about self-reliance.
Healthy expressions of this creed have included entrepreneurship, independence, irreverent
humor, and suspicion of any auftority that is not rooted in democratic consent.
More recently, however, many political leaders have tapped a darker motive that
animates some of the talk about individual responsibility: it has become a coded phrase for
expressing resentment at what many Americans see as a permanent, parasitic "underclass"
that is sapping the moral and economic vitality of our country.
The trouble with- and the vulnerability of*- this Republican mantra is that it has lost
its connection to the other side of what has been called the American "civil religion": the
acknowledgment of a collective responsibility through which we all share in the happiness
and sorrow of one another.
Let me offer a brief historical reflection, then, on how liberals can restore the crucial
balance between individual and collective re^nsibility. This is not a political strategy for
the moment. It is the balance upon which democracy depends.
1
The great figure in American history who understood this problem of balancing
individual with collective responsibility was Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln declared repeatedly
during his career that he "hated" slavery. But he never demontzed the southerner or
pretended that the responsibility for this crime against humanity was somehow local or to be
limited to one region. In his Second Inauguial Address, Lincoln spoke of God bringing *to
both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offtence came."
He understood that the fates of all Americans— slaves and slaveowners, northerners and
southerners— were as inextricable as the states of the Union itself.
Lincoln was able to speak this way because he grasped and beautifully expressed
America's religious tradition: the Judeo-Christian tradition that compels us to understand evil
as existing both outside and within the self. He understood the need tofightevil as well as
the capacity of all human beings to foster and abet it within themselves in the form of
indifference.
Liberals need to regain this balance. To do so- astiiePresident sensed when he
sounded the "New Covenant" theme at the start of his first campaign- they must not cede the
insights and language of religion to the Republican right.
Let me now briefly suggest how liberals might think of the religious tradition in a way
that confirms rather than threatens liberal values.
When our culture began, all Americans had a story through which they tried to think
about the dilemma of individual vs. collective responsibility. Made vivid by preachers and
�DEC 19 '95 13:59
' p.3/4
Andrew Delbanco
page 2 of 3
primers, it was the Bible story of the Fallfromthe Garden of Eden- in which Adam and
Eve, tempted by the serpent, fellfromGod's grace. At the center of this tale (as it was
interepreted by Christian theologians) was the devil- a seductive monster who infrised his
insatiable pride, envy, and rancor into the impressionable mind of man.
The moral genius of this story was its insight that the tempted share responsibility
with the tempter. It maintained that evil exists as an objective force in the world; but it also
insisted that every person is responsible when evil infrltrates into himself. It made a
connection between the evil without (the serpent) and the evil within (sin) - a connection that
explained human sinfulness, but did not acme it. This stoiy fiunished the basis of what we
now call "Judeo-Chri.stian" ideas of good, evil, and responsibility. Satan was the
embodiment of pride, a creature culpably unable to imagine the world from any perspective
other than his own. Consumed withrage,he felt victimized by God; and he took his
implacable vengeance on man.
Today, after theriseof science, in a culture where pride and ambition have become
virtues rather than sins, it might seem strange to take this story seriously. Yet it remains the
best story we have that enables us to hate evil when wc observe it, while at the same time
recognizing it within ourselves. It makes it possible, as we stare into the undifferentiated
world of the TV screen, to be repulsed by the fervor of the tmorist and the indifference of
the thug, while at the same time recognizing our capacity for fury and callousness in our own
lives.
With the moral power of this story in mind, the poet Wallace Stevens wrote that "the
death of Satan was a tragedy for the imagination." This point is confirmed today by bodi the
fundamentalistrightand the secular left, each of which has lost the basic insight that was
once expressed through the symbolic idea of Satan. On therightthere is, to be sure, lots of
talk about evil and the devil and God. But this is not the intimate devil of Genesis or St.
Augustine or Paradise Lost, who shocks us with his resemblance to ourselves. The
fundamentalist devil is, instead, remote- easy to believe in because he stands apart from the
righteous, who discover him in the abortionist, the immigrant, the welfare cheat, but never in
themselves. People on therightare quick to preach responsibility to the tempted- to the
absentee father, the welfare mother, and their bereft child. But they have litde to say alxMJt
the responsibility of a society that leaves to its children a choice between virtuous poverty and
going to work for the drugdealer whose siren song is the only credible promise in the blasted
garden of the ghetto.
Conmientators on the left, who tend to be less comfortable with explicidy religious
language, nevertheless have plenty to say about temptation. Their devil is "the system'—
with its false allures and blandishments. They are more comfortable talking of rehabilitation
than punishment, quicker to call for access to education than for standarxls of judgment. The
left sees the serpent, but not the sinner. Therightsees the sinner, but not the serpent.
For those who hunger for a more satisfying vision- a liberal vision— of our problems
and possibilities, it is worth recalling that the political center in America has often been
galvanized by religious leaders (Walter Rauscbenbusch, Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Luther
King) who bring to public debate a powerful sense of the presence of sin both without and
within ourselves. These progressive religious thinkers recognized that the only Amire for our
society is one in which we accept responsibility for ourselves and for each other. They
understood that without this balance, which is best expressed in the Genesis story, we are
headed for a world like that made vivid in the recent movie, Pu^ Fiction-- where the poor
�DEC 19 '95 14:00
P.4/4
Andrew Delbanco
page 3 o f 3
make no distinction between killing a man and ordering a cheeseburger, and where the rich
dissipate in compounds of privilege, pretending that they bear no responsibility for those who
live outside the wall.
Consider the horrific events in Oklahoma City and on 125th Street in Harlem. Each
of these crimes- these evils- involved the acts of individuals who can never be excused or
exonerated. At the same time, each took place in an atmosphere of sanctioned ragewhereby an insidious enemy (the Federal Govemment in Oklahoma City; whites and Jews in
Harlem) had been identified by politicians, radio hosts, and even religious leaders, as the
targetable source of pain and injustice.
These events, in other words, involve individual and collective responsibility. They
are national tragedies as well as individual crimes. They should certainly make us resolve to
hold our citizens accountable for themselves; buttiieyshould also alert us to the fri^tful
danger that threatens our society when the sense of mutual connection is severed- when more
and more Americans seem to be searching for persons, institutions, or groups on which they
can blame their own distress. In short, these events were manifestations of evil that most
Americans regard as far-away- worth a shudder or a sigh as they are replayed on the
television screen. But the difficult moral challenge— the paradox that Liiacoln understood— is
that such events also bespeak our collective responsibility. They remind us with terrible
clarity of the destructive power of words, and of indifference to the lives of those who seem
remote from us.
Americans not only recognize that involvement with the Kves of others is a
commendable virtue. They hunger for this involvement, and they know that it is what makes
life worth living. The President tried to touch this current of altruism with his National
Service program— and I believe he should push forward in that direction despite the anti-biggovemment chant of the Republicans.
Yes, Americans are uneasy about the drift toward a bureacratic state which
conservatives have succeeded in portraying as a form of creeping socialism, by which
individuals are coddled and relieved of respon^bility for theinsclves. But tiiey are also
appalled by the prospect of a return to the laissez-faire brutality of the 19th century, in which
society recognized virtually no responsibility for its individual citizens- in which widows and
v^erans and children were left to the mercy of fortune. The best way to speak about tiie
mutual imperatives of individual and collective responsibility is through the language of
religion— not of any specific denomination or doctiine, but through the broad Judeo-Christian
language of virtue and sin. If the President uses this language with due caution but with real
conviction he will, I believe, touch the American heart.
Andrew Delbanco
Columbia University
�ASSESSING THE CONDITION OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
THE WHITE HOUSE
JANUARY 7,
1996.^^^
9SDEC22 P8: 02
CONTENTS
Tab 1
Cover Memo
Tab 2
B r i e f B i o g r a p h i e s of
Tab 3
Bruce Ackerman
Tab 4
Benjamin Barber
Tab 5
Stephen C a r t e r
Tab
r-
0
Alan Ehrenhalt
Tab 7
Amitai Etzioni
Tab 8
Henry Louis Gates
Tab 9
Amy Gutmann
Tab 10
Charles Johnson
Tab 11
R a n d a l l Kennedy
Tab 12
Jane Mansbridge
Tab 13
Robert Putnam
Tab 14
Additional Materials
Tab 15
Additional Materials
�UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND AT COLLEGE PARK
INSTITUTE FOR PHILOSOPHY AND PUBLIC POLICY
December 21, 19 95
MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT
FROM:
BILL GALSTON
SUBJECT:
SCHOLARS' DINNER
On January 7, 1996, you w i l l meet w i t h a d i v e r s e group o f s c h o l a r s
i n t h e r e s i d e n c e f o r d i n n e r and c o n v e r s a t i o n . The purpose o f t h e
evening i s t o a s s i s t i n t h e process o f t h i n k i n g b o t h about t h e
S t a t e o f t h e Union and about some o f t h e themes and ideas t h a t you
might choose t o emphasize throughout 1996 and beyond.
The g e n e r a l r u b r i c o f t h e evening w i l l be "Assessing t h e C o n d i t i o n
of American Democracy." P a r t i c i p a n t s w i l l come armed w i t h i n s i g h t s
from
their
respective disciplines--law,
political
science,
l i t e r a t u r e , and p h i l o s o p h y , among o t h e r s .
Some w i l l
offer
diagnoses; o t h e r s w i l l advance p r e s c r i p t i o n s as w e l l .
The proposed format f o r the evening i s modelled ( w i t h t h e necessary
adjustments) on l a s t year's s c h o l a r s ' meeting a t Camp David.
S h o r t l y a f t e r we a r e seated f o r d i n n e r , I w i l l c a l l t h e group t o
o r d e r and d e f i n e our m i s s i o n .
I f you wish, you w i l l make some
b r i e f welcoming remarks. I w i l l then ask each p a r t i c i p a n t t o make
a s h o r t opening statement; I w i l l s t r i c t l y m o n i t o r and e n f o r c e t h e
5-minute t i m e l i m i t .
A f t e r t h e opening statements a r e completed,
you w i l l then have t h e o p p o r t u n i t y t o pose q u e s t i o n s t o t h e
p a r t i c i p a n t s and d i r e c t t h e c o n v e r s a t i o n i n any way you see f i t .
Of course, you w i l l determine how l o n g t h e c o n v e r s a t i o n proceeds
and when t h e evening ends.
The p a r t i c i p a n t s i n c l u d e :
P r o f e s s o r Bruce Ackerman
Yale Law School
P r o f e s s o r Benjamin Barber, D i r e c t o r
The Walt Whitman Center f o r t h e C u l t u r e and P o l i t i c s o f Democracy
P r o f e s s o r Stephen C a r t e r
Yale Law School
SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS •
COLLEGE PARK, MARYLAND 20742 •
(.301) 40.S-4753 •
FAX: (301) 314-9346
�Alan E h r e n h a l t
E x e c u t i v e E d i t o r , Governing Magazine
Amitai E t z i o n i , U n i v e r s i t y Professor
The George Washington U n i v e r s i t y
P r o f e s s o r Henry Louis Gates, J r .
Department o f Afro-American S t u d i e s , Harvard U n i v e r s i t y
P r o f e s s o r Amy
Gutmann
Dean o f t h e F a c u l t y ,
Princeton University
P r o f e s s o r Charles Johnson
Department o f E n g l i s h , U n i v e r s i t y of Washington
P r o f e s s o r R a n d a l l Kennedy
Harvard Law School
P r o f e s s o r Jane Mansbridge
Department of P o l i t i c a l Science, N o r t h w e s t e r n U n i v e r s i t y
P r o f e s s o r Robert Putnam, D i r e c t o r
Center f o r I n t e r n a t i o n a l A f f a i r s , Harvard U n i v e r s i t y
The a t t a c h e d b r i e f i n g book i n c l u d e s b r i e f b i o g r a p h i e s of t h e
p a r t i c i p a n t s ( a t Tab 2 ) , w r i t i n g s from each of them (Tabs 3 t h r o u g h
13), and a few a d d i t i o n a l submissions (Tabs 14 and 1 5 ) .
�DEC 19 '95 10:58
-
^•'^
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: BRUCE ACKERMAN
Bruce Ackenaan i s one of America's leading political philosophers
and constitutional lawyers. His most important works are Social
Justice in the Liberal State (1980) and We the People (1991). He
has also written many books on concrete problems ranging from
housing policy to environmental law to international relations.
His last book in this genre, I s NAFTA Constitutional?, was
published last month by Harvard University Press.
At the same time, he tries to serve the public as a lawyer in
selected cases. At present, he i s lead counsel with Lloyd Cutler
in a lawsuit, brought on behalf of David Skaggs and other
Representatives, that challenges the constitutionality of new
House Rules requiring a supermajority vote for income tax
increases.
Mr. Ackerman i s Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science
at Yale. He i s spending this year as a Fellow at the Woodrow
Wilson Center in Washington D.C.
�BENJAMIN R BARBER
Benjamin R. Barber holds the Walt \\Tiitman Chair of Political Science at Rutgers University,
where he is Director of the Walt Whitman Center for the Culture and Politics of Democracy,
jie is also the Executive Director of the New Jersey Academy for Community Service and
ervice Learning and a member of the Governor's Commission on National and Community
Service. He occupied the French-American Foundation's Chair of American Civilization at the
Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris for the academic year 1991-92.
Barber brings an abiding concern for democracy and citizenship to issues of politics, culture,
education, civil society and the arts both in America and abroad, and consults regularly with
political and educational leaders in the United States and Europe, while serving on the
advisory boards of a broad spectrum of scholarly and civic organizations including Active
Citizenship Today, the Center for Living Democracy, American Health Decisions, the World
Without War Council, the UNCF/Ford Foundation Community Service Partnership Project,
Moscow Interlegal and the ASCD Urban Advisory Board.
•
Barber's ten books include the classic STRONG DEMOCRACY (1984), with translations in
German, Turkish, Polish and other languages, as well as A N ARISTOCRACY OF EVERYONE:
THE POLITICS OF EDUCATION AND THE FUTURE OF AMERICA (1992) (published in
France as L'EXCELLENCE ET L'EGALITE); THE CONQUEST OF POLITICS (1988); and
the novel MARRIAGE VOICES pubHshed by Simon and Schuster in 1981. With Patrick
Watson, he wrote the prize-winning CBC/PBS ten-part television series THE STRUGGLE FOR
DEMOCRACY, published by Little, Brown. His latest book is JIHAD VERSUS MCWORLD
(Times Books, 1995), a critical study of the corrosive effects of tribalism and markets on
democracy, based on his acclaimed and widely-reprinted 1992 Atlantic Magazine cover essay.
jPBS's Frontline is producing a television special based on this book.
From 1973 to 1983 Barber edited the international quarterly POLITICAL THEORY. He
currently serves on its editorial board, as well as the editorial boards of THE LEADERSHIP
QUARTERLY, THE CIVIC ARTS REVIEW, COMMON PURPOSES, EUROPEAN JOURNAL
OF POLITICS, AGORA, and THE RESPONSIVE COMMUNITY. He writes a regular feature
("Letter from America") for the British international journal GOVERNMENT AND
OPPOSITION, on whose editorial executive board he also sits. He has been a Guggenheim
Fellow (1980-81), a senior Fulbright Research Scholar (Essex University, 1976-1977), a visiting
fellow at the New York Institute of Humanities (1980-81), and an American Council of Learned
Societies Senior Fellow (1984-85). He was a visiting professor at Princeton University in 198687, and was awarded an honorary doctor of laws by Grinnell College in 1985. He holds an M.A.
and Ph.D. from Harvard University and a certificate from the London School of Economics.
His essays appear in a broad range of scholarly and popular journals and magazines, including
HARPER'S, THE ATLANTIC, DAEDALUS, THE NEW YORK TIMES, DISSENT, THE NEW
REPUBLIC, THE LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS, SALMAGUNDI, THE NATION, ETHICS,
THE AMERICAN PROSPECT, POLITICAL THEORY, SOCIETY/TRANSACTION, THE
BOSTON REVIEW, and THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW.
For television, in addition to THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY, Barber has contributed to
and appeared on THE A,B,C OF GREEK DEMOCRACY and GREEK FIRE (for Channel Four.K.); the Close-Up Foundation's CITIZEN STORIES; and two education specials, TOM
'PAINE, and the three-part PBS special THE AMERICAN PROMISE.
�DEC 21 '95 1 2 : I B
FROM YflLE-LPU SCHOOL 384
PRGE.001
Post-It" brand fax transmittal memo 7671 » oi p«g«s >
Co.
Dspt.
STEPHEN L. CARTER
Rinpraphical Data
Srepher L Carter is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale, where he has taught
since 1982. He has become known for his provocative work on controversial subjects.
His best-known book is The Culture nf Disbelief- Hnw Our I^pal and Political Cultures
Trivialize ReliginiLs Devotion (1993), hailed by critics as one of the best books on religion in
decades, which became the first book by a non-theologian to win the prestigious LouisvilleCirawemeyer Award in Religion. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed Reflectioas
of an Affirmative Action Rahv (1991) and The Confirmation Mess: Cleaninp T?P the Federal
Appointment Process (1994).
He is currently at work on a series of books about elements of good character in a democracy.
The first book in that series, Integrity, will be published by Basic Books early in 1996.
Also in 1996, Harvard University Press will publish Professor Carter's Massey Lectures, I M
Dissent of the Governed: A Meditation on Law. Religion, and Ix)va]tY.
In addition to his dozens of articles on constimtional law and other subjects in law reviews.
Professor Carter is a frequent contributor to such publications as The New York Times. Ili£
New Yorker. The Wall Street Journal, and Th^? New Rgpyblic
Professor Carter was born in Washington, D.C, and educated in the public schools of
Washinglxjn, New York City, and Ithaca, New York. He was graduatedfiromStanford
Universit:' and the Yale Law School. Following law school, he served as a law clerk to the
late Supreme Coun Justice Thurgood Marshall. He practiced law briefly before joining the
faculty al Yale, where he teaches subjects as diverse as constimtional law, contracts, and
inteilecmal property.
Professor Caner is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In the fall of
1994, he was named one of 50 future leaders of America by lime magazine. He has also
received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Seabury-Wesiem Theological
Seminar}'.
Professor Carter and his wife live with their two children near New Haven, Connecticut.
They attend an Episcopal church.
[A resume and list of publications are available upon request.]
Rev. 7/95
^
�Withdrawal/Redaction Marker
Clinton Library
DOCUMENT NO.
AND TYPE
001. bio
SIIB,IECT/1 r i I E
D.VTE
RE: Dates of birth, home address, and telephone number (partial) (1
page)
12/18/1995
RESTRICTION
P6/b(6)
COLLECTION:
Clinton Presidential Records
Communications
Don Baer
OA/Box Number:
13425
FOLDER TITLE:
["Assessing the Condition of American Democracy" Jan. 7, 1996 (Binder)] [1]
2006-0458-F
dbl266
RESTRICTION CODES
Pre.si(lential Records Act -144 U.S.C. 2204(a)|
Freedom of Information Act - |S U.S.C. 552(b) |
PI National Security CiassiHed Information 1(a)(1) of the PRA|
P2 Relating to the appointment to Federal office 1(a)(2) of the PRA|
P3 Release would violate a Federal statute 1(a)(3) of the PRA|
P4 Release would disclo.se trade secrets or confidential commercial or
financial information 1(a)(4) of the PRA|
P5 Release would disclose confidential advice between the President
and his advisors, or between such advi.sors |a)(5) of the PRA]
P6 Release would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of
personal privacy 1(a)(6) of the PRA]
b(l) National security classified information 1(b)(1) of the FOIA]
b(2) Release would disclose internal personnel rules and practices of
an agency 1(b)(2) of the FOIA]
b(3) Release would violate a Federal statute 1(b)(3) of the FOIA]
b(4) Release would disclo.se trade secrets or confidential or financial
information 1(b)(4) of the FO!A|
b(6) Release would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of
personal privacy 1(b)(6) of the FOIA]
b(7) Release would disclose information compiled for law enforcement
purposes 1(b)(7) of the FOIA)
b(8) Release would disclose information concerning the regulation of
financial institutions 1(b)(8) of the FOIA]
b(9) Release would disclose geological or geophysical information
concerning wells 1(b)(9) of the FOIA]
C. Closed in accordance with restrictions contained in donor's deed
of gift.
PRM. Personal record misfile defined in accordance with 44 U.S.C.
2201(3).
RR. Document will be reviewed upon request.
�202 B62 2032
UJUtKNlNb
P.01
Alan Ehrenhalt
Post-tt* Fax Note
^*
7671
\!)( f (n^--dr\
CoTDifX.
Born:
(b)(6)
•
^'
1?)
liV'^Wf,
Education:
University of Chicago High School, 1960-54.
Brandeis Dniversity, B.A. i n Psychology, 1968.
Columbia University, M.S. i n Journalism, 1969.
Harvard University, Nieman Fellow, 1977-78.
u. of C a l i f . , Berkeley, V i s i t i n g Scholar, 1987-88.
Professional Career:
Associated Press/ Chicago, reporter, 1968, 1969
Washington star, congressional reporter, 1979-80
Congressional Quarterly, p o l i t i c a l w r i t e r , 1969-75
p o l i t i c a l editor, 1975-79, 1980-88
Governing Magazine, p o l i t i c a l editor, 1988-89
deputy editor, 1989-90
executive editor since 1991
Writing:
Author of The Lost City, piiblished 1995, Basic Books
The United States of Aabition, published 1991, Times Books
Writer of Congress and the Country, a bi-weekly column that appeared
Ln congressional Quarterly from 1981 to 1988. This column was awarded the 1983
Everett McKinley Dirkseh award f o r distinguished reporting of Congress.
Creator and editor of the f i r s t four editions of P o l i t i c s i n America,
i biennial reference book p r o f i l i n g a l l 535 members of the House and Senate
ind the places they represent.
'amily: Married t o Suzanne de Lesseps of Opelousas, La.
Two daughters: Elizabeth, born , (b)(6) ; Jennie, born L..(bji6r]
.ddress: Home:
Office: Governing Magazine
2300 N St. NW
Washington D.C. 20037
(202) 862-8802
Clinton Library Photocopy
TOTftL
P.01
�AMITAI ETZIONI
Dr. A m i t a i E t z i o n i i s t h e f i r s t U n i v e r s i t y P r o f e s s o r of The George
Washington U n i v e r s i t y .
He i s t h e 1995 p a s t - p r e s i d e n t o f t h e American
Sociological Association.
I n 1987-1989, he served as t h e Thomas Henry
C a r r o l l Ford F o u n d a t i o n P r o f e s s o r a t t h e Harvard Business School.
He
served as S e n i o r A d v i s e r i n t h e White House f r o m 1979-1980.
He was
guest s c h o l a r a t t h e B r o o k i n g s I n s t i t u t i o n i n 1978-1979. For 20 years
(1958-1978), he served as P r o f e s s o r of S o c i o l o g y a t Columbia U n i v e r s i t y ;
p a r t of t h e t i m e , as Chairman of t h e department.
He
founded
and was
the f i r s t
p r e s i d e n t ('89-'90) of t h e
i n t e r n a t i o n a l S o c i e t y f o r t h e Advancement of Socio-Economics and i s now
an Honorary F e l l o w .
He i s t h e e d i t o r of The Responsive Community:
R i g h t s and R e s p o n s i b i l i t i e s , a communitarian q u a r t e r l y . I n 1991 t h e
press s t a r t e d
referring
t o Dr.
Etzioni
as t h e "guru" of t h e
communitarian movement.
He i s t h e a u t h o r o f f o u r t e e n books, i n c l u d i n g A
Comparative
A n a l y s i s o f Complex O r g a n i z a t i o n s , Modern Orcranizations. P o l i t i c a l
U n i f i c a t i o n . The A c t i v e S o c i e t y , Genetic F i x . S o c i a l Problems,
An
Immodest Agenda, and C a p i t a l C o r r u p t i o n . The Moral Dimension: Toward a
New Economics, and most r e c e n t l y . The S p i r i t of Community: R i g h t s ,
R e s p o n s i b i l i t i e s and t h e Communitarian Agenda (Crown Books, 1993).
Dr. E t z i o n i ' s achievements
i n t h e s o c i a l s c i e n c e s have been
acknowledged by s e v e r a l f e l l o w s h i p s , i n c l u d i n g those g i v e n by t h e S o c i a l
Science Research C o u n c i l (1960-61), The Center f o r Advanced Study i n t h e
B e h a v i o r a l Sciences (1965-1966), and The Guggenheim Foundation (196869) .
Outside of academia. Dr. E t z i o n i ' s v o i c e i s f r e q u e n t l y heard i n t h e
l e a d i n g news media, i n a r t i c l e s i n p u b l i c a t i o n s such as The New York
Times, The Washington Post and The Wall S t r e e t J o u r n a l and i n
appearances on network t e l e v i s i o n .
He founded t h e Center f o r P o l i c y
corporation dedicated to public policy,
d i r e c t o r since i t s inception.
Research, a n o t - f o r - p r o f i t
i n 1968, and has been i t s
In
1976,
t h e American R e v o l u t i o n B i c e n t e n n i a l A d m i n i s t r a t i o n
accorded Dr. E t z i o n i a c e r t i f i c a t e of a p p r e c i a t i o n f o r h i s o u t s t a n d i n g
c o n t r i b u t i o n t o our n a t i o n ' s b i c e n t e n n i a l commemoration.
A 1982 s t u d y ranked Dr. E t z i o n i as t h e l e a d i n g e x p e r t of 30 who
made "major c o n t r i b u t i o n s t o p u b l i c p o l i c y i n t h e p r e c e d i n g decade."
He was awarded an h o n o r a r y degree by The U n i v e r s i t y o f Utah i n 1991 and
by Colorado C o l l e g e and C o n n e c t i c u t C o l l e g e i n 1994.
ae2\shrtvita.c
�12/21/95
13:41
©617 496 2871
AFRO AM STUDIES
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was born and raised in Mineral County, West
Virginia. In his junior year, at Yale University, he was elected to Phi Beta
Kappa. He graduated summa cum laude from Yale, as a Scholar of the
House in History. He was a London correspondent for Time Magazine
before receiving his Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the
University of Cambridge. He writes frequently for such publications as
I M New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, and I t e New Republic :
his books include Figures in Black. The Signifying Monkey (for which he
received an American Book Award), Loose Canons, and Colored People : A
Mennoir, which received several major awards. He is the W.E.B. Du Bois
Professor of the Humanities, Chairman of the Department of AfroAmerican Studies, and Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for AfroAmerican Research at Harvard University. In March, his next book. The
EuiUEfi of lh£ Ra££, co-authored with Cornel West, will be published by
Knopf.
12034
�Amy Gutmann
Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor
of Politics
Amy Gutmann is Dean of the Faculty and was
the founding director of the University Center for
Human Values and of the Program in Ethics and
Public Affairs. Among her publications are
Democratic Education, Liberal Equality, Democracy and
the Welfare State, Ethics and Politics, and most
recently. Democracy and Disagreement. Her articles
have appeared in Philosophy & Public Affairs, Political
Theory, Ethics and other scholarly journals. Her
teaching and research interests include moral and
political philosophy, practical ethics, education, and
public affairs. She serves on the Executive Boards of
the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics
and the Center for Policy Research in Education,
and has held fellowships from the American
Council of Learned Societies, the National
Endowment for the Humanities and the Rockefeller
Foundation. She was Tanner Lecturer at Stanford
University for 1994-95. She was a Visitor at the
Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and
Visiting Professor at Harvard University. She
received a B.A. magna cum laude from HarvardRadcliffe College, received her M.Sc. from the
London School of Economics, and Ph.D. from
Harvard University.
�.UHNSUN
Dec IB'yb
2U:44 No.UUb P.U2
1
Charles Johnson
Condensed Biography
12/1/95
Charles Johnson i s the author of three novels Faith and the Good
Thing ( 1 9 7 4 ) ,
Oxherding T a l e ( 1 9 8 2 ) ,
and Middle P a s s a g e ( 1 9 9 0 ) ; a
collection of short stories, The Sorcerer's Apprentice (1986), a
work o f a e s t h e t i c s , B e i n g a n d R a c e : B l a c k W r i t i n g S i n c e 1970
(1988), and two collections of comic art, Black Humor (1970) and
Half-Past Nation Time (1972). As a cartoonist and j o u r n a l i s t in
the early 1970s, he published over 1000 drawings in national
publications.
Johnson received the 1990 National Book Award for Middle Passage
(he was the f i r s t African-American male to win t h i s prize since
Ralph E l l i s o n in 1953). Oxherding Tale was awarded the 1983
Washington State Govenor's Award for Literature; Sorcerer's
Apprentice was one of f i v e f i n a l i s t s for the 1987 PEN/Faulkner
Award, and Being and Race won a 1989 Govenor's Award for
Literature. He was named in a survey conducted by the University
of Southern C a l i f o r n i a to be one of the ten best short story
writers in America, and his short f i c t i o n i s much anthologized,
including on the Internet.
He has written over 20 screenplays, among them "Booker" (1985),
which received the international Prix Jeunesse Award and a 1985
Writers Guild Award for "outstanding s c r i p t in the t e l e v i s i o n
category of children's shows." That show, along with "Charlie
Smith and the F r i t t e r Tree" (.Visions, PBS, 1978), now appear on
the Disney channel. He was one of two writer-producers for "Up
and Coming" (KCET, 1981), and e a r l i e r created, hosted, and coproduced "Charlie's Pad" (1970), a PBS how-to-draw s e r i e s that
ran nationally for a decade in the U.S. and Canada.
He
has published
44 r e v i e w s
i n The New York Times,
Los Angeles
Times, The Washington Post as well as other major newspapers and
published numerous c r i t i c a l a r t i c l e s . He has also written an
introduction for the commemorative edition for E l l i s o n ' s
I n v i s i b l e Man, has completed an introduction for the Oxford Mark
Twain, and i s drawing a cartoon feature " L i t C r i t s " for Quarterly
Black Review. He has served as a f i c t i o n judge for the Pulitzer
Prize, National Book Award, PEN/Faulkner, Los Angeles Times Book
Prize, and i s also a nominator for the MacArthur fellowships.
Professor Johnson has granted 129 interviews for American and
foreign papers, radio, and local television, and for Nigeria and
Singapore v i a USIA. He i s also co-director of the "Blue Phoenix
Kung Fu Club," a Seattle martial-arts school.
Johnson has received both a National Endowment for the Arts grant
(1979) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (1986).
Professor Johnson has lectured in 7 countries (eastern Europe,
Asia, Spain and Portugal) for the US Information Agency and i s a
regular speaker at American campuses. He has delivered 171
lectures and readings. Three books about his work are presently
being prepared, one by Dr. Jonathan L i t t l e (Alverno College), and
�JUHN^TJ]sr-
I LL: 12Ubb2bb5yi
;
Dec
l^'^b
2U : 4 b
NO .UUb
K .U5
2
two
one c r i t i c a l study, one anthology of essays
by Dr.
Rudolph Byrd (Emory University). Afri can-American Review vii'i^
devote i t s f a l l , 1996 issue to his work, which has also been the
subject of a special session of the Modern Language Association
(1991 ).
A former director of the creative writing program at the
University of Washington, he holds an endowed chair, the Pollock
Professorship for Excellence in English (the f i r s t chair in
writing at UW), and currently teaches fiction. Since 1978 he has
served as fiction editor for the Seattle Review. In 1995 he
received an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from Southern
I l l i n o i s University, and in 1994 an honorary Doctor of Arts
degree from Northwestern. He sponsors the "Marie Clair Davis
Award in Creative Writing," given to a secondary student at
Evanston Township High School. And his aimer mater, SIU,
administers the "Charles Johnson Award for Fiction and Poetry," a
nationwide competition for college students inaugerated in 1994.
�Randall Kennedy graduated from Princeton U n i v e r s i t y (1977),
attended B a l l i o l College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and
received h i s law degree from Yale Law School (1982). He
served as a law c l e r k f o r Judge J. Skelly Wright and f o r
J u s t i c e Thurgood Marshall before j o i n i n g the f a c u l t y of the
Harvard Law School. At Harvard, Professor Kennedy teaches
courses i n c o n t r a c t s and i n race r e l a t i o n s law and c o n t r i b utes t o a wide range of p u b l i c a t i o n s i n c l u d i n g the Harvard
Law Review, the Yale Law Journal. The A t l a n t i c , The New Rep u b l i c . and The Nation.
�Jane J . Mansbridge
Jane Mansbridge i s P r o f e s s o r o f t h e A r t s and Sciences i n t h e
Department o f P o l i t i c a l Science, Northwestern U n i v e r s i t y .
She i s
the a u t h o r o f many books and a r t i c l e s f o c u s i n g on i s s u e s such as
feminism, p o l i t i c a l p a r t i c i p a t i o n , and t h e r o l e s o f s e l f - i n t e r e s t ,
p u b l i c - s p i r i t e d n e s s , and d e l i b e r a t i o n i n democratic p o l i t i c s .
A
member o f t h e American Academy o f A r t s and Sciences, she i s t h e
r e c i p i e n t o f numerous awards and f e l l o w s h i p s . P r o f e s s o r Mansbridge
r e c e i v e d a B.A. from W e l l e s l e y C o l l e g e and a Ph.D. from Harvard
University.
�R O B E R T D.
PUTNAM
Robert D. Putnam, Clarence Dillon Professor oflntemational Affairs and Director of the Center
for Intemational Affairs, is a specialist in comparative govemment and intemational relations.
He served previously as chainnan of Harx-ard's Department of Govemment, as Associate Dean of
the Faculty of Ans and Sciences, and as Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Govemment.
He is the author or co-author of more than thirty scholarly articles and seven books published in
eight languages, including Beliefs of Poliiicians (1973); Comparative Study of Political Elites
(1976); Bureaucrats and Politicians in Western Democracies (1981); Hanging Together: The
Seven-Power Summits (1984; published in English, Gennan. Japanese, and Italian); Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (1993; published in English. Italian, Polish, and
Spanish); and Double-Edged Diplomacy: International Bargaining and Domestic Politics
(1993). Raised in a small town in the Midwest, Professor Putnam graduated from Swarthmore
College with Highest Honors in 1963, attended Balliol College. Oxford, and in 1970 received his
Ph.D. with distinction from Yale University. He has received honorary degrees from Swarthmore College (1990) and Stockholm University (1993). He taught at the University of Michigan
for more than a decade, and served on the staff of the U.S. National Security Council at the
White House, before coming to Har\'ard as professor of govemment in 1979. A recipient of numerous awards and scholarly honors and a consultant to various governments and intemational
organizations, he is a Fellow of the .American Academy of Arts and Sciences, where he directs a
major interdisciplinary investigation of "Social Capital and Public Affairs." His award-winning
book. Making Democracy Work, has been lauded by the A^eu' York Times as "a classic" and
praised by THE ECONOMIST as "a great work of social science, worthy to rank alongside de Tocqueville. Pareto and Weber." His cunent research, which also has been commended in a score of
editorials and op-ed pieces in the last year, focuses on the revitalization of American democracy.
�DEC 19 '95 10:58
Crediting the Voters
A New Beginning for
Campaign Finance
Bruce Ackerman
•IP A TThenAincricaivsregisterto vote, they should be issued a credit
\ / \ / card by a special public company—call it the Patriot card and
V V color itred,white, and blue. This card will become the basis
of campaign finance.
Suppose each voter's card were automatically credited with a $10
balance for the 1996 presidential election. To gain access to this red-whiteand-blue money, candidates shoxild be obliged to demonstrate significanl
popular support by gathering an appropriate niunber of voter signatures.
In exchange for these signatures, the Patriot company would open an
account that granted the candidate an initial balance of red-white-andblue money—say, one million dollars for presidential aspirants. Candidates could then spend their initial stake on a series of advertisements
toamvinMPatriotholderatobansfermore
led'white-and-blue money to them. Some
caz\didateft will, of course, soon see ttwir
initial Patriot balance ahrink to zaro; othets
wUl generate tens of mUlions as the campaign proceeds.
Underttvissystem, only led-white-andblue money may be used tofinancepolitical
campaigns. The use of greenbacks would
be treated as a fbim of cozzuption aimllar to
the use of greenbacks to buy votes.
during the age of Andrew Jackson. W8»tt>e
abolition of properly requirements for
voting. The secozid devebpment, the secret
ballot oame a haltceiUury latec Before this
reform, people could buy your vote arid
hold you to your bargain by watching you
at Qie polling place. Even if you refused a
bribe> you were subject to retaliation from
your employer or other rich folk. Only with
the rias of the eeoet ballot, in d\e late
nirtfteeith century, did Americans begin to
build a political sphere dut was insudated
fromti\einequalities of the market
Reforming Rejorm?
Since then, we have been trying to take
A demxnatic maricet sodety^ mustcoivthe
r\ext step. Just as the nineteenth century
ftont a basic tenskxn between its ideal of
made
it tough to buy votes, the twentieth
equal citizenship and the really of market
has
tried
to make it hard to buy caninequality. It does so by drawing a line>
didate—most
recentfy in the 1974 amendmarking a political sphere within which the
ments
to
die
Federal
Section Campaign
power relationships of the market are kept
Act,
"ifet
these
efforts
have
been painfully
under democratic control Over past 150
ine^tive;
they
have
even
backfired.
years, Americans have taken two large
Thisfailurehas had multiple causes: the
steps in this diiectiorL Thefirst,completed
P.3
�P.4
DEC 19 '95 10:59
SPRING 1993
72 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT
power of vested interests, ux\deriying un>
certainties about the ideal rclationahip between liberty and equality, and between
money and speech. But diere is another
cause as well—primitive regulatory thinking. For too long, debate has focused on two
strategies: (1) limit d>e kinds and amounts
of private money intiodxioed into d\e sya>tsm; (2) add govemment funds dispeiued
by a centralized bureaucratic agency.
But there is a third way, which depbys
an iiKreasingly f""'^'" reform technique:
the vouchee From welfare to educatkm to
health care, voucher proponents make d\e
same basic poii\t The alterzwitive to a
market is not necessarily a slow-moving
and potentially oppressive bureaucracy. If
the root of tiie diCSculty is extreme inequality, a voucher system pezmito the creation of a new oirzeney, distributed on more
egalitarian lines,friatretains many other
advantages of a rrudset system.
Tlie voucher isn't a panacea. Curiously,
howevei> its potential has bes\ largely ignored in an area where it shows itself off at
Ruudirul advantage: campaign finance.*
While money isn't speech, it makes effective speech poseible, espedally in an age of
mass media. This generates anxious
doubts. Egalitarian reformers begin to seem
grimly repressive. Do we really want
equality at Ave cost of shutting down
debate?
Restricting die fiow of cash may also
skew the balance of power between incumbents and diair challengers. Incumbents go
into nch campaign with the accumulated
reputation they have generated throvigh
years of great visibility. Qiallengers need
bts of cash to ofEaet diis advantage. By
placing an overall linut on funda^ aren't we
allowing old-timers to tighten their grip on
of&ce under the banner of "reform"?
T
hese questions endure despite the
second
traditional strategy:
government finance duough a
centralized bureaucracy, which typically
gives established parties a privileged position at dM fedoal trough. Worse, the
pruant vyrstem of publicfinandnghas not
stemmed dveflowof privatefinance;it has
only diverted it into new emd more irvThe Core of the Problem sidious channels of "soft money* and has
Consider how the two traditional reform left the large donor and die large fundraiser
more infliiential dum even Moreover
strategies combine to create insuperable
obstacles to efEective action. By restricting present law allows well-heeled candidates
like Ross Perot and John Coiuiolly to buy
the amovtnt of greet money sloshing
tiKrough the system, we oeate two big dieir way to the White House so kmg as
dtfy tum down the subsidy.
problems. Most obviously, we have
These loopholes erode the moral founreduced tt\e amount of pcJitical debate.
dations of reform. Despite public fiiumc* Voucher ptopoeals weie, moR aetioualy mieping, presidential politics ccmtinues to be a
tained in th« 1961:^ and 1970i thanrarantly.For rich person's game. The loopholes permit
exunpla. Senator Metolf ptopasad a priinitive " Q\e resurgence of special interest in*
voudwr Khene in 1967,
Ihm li a UMful djacut•ion by David Adamany and Cmoigt Agnc Pelitfoil fiuence. They generate corrosive skepM>nMy 189-92, 196-201 (197S). Mon ncant ttaat- ticism among ordinary people. And yet it
siento seem to ignore the voucher altsmatWa. Sa^, is too easy to condemn die loopholes outfor example David Migleby and Candica Nolaon, right At least dtey provide an escape
Tht Money Out* 200 (Uit of taopoaed compiehen* hatch agairwt the worst possible abuses of
tlva nisaa» (1990). Piofaaor Philippe Sdwitter of
Stanford University has genennuly ahazed with tat centralized publicfirunce;Do we really
ume unpuUishad wozk that uses One voucher lach- want politicians to be entirely dependent
nique as port of an amUtiout effort to xehaUlltata upon the good will of govemment
coiporatism in democnticttieoiy.Since I am uncon- bureaucrats for financial assistance in
vinced of Schmlttar'a laiger goal, my voucher
dieir hour of electoral need?
proposal divargea fmn his in bask: aim as wdl aa
Adoption of F&triot permits a straightcountlasi paxticulan.
�P.5
DEC 19 '95 10:59
NUMBER 13
forward answer that encourages decisive
steps against corrosive loopholes. Tlie new
system controls die undue influence of
wealdi without txanaferring power bom
the general citizenry to an imperial
bureaucracy. Under die proposal, die
Patriot company would distribute a sum of
red-white-and-blue money to cardholders
that, when summed, will be greater than
the total spentin die last eLectionheid under
the green money regime. For exampletr if
$10 in red-white-and-blue money were distributed to each of America's 130 million
registered voters, the S1.3 biUion deposited
in Patriot accounts would quadnq>le die
total sum speni by all presidential candidates in
Even if lots of people never
used their Patriot cards* rru»e money
would still be running duough the system
dian prannously without the heavy hand of
bureauoatic direction.
Patiiot also generates a much more
egalitarian distribution offinancialpower
than anydiing promised by traditional
spending limitations. Those ceilings may
cut down on the infiixence of very rich
people and interests. They do nothing to
confrant die fact that the overwhelming
majority of citizens give nothing to political
CREDTTTNG THE VOTERS 73
campaigns, and that the small percentage
who contribute are overwhelmingly from
the upper classes. Under green money,
Americans decide whether they are willing
to send a $10 check to die Republican or
Demooatic candidate at the expense of an
extra shirt for dieir sbc-year-old. Compare
Patriot. Ratiwr than pittbig an act of dtizervship against an act of private consumptiorv
dw voucher system presents a dlEEerent
choice: Do citizens want tiieir Patriot balances 'to go to %va8be' or do they want to take
time to dedde which candidate should
get the money?
The voucher plan transforms campaign
finance from an inegalitarian embarrasB«
ment into a new occasion for dvic resporvsibility. Each Patriotic decision wUl serve as
a preliminary vote, eicouraging card-holders to focus on the campaign as it develops
and support die candidates of their choice
at the time of dwir choice. These bens of
millions of decentralized dedaions replace
acts of centralized audiority that bulk large
in die traditional subsidy proposals. Radier
dian authorizing a bureaucracy to determine when, and whedie^ particular candidates can share in governmental largesse,
die Patriot plan places diis dedsion in the
�P.6
DEC 19 '95 11:00
74 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT
hands of die dtizsis of die United States,
where it belongs
Designing Pabriot
One appealing strategy is to begin with
a narrow target the presidency. In contrast
to congressional electiorv^ which have no
public financing we already have in die
presidency a large program that seeks to
substitute publicforprivatefinance.Patriot
would simply do die job much beder dian
existing centralized arrangements, If a pibt
program were in placeforthe 1996 election,
it would demonstcate concrete^ to ordinary Americans that they can indeed act
ccnstzuctively to provide a solution to die
present disgrace. This demonstration
coiUd, in tuxn, generate a dedsive swing in
support of a significant txpaimm of scope
on bodi federal and state levels. Existing
doubte about expanding publkfinancedo
not revolve aroimd matters of budgetary
cost It would cost mudi less dian a biDion
doUars a yeat,forexan^le, to expand Patriottofinanceall congresaional campaigns.
Opposition is based instead on the pervsi^e suspicion thatfederalfunding will
be perverted by incumbents to insulate
themselves furdterfiromdie popular wiH
T ^ best way to confront dieae fears is by
demonstrating Patriot's capacity to empower ordinary people rather dian Washington bureaucrats.
Of course, present discontent widi Congress is already co high that it mi^t be
preferable to indude congressioiial electionsficomdie outset The Patriot's cleansing effect on congressional elections is more
likely to improve die quali^ of public life
than, say, term limitations forcing the retirement of popular and seasoned members of
the House and Senate after a few terms in
ofBoe. If die Patriot is extendedtocongressional elections, a second design issue b»
comes even more important many voters
will have trouble maidng iideDigent fundr
ing decisions. If primaries ate induded
within the program, challengers will have
a hard time pierdng the anonymity barrier.
For the schemetofimction effectively, card-
SPRING1993
holders should be aOowedtogive their redwhite-and-blue moneytopolitical brokers
to spend where diey diink it v^rill do die
most good.
Millions will refusetotake advantege of
diis option and will insist on making dieir
ovm dodsions on candidates. But diose
who wishtodelegate dieir choices should
be allowed a broad range of choice. Many
will select a political party to serve as
broker; but d i ^ should abo be aUowed to
transfer fundstoa broad range of interest
groups—PACs, if you will representing the
full gamut of political opinion.
While PAC-baiting is a part of die conventional wisdom, we should rethink the
source of our unease. So long as PACs
depeid on die supply of green money, it is
easytosee how th^ reinforce those special
interests diat are rdatively advanta^Nl by
dtt maricet It howevet PACs are dependent ;;^an red*white^and-blue fundstr why
not let a thousand ftowers bloom, leaving it
to the good sense of ddzens to determine
whedier a political party or a PAC or a
puticular candidate best expresses their
vision of the public good?
Some political sdentiste may find diis
expression of faith in ordinary people
naive. Radier thanleaving die role of parties
to die political marketplace, they argue diat
the integrative functions performed by parties are crudal to the operation of a
democracy. On this view, it would be healthier in die long nm if we refusedtoaUow
"^serial intereete"tocompete direcdy for
red-white^uid-blue funds, requiring diem
instead to compete far influence hy partidpatingactivdy widiin the parties.
I am unpenuaded, but more important,
so is die Supreme Court As we shall see,
there is noreasontothink dud die Court
will reacttoPatriot widi hostility so long as
it remains broadly opentodie shifting currents of political opinion Using it to
entimch the power of existing political par^
ties, howevec will likely generate a much
mote hostile response from the Court
Tiiere are many more practical problems
to be considered. I hope I have said enou£^
�P.7
DEC 19 '95 11:01
aiEDrriNG THE VOTERS 75
NUMBER 13
with market-generated inequality. Since
line-drawing is a feature of all reform
prograou, the difficulties it entails cannot
be used as a reasonforrejecting Patriot and
continuing v^th old-style campaign
' reform.
Drawing ihe Line
Wherever we draw the line, we will be
Afirstbasic issue revolves around the obliged to distinguish close cases. For example. Patriot might mimic eidsting law by
relationship between the new red-whiteallowing rich dtizens and spedal interest
and-blue currency and die ongoing use of
groupstospend green money on political
familial- greenbacks: Can greenbackholders continuetobuy political advertise- advertisements so bng as diey act "inde*
pendendy" of the candidate's direction. But
ments in newspapers to announce their
there is nothing sacrosanct about diis line.
"spontaneous and independent" support
of a candidate? And
It is a result of Supreme
what of the normal disCourt decisions diat as
The Patriot vouclier plan
cussion of political
we shall se^ do not
questions in newspacontrol a constitutional
controls the undue
pers and other mass
assessment of Pabnot
however, to make my sketch suffidendy
credible diat we can step back from diese
important but ultimately secondary,
details to consider Patriot's place in the
larger system.
medio,?
Presumably
inllLieru.A^ ot we.iltii
without transferring
Ijower from tlic goneial
citizenry to an irri()eri.-il
[)iireoiicra(":y. It transtoims campaign finance
from an ineg.ilitanan
embaitar>:-iment into a
new occasion for
civic responsibility.
Coiignsse alioulil tl^eie-
these standard media
fore feelficeetobar all
will continua to be fi«
purchases of political
nanced duough green
advertisemente with
dollars. Should their ingreen money, even if
tervention in political
the purchaser dairrut to
campaigns, then, also
be
acting "inde*
be resbicted?
pendendy."
Tills dedsion, it
Fundamental quesbears
- emphasizing,
tions—but diere is
does
not
mean an end
nodiing spedal about
to
independent
politithe voucher plan diat
cal
action.
As
we
have
generates therru Any efseen,
PACs
will
remain
fort to insulate cambee to compete widi
paigTifinance£com die
candidates
and
parties—for
red-whit^
unmediated rule of money requires us to
and-blue
money,
if
PACs
choose
tospend
cut die world into (at least) two
their
Patriot
funds
on
an
independent
camspheres—die sphere of "carr^uign
paigtv
radier
than
on
contributions
to
finance," in which the cole of green money
caxvdidatee'
war
chests,
dut
is
their
dioice.
is constrained (eidier though traditional
' reform measures or as part of a voucher Patriot simply deprives PACs of power
based on the wealdi of their clients; it does
plan), and die worid of ordinary commodities, where abilitytopay is measured not deprive diem of their £reedom to
exdusively in terms of gceei dollars. Unless operate on a more level playingfield.If the
American Medical Association can condie market or democracy is allowed to
vince the doctors of the United Stetes, and
dominate all ^heres of life, we must be
preparedtodraw some lines—pointing out perhaps some patiento as well,totransfer
their ten red-white-and-blue dollars to
thoK activities, like voting or campaign
finance^ in which die democratic aspiration them, rather dian die Sierra Qub or die
istekenwith special seriousness, and diose Republican Party, Pabnot does not prevent
spheres where we are more willingtolive diun from continuingtoplay die game of
�P.8
DEC 19 '95 11:02
I
76 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT
electoral politics, albeit on a reduced scale.
Nor will Patriot eliminate die power of
green money. General purpose mediaranging bom the New York Tima to the
National Em^ut'nrr—would remain within
the green-money sphere. While diey could
only accept political advertisemente in exchangeformoney coming out of a Patriot
account they wrould odierwise befeeeto
comment on political matters. Tlunk tanks
will continue to shape dieir messages to
win the support of ridi donors. By ledefinr
ing die sphere of political equality, I have no
deeire to abolish the impact of marketgenerated inequality on our political life. I
am searching for a healdiier balance—in
which the sphere of political equality is iv>t
overiy compromised by the pczvasive impact of wealth.
Similar line-drawing exemaes await
when we tum to consider the problem of
the political volunteer. Whenever a dtizen
worksforfineon a political campaign, he
or ehe isforgoingtimediatmi^thavebeen
spoit on money-making activitieB. Should
we conclude; dien, that volunteers are realp
ly spending the market value of dieir time
and diat their 'imputed wages" should be
charged against dve campaign's red'^hiteand-blue budget?
Though this suggestion might appeal to
some economiste, liberal democrate should
reject it The point of a political campaign is
to inspire bte of Americanstoact as conscientious dtizensy putting dieir moneymaking carestoone sidefora timetoconsider the public interest One candidate
shouldnotbe penalized ifhe or shesuccessfulfy engages this dvic spirit more dian
others. Volunteers are not in it for the
money, and their oiergies should not be
charged against the campaign's budget
If so much is accepted, we confixmt a
final question: How should we treataeandidate like Ross Perot who wantetoinvest
vast sums of green money in his own campaign? Just like everybocfy^ else. On the one
hand, die fat paycheck Perot could have
been earning as a business executive should
not be chai^^ to his campaign's Patriot
SPRING 1993
account as an "imputed" cost of operation.
On the odwr hand, Perot should not be
permitted to throw his green money
aroundtobuy die presidency or any odier
office. Like every other American, his purchasing power widiin the sphere of campaignfinanceshould be measured in terms
of red-white-and-blue, riot greoi, dollars.
Corruption
But won't our careful line-dravring efforts be undermined by outright corxuption? If a credit card has a balance of 10
red-white-and-blue^ what is to prevent ite
holder from selling this balzuice in a corrupt
exchange for a couple of greens? This is
what happens with food stamps, why not
with more pafaioticformsof "nonnegotiable" currency?
Tlie anabgytofoodstamps is too quick.
The illegal bi^er of food stamps can go into
any store arid exchange them for commodities. The comipt buyer of a Patriotic
balance will have greater difficulties. He
must spend time aivd oiergy making sure
diat his promisee goes to a card machine
and dials in die codes that will authorize the
transfertodie "ri^t" political party orcandidate This will be very cosdy, g^en die
reladv^ small sum die corrupting party
will gainfromeach transaction. It will also
be hard to keep die media ignorant of a
mass effort at comipt purchases by a political "machine." Amisetep here can be disastDous. Wrongdoers will face crindnal
sanctions equivalent to those involved in
votingfraud,and the media carnival following die Recovery of "dirty tricks" will
seriousty damage die t2unted candidates.
But we have moretofear than this low
level kind of corxuption. What istoprevent
high'^K'^ managers of the Patriot companyfromabusing their positions of trust?
Tlie possibilities are many: leaking liste of
contributorsy cheating on the accounte, and
80 fordt While then are institutional
safeguards that may be employedtocheck
against abuse, who will guard against
abuse by the guardians? There can be no
fully satisfactory answer. However die
�P.9
DEC 19 '95 11:02
NUMBER 13
CREDITTNG THE VOTERS 77
wide-ranging innovation. The constitutional caseforPatiiot builds on dds strong
affirmation.
The qu«tion diat induced die Courts
change of course involvedttiefinancingof
presidential elections. While Congress was
offering candidates bigfederalsubsldiesfor
their faU campaigns, it attached a very significant string: any candidatewho accepted
tiiefederalsubeidyoouldnotacceptasingle
penny from die private sector. Over die
ettong dissent of Chief Justice Buigej; die
But Is It Constitutional?
Despite diis ptoapecX of reinvi^rated flucfciey Court upWd diis innovative coxv
democracy, wittPatriotnonedieless beheld dition. In doing so, it took one large step
towardPatanot Like die
unconsdtutianal by die
—
program involved in
Supreme Court? BuckBuAIey, Patriot requires
It
wa.s
one
thing
foi
ley V. Video upheld pubeach candidate to
lkickley\o |.)rotect the
licfinandngbut struck
decline all green money
down eome of Conuse of greenbacks when in exchange for pargress's attempte to r^
tidpating in ite subsidy
strict die role of private people were not piovided
scheme. On this core
money in campaign
with red white-and-blue
question, diete can be
gnance. Worse yet the
no doubt about the
money
,
quite
another
case has chilled innovaplan's constitutionality.
tive diinklng ever since.
thing to invalidate
But Pabnot goes furHUB is especially uivPatriots restticlions or\
dver. It prohibite people
fortunate because die
gfeen money when each like Ross Perot from
Courtf s dedsion should
Patriotic dolhave pushed discuscitizen IS compensated in refusing
lars and insisting on his
sion in die direction of
a
new
political
curiency.
righttobuy his way to
Patriot To see why,
die presidoicy widv
divide the BucUey opigreen money. It also
nion into twre large
lestricte
ordinary
dtizens to dieir redchunks. One part expressed deep s k ^
white-and-bUie money if diey choose to
bdsm about Congress's comptehenatve efsupport "indepaidenr campaigns on beforttoreduce die level of private expendihalf of dieirfevoritecandidates. On dieae
ture by dtizens and candidates. While die
particular issues, Buckley kx>ks bodi ways.
Ctourt upheld some ofttiaselimitations, it
As we have seen, die case strongly supports
struck down others tiut itfearedcut too
deeply Into die resources required by can^ congMsional creativity In die design of mnovadve subsidy programs. At die aaine
didates and dtizais for energptic public
debate. Asecond part of die opinion took a tixne^ die more skeptical portion of die
Court's opinion did invalidate restrictions
very differentteds,abandoning skeptical on candidates and dtizenstiiatbear a eucritique for andiufllastic support The Court pofidaliesmWanoetodioee at issue here.
shifted conoeptiial gears when it eonIn particular it invalidated Congress's
fronlfid Gongreas'B creative use of subsidy restriction on candidates who wished to
programs to control campaign abuses.
finance dialr campaigns widi didr owri
Radier dian striking down such efforts, die eteenbacks; it also protected dierightof
Court went out of ite way to uphold
citizenstouse greeribackstocontribute to
Conpess's broad autiiority to embrace
present system of presidential public
financing has been rdatively conuptionbee, and odier public bureauaades have
discharged even more sensitive functions
widiout too much abuse. For example, die
Internal Revenue Service has done a pretty
good job insulating iteelffromprsesure by
poUtical instooppress die poUtical outs. Is
Oiete any reason to supposetiiatPatriot
cannot be controlled as well?
�P. 10
DEC 19 '95 11=03
78 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT
SPRING 1993
tolooki^xmanencompasaingsetofrestriccampaigns diat were "independent" of die
widi skepticism.
main effort controlled by die candidates tions
But as we have seen, Buckley iteelf recogdiemaelves.
nizedtiiattiieconstitutional calculus can be
radically transformed by die addition of a
n die lawsuit of die future, die chal- Bubsidy Since Pateiot distributesfourredlenge will betoconvince die Justices white^nd-bhie dollarsforevery green doldiat diis part of Buckley doesnotappty lar spent in die last election, it will lead to
to die new reform. Defenders of Patriot BiorCnot less, poUtical debate Given tiiis
must show convindngly diat it was one tect die Court should ask iteelf a new questhingforBucfcleytoptotectdieuse of green- tion when confronting Patriot's Umitetions
backswhenpeoplewerenotprovidedwidi
on die use of green money by candidates
rwi-^hitfr<aid-blue money; quite anodier and private dtizens. UnUke Buckley, die
dilngtoinvalidate Patriot's restrictions on constitutional critics of Patiiot wiU not be
green money when each dtizen is compen- abletoarguetiiatbotii macro-and microsated in anew political currency.
support invaUdatiort TotiieconHiis shouldn't be too hard-so bng as inteieste
trary, Patriot's dafanders will point to
die Supreme Court is preparedtoflilnk Bucfciey's support of innovative subsidy
dirough die reasons why Buddey was so programs and wlU urge die Courttosupekeptical about expenditure limitetions. As port Cbngreee in deigning a prograin fliat
we have seen, traditional reforms of diis
type endanger two distinct intensts. The wiU generate a much more vibrant poUbcal
first is a macro-interest whenever die law debate diantiiefreemarket had produced
Radiertiiantiireataningtiiemaoo-intereat
tdls people dut tiiey can't leg^y buy infreespeech. Patriot is reinvigorating It
poUtical advertisemaits, it reduces die
In reeponae, tiie lastrided greenbackOverall quantity of speech-related invests
hoklers
will only be abletoinvoke a vague
ment Tlie second is a miaw-interest:
mwltion
111 UB1;»V« «f *i»cir »M-»4«t««tlegatdleae of iteoverallimpact expenditure
alLi^aniynvowy-^y ^ ^ ^ l ^
limitetionsfrustrateeach individual's "After
it on an advertisement for a candidate
• freedomtospendmoney indie way diathe radier duui spend it on someteivialact of
or she diinks makes die moat sense. Given private consumption-say, an extea
diis dual direat Congress's comprehensbe felsviaion set?" Callfliisttiebmte property
efforttorestrict private expendlhire unde^ jnhiition. The constitutional question,
Btandably set off constitutional alarm bells simply puttowhetiiertiieSupreme Court
for die Court While dte pursuit of equality vrtiuldfindtillsa sufficient basis to mis an admirable ideaL are we not running it
into die ground when we use ittoreduce validate tiie r«w Umitetions on green
die reeources diat would odierwise be money imposed by Patriot
devotedtopolitical epeedi?
•• The Spirit of Lochner
Widiin diis contexttiieCourt set about
Thete was atimewhentiierightanswer
scrutinizing particular efforte at expendi- could have been yes. During tiie early
ture limitetion—passing some and rqect- twentietiv cenbiry, courts constructed an
ing odiers, induding die twotiiatresemble daborate jurisprudence guaranteemg
our Patriot limitetions. Tliough ™«y ^ * property owners a fundamentel constitur
questionedtiieeejudgmente, I agree witii donalrighttousetiieirproperty as ftiey
diem. Widiout a compensating subsidy, diought best The spirit of dietimewas
severe limitetions on greenbacks can great- expressed bytiiefamous lochner dedsion
ly reduce the overall amount of resources of 1905. New York had passed a stehite
devoted to political debate Since flie
viteUty of diis debate lies attiievery core of restricting die workweek of bakerstosixty
hours. Tlie Court irtvaUdated die statute on
tine First AmendmenttiieCourt was right
I
�P. 11
DEC 19 '95 11:04
NUMBER 13
CREDITING THE VOTERS 79
have arighttospend—green or red-whiteand-bUie?
Or perhapstiiequestion is better steted
intermsof supermoney: Does die Constitution affirmatively requirettiecreation of a
single supermoney tiut must always be
recognized as le^al tender so bng as any
other kind of money is tenderable?
Since constitutional lawyers have been
Uving in a single-morvey worid, such questions are unfamiUac As an active Court
watcher, I am confident tiiat die Justices,
after scurryingtoreadtiieappUcable precedente, would grant exceptionally broad discretiontodie poUtical branches in diis area.
If Congress insisto there be onty one currency, d«^sfine;if it wante to cnsate specialized cunendee in addition to an all-purpose money,tiuifs OX.; but if it wante to
create "eeparata-but-^qual" monies—each
legal tender only widiin ite own
Bphere-diaf sfinetoo. Sincetiiispredictable position leadstostraightforward sup
, Constitutional Supermoney?
But assume I am wrong in all this, and portofPatriotor^couldlaavetiieconstihitional anafysis at this point
that the ascoidant RepubUcans on die
Howevertiiereare fundamental prinSupreme Court are willfrigtobreatiie new
dples
lurking here. Thefi?eedomtiiatoldlife intotiieLochnerian premise. Evsi tikis
teahioned
greei money gh^es us to shape
change would not be radical B W U ^ to
die
contours
of our Uves is nottobe taken
endanger tiie constitutionaUty of Patriot
U^idy
Whenever
die Bteto decrees diat one
TheLDChnerprindplehasanunproblematic
land
of
money
canrwt
be transferred nito
application withina eodal order'wdiere one
another
kind,
it
conslxains
thefreedomof
kind of currency—color it green—serves as
those
vdio
would
have
made
a diffierent
legal tenderfr>rall legal purposes. But it is
tradeoff.
The
proUferation
of
aeparate-butpreciselytillswoddtiiatPatriot is dying to
equal monies, each for use in a different
replace This multi-currancy a^iratioa
sphesB of Ufe, could leadtovery real conmovaovet l» shared by a host of otiier
Btnlnte upon our traditional practice of
voucher proposals. In educatioiv healtii
caie, welfare, environmental control, policy liberty. I am unprepared to say tiut such
digcuseion is awash witii designs for spe- ptoUferation should be permitted to
cial-purpose curxendes. If a fractionof these proceed widiout any serious constitutional
initiatives become social reaUtie^ die wal- scrutiny.
It seems wiseiitiien,tomove beyond the
leto of die future will have a different
conventional
answer-tiie near-plenary
design: loteofpockete containing monies of
power
of
Congress
overttiecurrency—
different cobrs, tendenble in different
de^ite
die
fact
diat
die
Court will almost
transactional contexts.
certainly invoke ittosustain Patiot against
Withintidsbrave new world,tiieneoLochnerian princq>lc becomes cancephialr atta<^ Whatever may be said of separatebutnequal monies in otiier emerging conly inadequate. It is notongerenou^tosay
tiiat we have arighttospend money as we texte, Patiiot merito more tiian rubberplease; die question is whiek money do we stamp approval It deserves judicial recog-
the ground that it violated die freedom of
the owners and empksyees to use tiieir
property and labor as dieytiioughtfit,
If Lodmer ware still good lawtoday,I
would fearforI^triot Since die constitutional revolution of tt« 19308, however;
cases Uke lodmer stand as the great antiprecedente in die American legal mind For
Justice
no leastiianforJustice Brennan, it functions as a powerful symbol of
negation, not commendation. Whatever
constitutional ri^ Americans may plausibly claim in die modem era, all sitting
Justices iQ:ognize oneftiatAmericans can't
daim^and diat istiieLochnerianri^tto
use one's property any way one wante,
Givei the transvaluation of Ipdmer, even
the present conservative Court willfindit
difficulttoo^bcate die ri^ of property
as a reasonforinvalidating Patriot's restrictions on green mon^.
�P. 12
DEC 19 '95 li:05
SPRING 1993
80 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT
nition as a decisive contributiontoa prob- tt»t die circularity problem isn't too vilem diat gnaws at die very core of modem cious—tiiat die impact of the existing
division of waaldi, while substantial, isn't
constitutionalism.
Tlus involves the constitutional stetus of entirely undermining the constitutional
die American questfordistributive justice. credibiUty of poUtical judgmente about distributive justice. Perhaps die Justices reconSince die New Deal revolution, die Justices—from die Stone Courttiiroughtiie cile diemaelves to drcularity with die
tiioughttiiatdiere is not much they can do
Warwn Court through ttie Rehnquist
Court—have been bryingtocarry off a deU- effectivelytochange matters, and diat they
cate balancing act On die one hand, they must waitformobilized dtizens to insist
upon the greater autonomy of poUtics from
have consistsndy denounced the notion
diat die Constitution enshrines die market- wealth
goierated disbribution of wealdi and inhis is where Patriot enters, break>>
come. On die odier hand die Justices have
ing die circularity at ite most vulrefusedtotake die idea of social justice to
nerable point Patiiot allows the
heart and interpret the Constitution's
Court
to
stop papering over some uncomdemandfor"equ^ protection" as requiring
fortable
dicidarities whenever it defers to
any particular levd of redistribution from
the
poUtical
branches' interpretetion of the
die rich to the poo£ Instead, they have
constitutional
meaning of equaUty. By insou^tto remove themselves from die busisisting
diat
oniy
red-white-and-blue be
ness of defining distributive justice by
used
to
run
campaigns.
Patriot aUows the
delegating tiie task to die president and
modem
constitutional
system
to work acCongress. While diis step has insulated die
cording
to
ite
professed
prindplee—requirJustices from the aidless distributive struggles of die welfare stete, it has also left a ing propertytojustify itselftodemocracy,
question gnawing just below the doctrinal ladiertiianthe otiier way around
It in contrast tiie Court were to insurface.
vaUdate
Pabnot it would be saboteging the
Call it the problem of drcidarity. It is one
coUective
effort to break die circle created
tilingfordie Courttoinsisttiiatit is up to
by
ite
own
pattern of decisions. While the
die poUticianstodetermine die justice of the
Justices
doubtless
would continue to say
green-money distribution so long as the
tiat
die
question
of
distributive justice is
pcUtidans are selected duou^ a process in
opei
for
poUtical
determination, tiiey
which the green-money distribution does
would
have
destroyed
die very program
net piny «>n nimw>i«1 ming mle. I£ however,
duit
would
have
endowed
tiiisdaim with
die green-money distribution does domipolitical
reaUty.
While
I
disagree
with the
nate poUtics, there is a very vldous drde:
Rehnquist
Court
on
odier
points,
I do not
the Court deferstopoUtics, which defers to
beUeve
diat
die
majority
would
seriously
^aen money on the question whether the
existing green-money distribution is poUti- consider such a' counterproductive step.
cally legitimate. In consig^iing the question Patriot then, presente an euy constitutior*al case. Congress and die rest of us should
of disbibutive justice to die poUtical
processy surely die Court does not suppose confront it on ite merit* widiout undue
it is inviting the American peopletoplay a anxiety over hostile judicial reaction.
Campaignfinanceis reemerging as a
sheUgame?
high
priority of die CUnton administration.
This embarrassing question does not
But
die
newspapers are already fuU of fears
bulk large ontiiepages of die United Stetes
of
more
gridlock within die existing
Reports. Pediaps the Justices' insistenoe, in
framework
of reform proposals. Isn't it a
the reapportionment cases, on die prindple
good
time,
dicn, to redefine die
of one-person, one-vote is part of an efifort
framework?*
to reassuretiiemselves,and the rest of us.
T
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DATE
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12/21/1995
RESTRICTION
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FOLDER TITLE:
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�SOME PROPOSED LANGUAGE FOR OUR JANUARY 7 DISCUSSION AND
A STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH:
FOR
"As we approach the end of the century and face the
u n c e r t a i n t i e s of a new millenium, the cold war over, new
technologies promising new forms of l i b e r a t i o n , new problems
promising new forms of servitude, more than ever before
America and the world need e f f e c t i v e democratic leadership:
c e r t a i n leadership f o r u n c e r t a i n times. Certain leadership
i n times of u n c e r t a i n t y means democratic leadership.
Democratic leadership i s exacting because i t demands shared
r e s p o n s i b i l i t y t h a t no s i n g l e woman or man, not a Speaker or
a p a r t y leader, not the President e i t h e r , can exercise
single-handedly. I n a democracy, leadership i s exercised i n
common p a r t n e r s h i p by c i t i z e n s and t h e i r elected
representatives: a strong democracy requires strong c i t i z e n s
no less than strong elected o f f i c i a l s .
"Certain leadership f o r u n c e r t a i n times brings s p e c i a l
r e s p o n s i b i l i t i e s t o a l l of us i n four c r i t i c a l areas:
economic f a i r n e s s , race r e l a t i o n s , i n t e r n a t i o n a l cooperation
and democratic r e v i t a l i z a t i o n .
" R e s p o n s i b i l i t y f o r f a i r n e s s : Leadership involves hard
decisions t h a t , i n the name of common goods, exact r e a l
costs. This gives t o leadership a special r e s p o n s i b i l i t y f o r
f a i r n e s s . I f schools w i t h growing burdens are t o t i g h t e n
t h e i r b e l t s , a defense establishment r e l i e v e d of the burden
of cold war, though i t faces new challenges, must also
t i g h t e n i t s b e l t . We must do more f o r our men and women i n
the f i e l d but ask whether t h e i r s e c u r i t y requires another
nuclear submarine designed f o r a cold war t h a t i s over. I f
the poor are t o increase t h e i r r e s p o n s i b i l i t y f o r f i n d i n g a
way out of t h e i r poverty, must the wealthy expect tax breaks
to help them s u s t a i n t h e i r prosperity? Must l o y a l employees
be the only ones t o pay the p r i c e of corporate downsizing,
when corporate p r o f i t s are upsizing? A stock market t h a t
soars while so many ordinary Americans are s u f f e r i n g a
decline i n r e a l income may occasion more resentment than
celebration.
"On the other hand, whenever there i s f a i r n e s s , Americans
have shown themselves w i l l i n g t o make s a c r i f i c e s f o r the
common goods we a l l care about. They ask only t h a t the
s a c r i f i c e s are f a i r l y d i s t r i b u t e d and the b e n e f i t s equally
enjoyed. I b e l i e v e our seniors w i l l go the e x t r a mile to
assure t h a t t h e i r grandchildren are not impoverished by
debt, I b e l i e v e those who are not parents w i l l c o n t r i b u t e t o
education budgets, I b e l i e v e t h a t people able t o a f f o r d
second homes w i l l help assure t h a t others can purchase f i r s t
homes at a f f o r d a b l e i n t e r e s t rates -- but only i f they a l l
believe leadership i s a c t i n g even-handedly, and t h a t
fairness i s the premise of every request f o r s a c r i f i c e .
�"Fairness i s also common sense: education d o l l a r s spent
today guarantee productive c i t i z e n s and competitive workers
tomorrow. An economy t h a t disemploys r e c k l e s s l y erodes i t s
own consumption base. Eradicating poverty not only meets the
demands of j u s t i c e but l i b e r a t e s the economy. Racism
d i s f i g u r e s the r a c i s t no less than his v i c t i m . Young women
and men asked t o carry the e n t i r e burden of s o c i a l s e c u r i t y
and medicare may one day rebel and refuse t o bear any burden
at a l l . Fairness i s i n everybody's i n t e r e s t i n the long run
-- even those who may t h i n k they b e n e f i t from unfairness i n
the short run -- because America i s one n a t i o n t h a t w i l l
f l o u r i s h only i f we a l l f l o u r i s h together.
" R e s p o n s i b i l i t y f o r r a c i a l harmony: From the time of our
miraculous founding, which l e f t slavery i n place depsite the
high i d e a l s of l i b e r t y and e q u a l i t y t h a t i l l u m i n a t e d the
D e c l a r a t i o n of Independence and the new C o n s t i t u t i o n , race
has been, as Gunnar Myrdall c a l l e d i t more than a h a l f
century ago "The American Dilemma." I t has brought out the
worst and the best i n our n a t i o n : slavery and a b o l i t i o n , Jim
Crow and the C i v i l Rights Struggle, B u l l Connor and Martin
Luther King. Today, though we have come f a r , we have not
come n e a r l y f a r enough. The suspicion, the r e c r i m i n a t i o n ,
the r e c i p r o c a l fear and resentment, the p e r s i s t e n t b i g o t r y
a l l abide and t h e i r persistance undermines the i d e a l s and
the u n i t y t h a t give America i t s promise. Hatred seeds rage,
d i s c r i m i n a t i o n engenders resentment, persecution breeds
separation. But as two nations, black and white, i n Andrew
Hacker's dread p o r t r a i t , "separate, h o s t i l e , unequal,"
America w i l l not f l o u r i s h and cannot lead. I f our leadership
means anything, i t means addressing r a c i a l d i s t r u s t and
r a c i a l c o n f l i c t -- not t h e i r problem but our dilemma.
" R e s p o n s i b i l i t y f o r I n t e r n a t i o n a l Cooperation: I f t h i s has
been the American century, the next w i l l be a g l o b a l century
i n which, however, peace and p r o s p e r i t y w i l l spread only i f
America continues t o exercise f o r c e f u l leadership i n common
w i t h other nations. For nations are no longer the only
players i n the world and i n the 21st century world they may
not always be the c e n t r a l actors i n an arena where
t r a n s n a t i o n a l corporations and regional associations and
non-governmental i n t e r n a t i o n a l organizations w i l l a f f e c t not
j u s t g l o b a l a f f a i r s but American "domestic" i n t e r e s t s as
well.
"American Leadership t h a t i s b l i n d t o the character of
global interdependence and the forces a f f e c t i n g us from
abroad w i l l not only leave the planet untouched by our
i n t e r e s t s and unleavened by our i d e a l s , but w i l l f a i l us
here a t home. I f we wait t o act u n t i l g l o b a l environmental
problems reach our shores, wait t o act u n t i l the new Asian
and A f r i c a n viruses have entered our c i t i e s , wait t o act
u n t i l the d i s t a n t wars creep across our borders i n the form
of desperate waves of immigrants or economic d i s l o c a t i o n , i t
�w i l l be t o o l a t e f o r our a c t i o n t o count. Where we have
a c t e d w i t h seeming ' a l t r u i s m , ' as w i t h the g l o b a l warming
t r e a t y or i n H a i t i , we have a l s o served our own i n t e r e s t s
w e l l . I t i s f a s h i o n a b l e t o c l a s s i f y American P r e s i d e n t s as
p r e o c c u p i e d p r i m a r i l y w i t h domestic p o l i c y or w i t h f o r e i g n
p o l i c y . However, the n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y d i s t i n c t i o n between
"domestic" and " f o r e i g n " a f f a i r s i s u n l i k e l y t o s u r v i v e i n t o
a t w e n t y - f i r s t c e n t u r y dominated by g l o b a l commerce,
t r a n s n a t i o n a l markets and w o r l d t e c h n o l o g i c a l
innovation.
P r e s i d e n t i a l l e a d e r s h i p demands b i f o c a l v i s i o n ; f o r what
happens on the d i s t a n t h o r i z o n a l t e r s the landscape i n f r o n t
of our noses.
"America can no more f l o u r i s h i n a w o r l d t h a t i s f l o u n d e r i n g
t h a n our suburbs can p r o s p e r when our i n n e r c i t i e s are
d e c a y i n g or our r i c h can remain secure when our poor are
g r o w i n g d e s p e r a t e . No man i s an i s l a n d , no n a t i o n a
f o r t r e s s . We need each o t h e r and l e a d e r s h i p means f o r g i n g
l i n k a g e s between domestic and f o r e i g n p o l i c y , means f o r g i n g
c o o p e r a t i o n and consensus abroad as w e l l as a t home.
1 ^
^
" R e s p o n s i b i l i t y f o r Democratic R e v i t a l i z a t i o n : L e a d e r s h i p i n
a democracy i s shared. Democracy demands not o n l y t h a t
p o l i t i c i a n s l e a d and v o t e r s f o l l o w but t h a t c i t i z e n s l e a d
and p o l i t i c i a n s respond. P r e s i d e n t i a l l e a d e r s h i p t h a t
p r e t e n d s e v e r y problem can be s o l v e d f r o m the E x e c u t i v e
O f f i c e i s f r a d u l e n t ; l e a d e r s h i p t h a t i n s i s t s government can
do n o t h i n g a t a l l i s h y p o c r i t i c a l . I n f r e e s o c i e t i e s ,
l e a d e r s h i p means p a r t n e r s h i p . There are some t h i n g s o n l y
c i t i z e n s can do: r e s p o n s i b i l i t y s t a r t s w i t h i n d i v i d u a l s and
f a m i l i e s and works upwards. But t h e r e are o t h e r t h i n g s o n l y
government can do, f o r i t r e p r e s e n t s the s o v e r e i g n people i n
a c t i o n , the k i n d of power t h a t works from the top downwards.
I t r e p r e s e n t s the o n l y power on which we get t o v o t e and so
the o n l y power t h a t i s l e g i t i m a t e .
"The American government belongs t o the American people
t o you. I t i s y o u r s o v e r e i g n i n s t r u m e n t . Those who would
t a k e i t away f r o m you i n the name of y o u r l i b e r t y e i t h e r do
not u n d e r s t a n d l i b e r t y or are engaged i n d e c e p t i o n . You
c e r t a i n l y have the r i g h t t o demand t h a t government be
e f f i c i e n t , t h a t i t be a c c o u n t a b l e , t h a t i t serve and not
abrogate y o u r common freedoms and t h a t i t embody r a t h e r t h a n
undermine y o u r common needs and common i n t e r e s t s . But
l e a d e r s h i p t h a t p r e t e n d s you have no r i g h t t o e x e r c i s e y o u r
s o v e r e i g n t y , l e a d e r s h i p t h a t t u r n s over t o c o r p o r a t i o n s and
b u r e a u c r a c i e s i n the p r i v a t e s e c t o r r e s p o n s i b i l i t y f o r
p u b l i c goods you expect y o u r e l e c t e d government t o secure -such l e a d e r s h i p i s n o t w o r t h y of the name. I t l e a d s by
r e j e c t i n g r e s p o n s i b i l i t y ; i t asks from you what i t w i l l not
ask f r o m i t s e l f . A r o b u s t economy r e q u i r e s a r o b u s t p u b l i c
s e c t o r . P r i v a c y , c o m p e t i t i v e n e s s and l i b e r t y are p r i v a t e
v a l u e s t h a t are p u b l i c l y secured.
�" P o l i t i c i a n s who make war on government undercut your
sovereignty, f o r i t i s popular sovereignty that they have
been elected t o represent. Their reluctance t o serve as
sovereign t r u s t e e s disempowers you. The market can service
you as producers and consumers but i t cannot represent you
as c i t i z e n s : only your government can do t h a t , as long as i t
r e a l l y i s YOURS. As elected o f f i c i a l s , trustees of your
common power, i t i s our r e s p o n s i b i l i t y t o assure t h a t i t i s
f a i r l y and e f f e c t i v e l y exercised, not t o surrender i t t o
others.
"Leadership i s hard not easy, long-term not short-term,
v i s i o n a r y not r e a c t i v e . To lead, I need a c t i v e responsible
c i t i z e n s a t my side. To engage i n c i v i c leadership you need
elected representatives u n a f r a i d of the r e s p o n s i b i l i t i e s
t h a t accompany power by your side. I cannot promise t o make
the u n c e r t a i n t i e s of the new millenium i n t o c e r t a i n t i e s : I
can promise I w i l l make America a country capable of
f l o u r i s h i n g under conditions of u n c e r t a i n t y . I cannot
promise t o t u r n our two oceans i n t o w a l l s t h a t i n s u l a t e us
from the world or t u r n back the clock t o a time when nations
could go i t alone: I can promise I w i l l make the voice of
America heard and i t s i d e a l s understood i n an ever more
interdependent world. I cannot promise I w i l l resolve the
American dilemma of race t h a t has slowed our progress
towards j u s t i c e and e q u a l i t y f o r so long; I can promise I
w i l l not l e t the dilemma f e s t e r or pretend t h a t i t i s not
our most formidable challenge.
"In the l a s t few years of t h i s , the American century, we can
by working together assure t h a t the next century w i l l
belong, i f not t o us alone, t o the democratic a s p i r a t i o n s
and high moral i d e a l s f o r which we stand. I t i s our power
t h a t has made the t w e n t i e t h century ours; perhaps our i d e a l s
can help make the next an American century f o r everyone."
Benjamin Barber
Piscataway Township
December 20, 1995
�n
THE
NEW YORK TIMES
OP-ED
TUESDAY.
AUGUST
I. 1995
o
K.
From Disney World to Disney's World
B y B e n j a m i n R. B a r b e r
(his b o o m i n g m a r k e t
With f i l m s ,
books, t h e m e p a r k s , t r a d e m a r k tie-ins
and now Capital C i l i e s / A B C as i t s
s u b s i d i a r y . Ihe c o m p a n y is poised t o
b e c o m e " t h e greatest e n i e n a i n m e n t
c o m p a n y i n the ncxi c e n t u r y . " as its
c h a i r m a n . Michael f isiier. r i g h t l y
boasted yesterday
SKX'KBRiiKit. Mass
aving
domesiiC3<ed
Ihe l.ion K i n g ahd the
Beast a n d successfully annexed a piece of
In f a c t . M r K i s n e r u n d e r s t a t e d t h e
42d S i r e e i . ihe W a l l
t r u i h .An e m p l o y e e of A B C ' s corpoDisney
Company
r a t e h e a l i h and s a f e l y d i v i s i o n c a m e
lacked o n l y a b i j j lelc-vision network to
c l o s e r w h e n he g u s h e d i l i . i l " c o m secure its e m p i r e A c q u i r i n j ; Capital
b i n i n g t w o w o r l d class c o r p o r a t i o n s "
C i i i e s / A B C Inc w a s a deal a l a m e r e
begets one " u n i v e r s e c l a s s o p e r a $19 b i l l i o n A f t e r a l l . back in 1986 when
t i o n " A n d Disney has as good a
the m e d i a m e r g e r f r e n z y first got
c h a n c e as a n y c o m p a n y to d o m i n a t e
under w a y . G e n e r a l E l e c t r i c paid $6 5
t h i s cosiTiiC m a r k e t l i s goods a r e a s
billion f o r Ihe RCA Corporation
m u c h i m a g e s as p r o d u c t s , c r e a t i n g a
( w h i c h o w n s N B C ) , a n d j u s i 1 wo y e a r s c o m m o n w o r l d taste i h a i is i d e n l i f i ago Bell A t l a n t i c o f f e r e d 133 billion i n
a b l y .American Music, video, f i l m s ,
a f a i l e d b i d f o r Tele c o m m u n i c a t i o n s
t h e a t e r , books a n d t h e m e p a r k s a r e
Inc . the largest cable c o m p a n y in the
t h e o u t p o s t s of t h i s c i v i l i z a t i o n i n
world
w h i c h m a l l s are the public squares,
The fashionable t e r m for all this
g a t e d suburbs are the neighborless
neighborhoods
and
computer
v e r t i c a l a n d l a t e r a l c o r p o r a t e intescreens the v i n u a l communities.
g r a l ion IS s y n e r g y , b u t s y n e r g y t u r n s
out t o be ) u s i a n o t h e r w o r d f o r mc^
D i s n e y has s i m p l y followed the
n o p o l y T h e D i s n e y a c q u i s i t i o n is t h e
m o d e m c o r p o r a t e i m p e r a t i v e to o w n
latest m a n i f e s t a t i o n of i r r e s i s t i b l e
deep a n d o w n wide If y o u o w n m o v i e
global economic a n d technological
s t u d i o s , b u y book c o m p a n i e s a n d
forces d e m a n d i n g integration and
t h e m e p a r k s and s p o n s t e a m s ( P a r a uniformity.
Mass producers are
m o u n t a c q u i r i n g Simon & Schuster.
mesmerizing
people
everywhere
V i a c o m b u y i n g P a r a m o u n t ) . If y o u
w i t h fast m u s i c , f a s i c o m p u t e r s , fast
o w n h a r d w a r e , b u y s o f t w a r e (Sony
food a n d f a s t i m a g e s , a s s e m b l i n g
t r y i n g l o s w a l l o w C o l u m b i a ) If y o u
nations into a n e t w o r k tied together
o w n T V stations, b u y f i l m l i b r a r i e s
by c o m m u n i c a t i o n s , i n f o r m a t i o n , en( T u r n e r a n d M G M ) O r if you o w n a
studio a n d a f i l m l i b r a r y , gel yourself
lertainmenl and commerce.
a big network
D i s n e y is a p i e - e m i n e n i leader i n
H
Heniamin
R Barlwr.
who teaches
poliiicul
scicnccui
kutfiers.
is authoi
of "JihuJ
vs M< World
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Planet
Is Both I attirtf;
Apart and
Coming
Tof^ethi'r
The d i s t i n c l i o n s b<'lween i n f o r m a tion and e n i e i t a i n m e n i . sofiware and
h a i d w . i i t ' . product and d i s t r i b u t i o n
a r e f a d i n g fast a n y w a y The Baby
Bells, set loose by a Covernvncnl inc r e a s i n f j v sidelmcd hv the Hcpubll-
can Congress a n d its d e r e g u l a t o r y
t e l e c o m m u n i c a t i o n s b i l l , are i n v a d i n g
the l e r r i i o r y of cable T V even as longdistance c o m p a n i e s r e t a k e local telephone l u r f
Kor the c o m p a n i e s , s y n e r g y — m o nopoly — IS | u s l good business M i c r o sofi s c h a i r m a n . B i l l Gates, k n o w s
that the s o f i w a r e p r o g i a i n s and patents he c o n t r o l s , t h o u g h sp<H l a c u l a r l y
successful, w i l l be w o i t h ex(x)neniial
ly m o r e t e a m e d u p w i t h the c r e a t i v e
ideas i h a i d r i v e H o l l y w o o d and M a d i son A v e n u e T h a t ' s w h y he went into
Lessons of the
ABC deal: Own
deep, own wide.
m u c h m o r e than a m u s i n g Amusement IS Itself an ideology II o f f e r s a
vision of life that, f o r a l l i h e protests
over sex and violence in the content, is
c u r i o u s l y a t t r a c t i v e a n d bland " P o cahontas' w n h l i s e c h w s in t h e m e
p a r k s and tie ins a i B u r g e r K i n g
weave m y t h i c siories a r o u n d c a i i o o n
ideniiiies i h j t seem l o c e l e b r a t e m u l t i c u l t u i alisni ev<-n as they er.idicate
real
diKeu-nre
Whethei
Oisney
knows It 1)1 not. ii is b u y i n g m u c h m o r e
than our leisure l i m e It has a purchase on our values, on how we feel
and ihink and what we think about
T h e r e a l q u e s t i o n r a i s e d b y this
latest m e d i a m e r g e r is i n e v i t a b l y
about us Do A m e r i c a n s w a n t s i m p l y
to be s p e c t a t o r s a n d c o n s u m e r s of
Ihe s y n e r g y f r e n z y t h a t is t u r n i n g
e n i e n a i n m e n t a n d m e d i a m i o a subs i d i a r y of a h a n d f u l of c o n g l o m e r a t e s l i k e D i s n e y ' ' Do w e r e a l l y w i s h
to r e f u s e the despised G o v e r n m e n t ,
o u r o n l y a l l y , s o m e m e a s u r e of cont r o l o v e r the n e w i n f o r m a t i o n a n d
e n i e r t a i n m e n i " t r u s t s " ? W h e r e do
w e l o k f o r help as w e b u s i l y d i s m a n tle o u r r e g u l a ' c y institutions^
business w i t h J e f f r e y
Kaizenberg
( l a t e of D i s n e y ! ) . Steven Spielberg
and D a v i d G e f f e n to c r e a t e D r e a m w o r k s , a n a t u r a l r i v a l to the n e w
As It stands poised o n the edge of
Disney A B C c o n g l o m e r a t e
the 2 I s i c e n i u r y . Disney seems to a i m
Consolidation h a s its advantages
at a 19ih c e n t u r y w o r l d of c o n g l o m e r F o r one t h i n g , it should allow nationalation in which the C o v e r n m e n i sits
decline pessimists l i k e the h i s t o r i a n
back and waiches. M i c h a e l Hisner is
Paul K e n n e d y l o stop w o r r y i n g so
no Rockefeller and B i l l Gates is no
m u c h I n the w o r l d c r e a t e d by Disney.
V a n d e r b i l t and Steven S p i e l b e r g is no
V i a c o m a n d T i m e W a m e r . ideas, i n Carnegie M r E i s n e r , M r Gates and
f o r m a t i o n and i m a g e s a r e of potentialM r Spielberg are f a r m o r e p o w e r f u l
ly f a r g r e a t e r v a l u e than c o m p u t e r
How a r e they to tx" rendere<l lesponsih a r d w a r e o r d u r a b l e goods Japa.nese
ble and accouniable'' A f t e i a l l . i h c i r s
c o m p u t e r p r o g r a m s have yet to pose a
is p<)«<-i nol over o i l . SU'V\ .ind r a i l
threat to the likes of M r Gates, a n y
roads hui over p i c t u r e s , i n l o i m a l i o n
more than G e r m a n sitcoms discomfit
and ideas Whose w o r l d d o w<- want il
the TV p r o d u c e r Steven Bochco
to b<- - Disney's or o u r s ^
I 1
And
Disney's amusements are
�, THE WASHWCTON POST
David S. Broder
Meeting on the Common
blackboard and intoned at the start of
What good is
Day
each day's session of Coogresa;
without hot iogt and hot air, baihe•. cue» and oratory? I can't supply the . "When a nation announces the work of
democracy ts finished, it's usually de-,
' ! eau. but I would otfer some holiday
mocracy that is finished in that na• t h o i i b u , inspired by an intercontjtion."
-.'oenUl exchange between Prague and
We live in a time when a great
••'the An*"^*^ grovesolacademe.
many politicians are addicted to re.V»ciav Havel, the president ol the
writing the Coostittitioo. No fewer
*• Cacch Repubbc, was Harvard's commencement speaker, delivering a pasthan four constitutiooal amendments-:
*' aiooatc and eloquent address oa the
may be voted on in Congress this
^reapoosibtlity <rf politkians and jouryear. Most of them don't stand scrutiToaltsts to embody and inciJcate the
ny. But even if they did. Barber re-:
•.civic virtues that make democracy
minds us that constitutioaal proteo'
. - r possible. Both poijtics and journalism.
lions are only what James Madison
! ' be - said, must aim at "serving the
called "parchment parapets," from
•-community," which means "morality
which threats to freedom and democ- r ^ i practice."
racy can be repelled only if a strongAjt the same time, in Havel's home
willed, principled dtircnry stands.
dty of Prague, Benjamin Barber, the
ready at the gates.
• ,
•.J.WaJT Whitman professor of political
Constitutions do not create de^sbcoce at Rutgers, was offering a
mocracy," Barber says. "Democracies
' related set of thoughts. Barber's comcreate constittitions.... America had
ments arc as applicable to our own
150 years of eipeneoce with kxal
country as to the repreaenUtives of
the former Communist lands who • dvic oihures and dvil liberty before
it codified the eipenence into the
were in his audience at a conference
Constitution and BiD of Rights.'
sponsored by the Ccniex for Civic
Those documents will endure only as
Educatioo. the American Federation
of Teachers, the Department of Edu- -. ioog as their prinapJes are dearly
,. etched on our minds and enshrined in
cation and the U.S. Informatioa
our heart*. That is why this' great
Agency.
national holiday really is the occasion
In words that Havel would certainly
for the kind of pairKXic oratory that
applaud. Barber reminded his listeners that "democracy is a process, not
icminds us of our individual responsian end; an ongoing experiment, not a
bility—Havd's favorite word—to
set of fixed doctrines. Its ideals, bnsafeguard denMxncy through active
Icss we repossess them generation to >.
dtizenshipi
,< generation, become tittle different '
. We aho live in a time when, as
than any other ideology. The open
noted here recently, the majority
society means a society without cloleader of the House of Representature, a society open to challenge and
tives. Didc Armey of Texas, and,
critidsm."
v
Biany, many other politicians argue
And then a sentence that I wish
that "the market » rational and the
could b e ^ f t ^ on every classroom
government is dumb." The exaggferat-
ed faith in the market is. Barber says,
, "our most insidious myth, because so
many believe it and because the handcuffs of the market fed so comfortable."
He decries the "disastrous confusion between the moderate and mostly well-founded claim that flexibly
regulated markets remain the most
efficient instruments <rf oDonomic productivity and wealth acc^^tailation.,,
• and the zany, overbtoi^ claim thit
naked. whoOy unregulated markAs
• are the sole means by which we/an
produce and distribute everythinl we,
care about, from durable goods to
sptritoal values, from capital daCeJop^
ment to social justice, from profctabili
ty to a sustainable envirorer:aAt.-fiT)fa ,;
private wealth to the csseqaal c^m-^^
* monweaL"
The point b that we arecitizens as •.
well as consumers. Individua] choice
worls wonderfully weD in guiding our
private consumption. But it b only as
•we'join together to sort out the.'
mtans for meeting our common goals I
s t£at we can sustain our democracy. '- T
That b why the traditioQa] Amcri- J
•can Fo<irth of July involves roeeting-r
jn th^ common—whether it b GokK;
en Gate Park in San Fraixisco, CrantT
• Pirk in Chicago or the Mali in Waslr^tingioo, where J will be. It b a tcne tit'
retnind ourselves of the Wessifl5»—
"and responsibilities-^-we share as citi--;'!
iensofthbland.
.
'
As Havel said at Harvard. "Tb4 'main task of the coming era b . . . a-.
radical renewal of our sense of t o - '
J?^aponsibility."
- 'i;".
'.\ There b no better time for poodeij - ;
ing that challenge—and acting o f l - "
: i t ^ ^ ^ Independence Day.- - ^ i ^
�COVER
STOR '
THE SEARCH FOR CIVIL SOCIETY
Can We Restore the Middle Ground Between Government and Markets?
BY
B E N)A M I N
R .
BARBER
I
n the Age of Gingrich, no one cares much for governgaged neither in government (voting, serving on juries,
ment. Yet at the same time, the privatization of public
paying taxes) nor in commerce (working, producing,
policy—the dominant theme of Republicans since the
shopping, consuming). Such daily business includes atReagan revolution—does not and cannot satisfy
tending church or synagogue, doing community service,
Americans' longing for family values and a sense of
participating in a voluntary or civic association, joincommunity Americans are being offered an uning a fraternal organization, contributing to a
palatable choice between an excessive, elecharity assuming responsibility in a PTA or a
phantine, and paternalistic government
neighborhood watch or a hospital fundand a radically self-absorbed, nearly anraising society It is in this civil domain
archic private market. No wonder they
that such traditional institutions as
are outraged at politicians.
foundations, schools, churches, public
Yet once upon a time, between the
interest groups, voluntary associapoles of government and market,
tions, civic groups, and social move' there was a vast, vital middle ground
ments belong. The media too, when
known as ci\'il society. Although in
they place their public responsibilieclipse today civil society was the
ties ahead of their commercial ambikey to America's early democratic entions, are better understood as part of
ergy and civic activism. Its great virtue
ci\'il society and not the private sector
was that it shared gcn-ernment'.s regard
People occupy ci\'ic space all the
for the commonweal, y d uiiliko governtime;
the trouble is, tho\' seem not to
ment made no claim to exurci.se a monopknow
It.
Not long ago, following ,i lecoly on legitimate coercion. Rather it was a
ture
on
citizenship
and civil societ\', a chasvoluntary "private" realm devoted lo "pubtised
middle-aged
woman
raised her hand
lic" goods.
and said to the speaker: "You shame me, sir!
Civil society is the domain that can poten- Alexis de Tocqueville
Clearly, being a citizen in civil society is vitally
tially mediate between the state and private
THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE
important. But I have to tell you, what with
sectors and offer women and men a space for
my chairing the church bazaar committee, my
activity that is simultaneously voluntary and public; a
service at the hospital, my assignment on the PTA, and
space that unites the virtue of the private sector—
now I've been elected head of my block association, well
liberty—with the virtue of the public sector—concern for
you see, I just don't have time to be a citizen!"
the general good.
What we call things counts. We need to understand
Civil society is a societal dwelling place that is neither
our civic engagements not as private activities, but as
a capitol building nor a shopping mall. It shares with the
non-governmental public activities, and we need to call
private sector the gift of liberty; it is voluntary and is
the spaces we share for purposes other than shopping or
constituted by freely associated individuals and'groups.
voting civil society When the free space that is civil sociBut unlike the private sector, it aims at common ground
ety goes unrecognized, we begin to treat the activity that
and consensual, integrative, and collaborative action.
takes place within it as private activity that is on a moral
Civil society is thus public without being coercive, volpar with the most selfish forms of commerce. This is
untary without being private.
how associations concerned about the good of all
The best way to think about civil society is to envision
people—for example, labor unions and environmental
the domains Americans occupy daily when they are enorganizations—lost their identity as "public" interest
THE .\EW DEMOCRAT
13
�COVER
groups and re-emerged as "special" interests whose
aims are indistinguishable from those of the for-profit
corporations with which they compete.
The Lost Tradition
How did it come to pass that a nation that prides itself
on its democratic civic tradition lost touch with the foundations that gave that tradition resilience? How could so
rich a political idea—drawing sustenance from John
Locke, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexis de
Tocqueville—get shunted aside?
Throughout the 19th century in Tocqueville's 1830s
America and afterward, our society comprised not two
but three sectors: government, markets, and civil society.
In that era when, as Tocqueville observed, liberty was
local and civic activity more prevalent, a modest governmental sphere and an unassuming private sector were
overshadowed by an extensive civil society tied together
by school, church, town, and voluntary association. However expansive they looked at the time, the Federalist
constitution and later the unionist Republican Party were
by today's benchmark studies in civic humility Though
I his opponents feared he would be a kind of monarch,
George Washington in fact governed with an executive
staff that numbered only in the dozens. And the states
and the people, to whom the 10th Amendment had left
all powers not expressly delegated to the central government, were the real theater and agents for civic action.
in this simpler time, individuals thought of themselves as citizens and their groups as civil associations;
citizens and associations together composed civil society. After the Civil War, civil society rapidlv began losing
ground to nascent capitalist corporations with an appetite for expansion and a tendency to monopoly.
Market forces soon began to encroach on and crush civil
society.
Government responded with an aggressive campaign
on behalf of the public weal, though it did not directly
involve the public. In assuming the powers it needed to
confront the corporations, government inadvertently encroached on and crushed civil society from the opposite
side. Squeezed between the warring and ever-expanding state and corporate sectors, civil society began disappearing from American life.
Sometime between the two Roosevelts, it vanished altogether. Its denizens were compelled either to find
sanctuary under the feudal tutelage of big government
.or to join the private sector, where schooLs, churches,
fand foundations assumed the identitv of corporations
and could aspire to be nothing more than agents for
STORY
their members. That their objective was the public good
became irrelevant since, by definition, all private associations necessarily had private ends.
This melancholy history has left us stranded in an era
in which citizens have neither a home for their civic institutions nor a voice with which to speak. Be passively
serviced (or passively exploited) by the massive, busybody, bureaucratic state, where the word "citizen" has
no resonance and the only relevant civic act is voting (an
activity in which fewer than half of citizens engage); or
sign onto the selfishness and radical individualism of
the private sector, where the word "citizen" has no resonance and the only relevant activity is consuming (an activity in which just about everybody engages). Be a
"citizen" and vote the public scoundrels out of office
and / or be a consumer and exercise your private rights
on behalf of your private interests—those are the only
remaining obligations of the much diminished office of
American citizen.
Lessons Old and New
There is no task more pressing for our leaders than the
restoration of a non-governmental public space that citizens can call their own. Tocqueville celebrated the local
character of American liberty and thought that democracy could be sustained only through vigorous civic activity in America's municipalities and neighborhoods. He
would .scarcely recognize America today where our alternatives are restricted to government gargantuanism
and private greed, and where the main consequence of
the recent elections seems to be the supplanting of New
Deal arrogance by market arrogance.
Ironically, America's admirers abroad have learned
lessons from us that we have forgotten. At the time of the
American founding, our Committees of Correspondence
played a role comparable to that of the pro-democracy
group Civic Forum in Eastern Europe, creating space for
civic action in the face of an oppressive government. In
Vaclav Havel's Czech Republic, where Civic Forum
helped transform the nation, and in Fang Lizhi's China,
where a similar spirit is being cultivated, civil society has
proved to be a prelude to democracy. It is clear to those
who live under tyranny that freedom must first be won
by citizens establishing their own public space; only afterward can it be secured by constitutions and law. Although American government today is neither colonial
nor totalitarian, it has usurped the space of civil society
The situation cries out for a remedy.
Without a civil society to nourish engaged citizens,
politicians turn into "professionals" out of touch with
THE .NEW DE.MOCRAT
15
�C 0 \' E R S T 0 R
their constituencies. Consider the wreck of health care
last year. In a debate that increasingly became technocratic and abstract, the people in whose names reforms
were being drawn up were invisible. The "public" had
no voice in the debate and those in search of it hardly
knew where to look, for neither opinion surveys nor the
special interest groups claiming to speak for the people
accurately reflect civil society The abyss that separated
the President's plan from its intended constituents
sealed its demise. While the merits of the health care
plan recently adopted in Oregon can be debated, Oregon
a plan because it created "health parliaments" and
similar institutions that gave citizens a direct hand in
shaping the reforms.
The story of AmeriCorps also holds important
lessons. National and community service belongs in the
domain of neither government nor the private sector,
but in civil society—indeed, such service helps define citizenship. Yet because civil society is not a part of our political consciousness, many Americans mistakenly view
AmeriCorps either as government-sponsored volunteerism (a contradiction in terms) or as a special interest
^enefit package for college students and the disadvan|taged. In truth, it is an exercise in high citizenship of
which Americans can feel especially proud.
A Mediating Domain
In the last 30 years. Democrats and Republicans have
hardened their battle lines. The former are pledged to
defend government, however alienating and inefficient
a tool it has become. The latter are committed to privatization, even if it means comprofriising the ideals (family
religion, liberty) to which they have traditionally been
committed. The parties are locked in a zero-sum game in
which the government cannot expand justice without diminishing liberty and in which the private sector cannot
expand liberty without diminishing justice.
Citizens are happy with neither choice. They sense
that democracy is precisely that form of government in
which not politicians and bureaucrats but an empowered people put flesh on the bones of their liberty; and in
which liberty carries with it the obligaions of social responsibility and citizenship in government as well as the
rights of legal persons against government. It is that
form of government in which rights and responsibilities
are two sides of a single civic identity one that belongs
neither to state bureaucrats nor to private consumers but
^to citizens alone.
Civil society is in fact the domain of citizens: a mediating domain between markets and government. It can
contain an obtrusive government without ceding public
goods to the private sphere. It also can dissipate the atmosphere of solitude and greed that surround markets
without suffocating us in big government's exhaust
fumes.
William Bennett's Book of Virtues tells many a salutary
moral tale, but the virtues it celebrates are the product
neither of government nor markets but of families and
citizens acting in the free space of civil society There is a
danger that Americans will think that the act of buying
the book somehow is tantamount to acquiring the
virtues. Character can be a source of American renewal,
but those who think commercial markets can instill character better than government have not spent much time
with the consumption-obsessed shoppers who cruise
suburban malls on Thursday nights, when stores stay
open late.
We do not need a novel civic architecture to recreate
civil society Rather, we need to reconceptualize and
reposition existing institutions. Schools, foundations,
community movements, the media, and other civil associations need to reclaim their public voice and political
legitimacy against those who would write them off as
hypocritical special interests.
Americans are sick of the partisans of both political
parties who would make them choose between a far too
filling government stout and a much too vapid market
lite. Americans want, need, and have a right to civil liberty—the liberty earned by citizens engaging in selfgovernment, willing neither to turn over their destinies
to government proxies nor to pretend that commercial
markets can produce the social goods and values that
are necessary for democratic community life.
A third way needs to be found between private markets and coercive government, between anarchic individualism and dogmatic statism.
If we fail to find it, we seem fated to enter an era in
which America's public voice, the nation's civic soul,
will be left forever mute. •
Beiijnwin R. Barber is Walt WJutmau Professor of Political
Science at Rutgers Unwersitif and autiwr of Strong
Democracy (1984), An Aristocracy of Everyone (1992),
and the forthcomini^ jihad Versus McWorld.
THE NEW DEMOCRAT
17
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205
Stephen L . C a r t e r
Integrity
( f o r t h c o m i n g , Basic Books, 1996)
(thirteen)
Toward an Integral Politics
E
(VERY time an American community holds an election for any
office something remarkable happens: when the votes have been counted,
the losers leave office peacefully. No tanks are rieeded for a rival political
party to lever open the doors of the White House; people need not risk
their lives against riot police to force the ouster of the defeated govemor;
the mayor who fails to win reelection does not have his opponents murdered. We simply assume that the winner will take ofHce, and, time after
time, our assumption comes true. This happens at every level, whether we
are electing a President or a dog catcher, and it is the signal feamre of our
politics.
Even today, as we move into what appears to be an increasingly biner
and even mean political era, nobody seriously doubts that if the bad guys
are voted out (and it doesn't matter who you happen to think the bad guys
are), they wjU step aside and let the good guys take office. So a political
party that is out of power plots the overthrow of its opponents by figuring
out how to get the right voters to the polls—^not by figuring out how many
troops to march into the streets.
I mention this because smooth transitions to power remain rare and
wonderful things in our troubled world, and because I think it is important
to begin any discussion of American politics with the simple optimism that
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RUMINATIONS
all of us, whatever our partisan preferences, should draw from the plain
faa that in the United States of America, democracy works. VHe may not
always like the answers that our democracy provides; we may not always
like the leaders whom our democracy elects; but the glory of our nation is
that the system works.*
That glorious system, however, is under threat. The threat comes not so
much, as today's media hoopla would have it, from America's many frightening fringe groups, although the groups are real and deserve the condemiution they receive. The threat comes, rather, from the increasing
alienation of people from their govemment, a trend that, if not halted, may
yet spell the end of genuine democracy in America. Indeed, a part of
democracy is already collapsing, for more and more people see government as a distant, indifferent, and even hostile enterprise, over whose decisions ordinary citizens have little sway.
A few days after the November 1994 elections, I gave a lecture on the
role of religion in Am*ican society at a small Christian college in western
Pennsylvania. Later on, 1 calked politics with members of the audience.
One was a middle-aged white woman who had voted Republican and supported, so she said, the Contract with America. Rather than bog us down
in ideology, I decided to talk specifics. I asked her how she felt about federal funding for school lunch programs. She said she supported it in principle—^in fact, she thought federal funding was a very good idea. She
added, however, that she simply did not trust the federal govemment to
do it. Washington—that was her name, and not hers alone, for the bureaucracy and the Congress together—Washington, she said, would mess it up.
Washington would hire too many bureaucrats, would write too many regulations, would somehow ruin things. Of that she was absolutely certain.
And not only that she felt, keenly, a sense that Washington did not trust
local people. People like her. Washington thought that if she, and people
like her, made the decisions, the decisions would be wrong. And she
resented it.
I am not attempting to elevate an anecdote into a national trend. But
nobody doubts that this sense exists or that it is widespread. Conservatives
say it is the fault of liberals, whose big-govemment philosophy has frozen
out local people who disagree with particular policies. Liberals say it is the
This may be why the American tradition rejects the category of political criminal,
the person who committ a crime not out of passion or a desire for personal gain
but out of devotion to an ideology. Who would believe in the notion of a 'political prisoner" in a nation that shares a faith (rightly or wrongly) that all can be fixed
through the ballot box'
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TOWARD AN INTEGRAL POLITICS
207
307
fault of conservatives, whose relentless atucks on the government" have
tumed it into the enemy. As so often, there is a little bit of truth in both
accusations. But placLig blame is less important than recognizing that the
survival of American democracy into the twenty-first century will require
fmding ways to overcome the alienation that is driving citizens away from
the political mainstream.
When conservative politicians succeed with the rhetoric of "devolution"
and "term limits," liberals often respond that the clever words are only gimniicks that mask terribly oppressive cuts in funds for desperately needed programs. But this ubiquitous answer, although .sometimes fair, is inadequate.
Most Americans are generous, not mean-spirited, and if they are attraaed to
what seem to liberals to be gimmicks, it is worth examining the gimmicks to
see what they offer. And what they offer is quite simple: democracy.
The trouble is that America is too big—not the government, although that
may be too big too, but the country. It is loo big to work as the easily governed agrarian republic that the Framers of the Constitution envisioned.' In
the world as the Framers imagined it. Tip O'Neill was precisely right all polirics was local. The federal government had litde to do. The aspects of governance that affected people most were carried on at levels they could influence: the stale house, the parish, and the town meeting. The cumbersome
machinery for electing a national legislature every two years was designed
to slow the national legislative process to a crawl: unable to anticipate modem transporution and communications, the Framers assumed that the rascals could do relatively little damage in two short years.
Of course, the Framers also limited the franchise in ways that we can now
see as inexcusable: women could not vote, nor of course could slaves, nor,
in many places, could men who did not happen to own property. This made
the nation as a whole less democratic, but it may have made the nation more
democratic wjdiin the narrow sphere of those permitted a voice. After all,
the limits on the vote meant limits on the number of voters one had to persuade in order to carry the election. The classic First Amendment image was,
for the bte eighteenth century, preciselyright:one could stand on a street
comer and orate and, if skillful, gain an immediate audience.
Over the two centuries since the Constitution was written and ratified,
America has progressively expanded the franchise, so that men without
property, then thefreedslaves, then women have been granted the vote.
This is all to the nation's credit, although more credit would be due had
America awakened sooner to its own moral obtuseness. Still, the nation is,
on parchment, far more democratic now than it was two hundred years
ago.
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RUMINATIONS
At the same dme, democracy has grown distant from the lives of the
American people. Of rutional tiemocracy, this is paniculariy true. Fewer
and fewer Americans believe, the polls tell us, that the govemment cares
about people like them.' This frustration, more than any other, creates the
danger that many a demagogue tries to exploit and that our poliUcs must
find a way to assuage.
The reader might reasonably ask what any of this has to do with integrity,
but the point, as will become dear, is a simpile one: a politics of integriry is
what is needed to draw people back to their faith in our democracy. In this
chapter, I hope to offer at least a preliminary sketch of what charaderisiics
an integral politics might possess.
MOVEMENTS AND INTEGRITY
American politics is under siege—by causes. Just about all of us have a
few. By a cause I mean a desire to put into place an institutional structure
that will guarantee that our particular political desires remain triumphant
(at least until the next cause comes along and sweeps away the structures
we foolishly think will stand forever). The institutional structure matters,
because the idea is to find a way to protca the triumph against some
future majority that might have a different idea. So many people who want
the government smaller demand a Balanced Budget Amendment to the
Constitution. Many people who support universal health coverage envision
a federal agency (once established, hard to abolish) to administer it. You
get the idea.
When people who believe in many different causes band together, we
have a political movement. Movements of this kind might be considered a
good and noble thing for democracy—groups of citizens working toward
a common goal!—^if the movements did not tum out, far too often, to be
the modem incarnation of what James Madison had in mind when he
warned, in Tbe Federatist No. 10, against allowing our politics to be taken
over by "factions."
Madison defined a faction as 'a number of citizens, whether amounting
to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and. actuated by
some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of
other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."* Factions, he believed, are ruinous to democracy, although he also
believed that the constitutional design—along with the sheer ungovernable
size of the new nation—made them less dangerous here than elsewhere.
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30*
Of course, advocates for every cause wUl insist that although their opponents are probably factions in the Madisonian sense, they themselves are
not, for they have at heart the nation's interest, not something narrower and
more ephemeral. And I am sure that they always believe iL Sometimes, certainly, it is true. (As usual, the dvilrightsmovement is my case in point.) But
the collapse of our politics into vaguely defined group interests—what business is said to want, what women are said to want, and so on—brings Madison's definition much doser to ourreality.So does die relendess (one almost
wants to say ruthless) insistence of too many of today's acihrists on characterizing their political opponents as outside the mainstream—even when
their opponents tum out to comprise a majority of their fellow citizens.
Our commitments are admirable, but they carry the seeds of tragedy.
The deeper our commitment to our causes, the weaker may be our commitment to democracy, for it is in the nature of the tme believer to have
litde patience with majoritarian struaures that get in the way of progress.
Rather than accept the possibility of defeat in democratic poliUcs, we try
to enshrine our commionents as beyond the reach of argument, by shoehoming them into die vast and intimidating structure of constitutional
rights or by crafting a rhetoric that makes those who stand against us necessarily stand widi the forces of evil. Un-American used to be a big word
in the vocabulary of silencing, as. today, are such terms as reactionary
(from the left) and not normal Americans (from the right).
I must confess that the great political movements of our day frighten me
with theirrecklessceitainues and their insistence on treating people as
means to be manipulated radier dian as die ends for which govemment
exists. Liberalism and conservatism, in their cunrent incarnations, both possess great ideas, worthy of a fair hearing and fair debate . . . and great capacities for hauied. Too many partisans seem to hate their opponents, who are
demonized in teims so creative that I weep at the waste of energy, and, as
one who smjggles to be C2iristian, Ifinddie hatred painful What perhaps is
worse, the liberal and conservative movements of our day both make common cause widi people who hate on grounds diat I would have diought history had by now taught us never to tolerate. 1 am asked, often, whether I
consider mysdf a ]Sxal or a conservative. My answer, always, is 'no." Conservatives too often welcome racists; liberals too often wdcome people who
look down dieir noses at "traditional values"; and both movements wdcome
more than their share of religious bigots. (Think of the evangelical leader
who stated at a political dinner in 1980 that God does not hear the prayers
of Jews; or die feminist leader who stated in 1991 that there are too many
Catholics on the Supreme Court.)*
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I very much doubt that I am alone in my antipathies, which is why I
sometimes wonder whedier die American people might rush to embrace
a political movement diat nunaged to make a forceful case for its causes
wiUiout having to hate and demonize those who disagree. The next century is arriving soon, whedier we are ready or not, and die only way to
avoid a twenty-first-century politics diat is every bit as nasty (and, if
integrityrequiresus to tell die trudi, undemocratic) as die politics of die
current era is to craft a set of principles and then to use our only political
weapon—the vote—to make sure dial our politicians and their movements
follow them.
#4
I mean diis quite sincerdy. I look forward to die day when we as voters
will say, 'I agree with So-and-so on most of die issues, but I could never
vote for somebody who would say diis or do that in order to win." We don't
do diat, of course. We may complain about the nasdness of our politics, and
we may wish it would change, but die fact is diat just like die frmd-raising
appeals we examined in chapter 5, nastiness and lies and unintegral behavior work. We reward them with our votes, perfiaps because we see no alternative.'
Perhaps diere is no alternative. But I am more of an optimist than diat.
This chapter, dien, is an effort to figure out how to changetilings,how to
begin to bring to our politics a true integrity, which would at last make our
democracy as moral as I deeply believe our people are.
E I G H T PRINCIPLES IN SEARCH OF A DEMOCRACY
American politics is a mess. But a careful attention to die demands of
integrity may offer us some hope of deaning it up. What, then, does integrity
require of us? The eight principles that I discuss below are a preliminary
effort to move toward an answer.
1. The nation exists/or ia people. Integrity, as we have seen, requires that
wc try to live our ideals. A politics of integrity, dien, believes and lives out
its ownrtietoric.And what is foremost in die rhetoric of liberal democracy?
Why, the importance of die individual—not simply as a possessor of rights
but as a full participant in the process of national governance. Thus, the
first principle of an integral politics is to remember our Kant: people are
ends, not means. People, and people alone, are the reason there is a
United States of America.
One of the reasons for the growing national disgust with politics, I suspea, is predsdy that politicians (along with the activists who feed them
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money and position papers) tend to forget diis. To diem, people are means,
not to be listened to but to be manipulated—persuaded to change their
minds if possible, or controUed if not. This vision of die people of die
United States as die dayradierdian die potters is not unique to left or right
m America; it is,radier.an elite mentality, die shared vision of people who
have in common dieir certainty diat diey know all die answers, if diey could
but get diose pigheaded American voters to come along.
Thus, many of die liberals who have been largely on the defensive since
1980 will pronounce solemnly dial dieir electoral defeats are die fault of
die successfiil manipulation of what must be die simpleminded voters of
America, or perhaps die essentialracism(or sexism or whatever) of diose
same American voters. This puts one in mind of a story about die cantankerous old Dbdecrat Lester Maddox, who, while serving as governor of
Georgia, was asked about unrest in die prison system. Herespondeddial
the problem was not die conditions intiieprisons but "the quality of prisoner you get diese days." And diat is what one hears nowadaysfromliberals: die problem is not die message but die quality of die voters who
keep ignoring it. As long as dial is die explanation, liberals will keep on
losing.
But conservatives have litde reason to celebrate, and if diey insist on
treatingrecentdections as ideological transformations, diey will have even
less. Aldiough diey have lately learned die lessons of populism—voters
want to vote for people who listen to diem—tiiey are also falling into die
same old traps that power always springs. Instead of listening to the voters who put diem in power, Republicans spent too much of 1995 listening
to die business groups diat paid for dieir successful campaigns, proposing
changes in die securities and environmenul laws diat businesses had long
sought—making it harder to win fraud suits and easier to meet environmental standards—changes dial precious few Americans had in mind
when diey voted die Democrats out and that certainly were nowhere to be
found in the Contraa with America."
Indeed, die Repubhcans, just like die Democrats, seem much more comfortable paUing around widitiieirfavorite interest groups dian actually
doing die work dial most Americans want done. In The Remit of tbe Elites,
the late Christopher Lasch argued diat most U^hington politicians, on left
"Lobbyistsforvarious business groups were invited to help draft the legislation.
Republican protests that the Democrais used to do the same thing with, for example, civilrightsgroups missed the point: people voted in 1994 for a government
that would listen to them.
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and right alike, actually disdain the common folk of whom they speak so
often, preferring die company of one another (even political enemies), as
well as lobbyists and journalists, people they consider, in effect, members
of their own class.' An oversutement? Probably. On the other hand, members of Congress do everything they can to prove Lasch right. A mystifying example is the combination of arrogance and sheer stupidity through
which many members of Congress refuse to make their fax numbers available to their own constituents—even those who call and ask. (I suspect
that the numbers are well known to the many lobbyists and media stars
with whom they associate.)
Republicans who believe that the 1994 elections were principally about
ideology rather than about a sense of a govemment out of touch with its
people should ponder the success of Ross Perot's famous line in 1992. that
Capitol Hill is the only place he knows where the employees can park and
the owners can't. Too many of our representatives, it must be said, spend
less time acting like our employees than like the employees of the PACs
that fund their campaigns. Perhaps it is too late to do much about that. But
integrity would suggest, at a minimum, that Republicans and Democrats
alike should let the voters know their fax numbers—or tdl the truth about
whose views they care about and whose work they're doing.
I do not mean this indictment to be as harsh as it may seem. Most of our
elected representatives are people of good will and a strong desire to do
theright.And yet the best will in the world is no insulation against the
temptation, once one has gained political offrce, to forget that the people
rule.
2. Some things are more important than others. A politics of integrity is
a poUtics that sets priorities, that does not tell the self-serving lie that every
program preferred by a particular political movement is of equal value. In
the political world toward which we are moving, priorities are essential.
Ever since the 1970s, voters have been decting Presidents who promise a
government that is smaller and, in the public mind (I suspect), more controllable. Thai is, the American people quite sensibly see govemment size
asrelatedto govemment accountability. Many dections that seem to be
about something else are probably about this.- people want a govemment
they feel is reachable.
For this reason, the debate over the proper relative roles of die federal
and state sovereignties—a debate that conservatives keep promising and
liberals keep resisting—^is actually a very useful one to have. As a nation,
we have good historical reasons to be leery of the phrase "states' rights,"
for it has been used both to permit and to nuskracialoppressions that
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should have been deemed intolerable. But that is not the same as saying
that it is obvious thai anything worth doing wdl is worth doing only at the
federal level. To the citizen, democracy most feels like democracy when
the apparatus of govemment is something that he or she feels capable of
affecting. The sense of the federal govemment as more and more distant
from the people (whether the sense is fair or not) is surely a far more
important force than ideology in driving the debate over government
size.
This is where liberals tend to make a serious mistake. They generally
defend a program threatened with reduction or dimlnation by objecting
that the program is a good one: it is cost-effective or it prevents starvation
or it fills a need. Often die argument is correa. But it also misses die point
of the new politics: it is no longer sufficient in defending a program to
demonstrate that it does some good—even a great deal of good. For the
government itself is no longer trusted. Consider again the story with which
I opened the chapter: the woman in western Pennsylvania who likes school
lunch programs but dislikes die feeling dial the federal governmem does
not trust people like her to do it right
Liberalism, and any revised philosophy that favors particular large govemment initiatives, must have an answer for this woman, and the answer
must be more persuasive than "It's a good program," which is no longer
sufficient, or the depressingly ubiquitous "The Republicans are starving
children," which is hardily rhetoric that will win back lost voters. Lots of
programs are good programs, and if the only argument needed to justify a
program is that it is a good one, the govemment will never shrink. And
shrinking government is something that the American people very much
want, and something that, one way or another, they are going to get
Any political movement that expects to survive into the next century
must make its peace with what a strong majority of voiers seem to believe:
the federal govemment (or govemment generally) cannot do everything
diat happens to be a good idea. Some things that are very good ideas will
have to be scrapped. Some things that work very well will have to be
scrapjjed. Some things that have very powerful constituendes will have to
be scrapped. And even some things that are very popular will have to be
scrapped
So our second hesitant step toward an integral politics is to acknowledge
diat the conversation has changed, dial argvimenis on pragmatics and practicalities wlU not suffice in an era when the dominant ideology is one of
skepticism and mistrust. What is required of both liberalism and conservatism, therefore, is something that for a good two or diree decades their
•
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pK>ponenis have stubbornly refused to do, perhaps because diey have not
had to: die sening of priorities. Not paper priorities, die sort one puts in a
platform, but real priorities, as in conduding dial diis cherished pnagram
is more important dian diat one. Less dian diat die voters will no longer
abide.
This stark faa-^if uve—will make life difficult for conservatives, who,
having gained a measure of political power, seem to have decided diat
shrinking government is less important dianreplacinga pleriiora of liberal
initiatives widi a plethora of conservative ones. The same stark fact—once
again, if tme—subsuntially wrecks the contemporary program of liberal
political philosophy, which has been to rmdjusHjications for die programs
of the liberal agenda. Many of the justifications offered for very controversial libeial programs are quite strong. Affirmative action, for example, no
nutter what its flaws, responds to a genuine moral claim that we all too
rarely articulate. And many of the challenged liberal programs themselves
are wonderful. For example, federal funding for alternatives in tdevision
and the arts is a glory, not an aberration, of the budget
But so what? Justifications, no matter how thoughtful, will no longer
suffice as substitutes for the setting of priorities. And here, of course,
integrity becomes crucial, because il is folly to pretend that all programs
are equally important Liberals Gike everybody else) must begin to draw
disiinaions. So one might say that federal funding for the arts is important and federal funding for school lunches is important, but is federal
funding for the arts as important as federal funding for school lunches? I
don't think so. Others might strike the balance the other way. The point
is that in an era that demands the sening of priorities, balances of this kind
must be struck.
3. Consistency matters. Third, a politics of integrity requires that the prindples for which our parties and institutions stand truly be treated as prindples. A principle is not a principle if we will bend it to hdp our friends.
Consider as an example the current assault on some aspects of the 'welfare state."' A central theme of the argument against treating govemment
assistance as an entidement is that reliance on aid supposedly cripples selfrdiance. Perhaps it does. But integrity requires that the prindples on which
the govemment operates be applied consistentiy. If welfare programs have
bad effects on individuals, they must also have bad effects on corporations,
and corporate welfare shouldreceivethe same scrutiny^-and be subject to
the same dismissive rhetoric—as welfare for individuals.
Consider the following examples of corporate wdfare, gleaned from
1995 reports by the Cato Institute and the Progressive Policy Institute:'
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• 'Over the past 20 years, the Forest Service has built 340,000 miles of
roads—more than eight times the length of the intersute highway system—^primarily for the benefit of logging companies." (The cost of this
project was $140 million in 1994 alone.)*
• "Through the Rural Electrification Administration and the federal Power
Marketing Administrations Isidi, the federal government provides some
$2 billion in subsidies each year to large and profitable electric utility
cooperatives.""
• "An estimated 40 percent of the $1.4 billion sugar price support program
benefits the largest one percent of sugar firms.""
•0-
Moreover, as the Progressive Policy Institute report points out, the corporate subsidies are deeply regressive, providing benefits to a relatively small
group of upper-income Americans, largely with money taxed from those
eartiing far less. In other words, corporate welfare programs are like individual welfare programs, except dial they transfer tax dollars from low- and
middle-income people to upper-income people, a kind of reverse-Robin
Hood effect
And, as the Cato Institute points out, corporate welfareraisesconsumer
prices, fosters cozy rdationships between the government and business,
and "converts the American businessman from a capitalist into a lobbyist.'"
In other words, corporate welfare has the same bad effects that individual
welfare is supposed to have, only more so, because corporate welfare hits
all of us and hits us hard. But the same Congress and administration that
are tilting at the windmills of welfare reform for individuals seem content
to leave corporate welfare rdatively untouched, but for a nip here and a
tuck there. (Of course, therecipientsof individual assistance do not have
political action committees.)
Machiavelli ai^ued that it is more important for a leader to seem to be principled than actually to be prindpled—indeed, that a truly principled leader,
one who tries to live out the deepest moral commitments of a sodet/s public rhetoric, will ultimaidy be deposed. A politics of integrity must, through
its structure and its work, deny the tmth of this proposition.
4. Everybody gets to play. A politics of integrity does not draw arbitrary
boundaries around the public square, screening out some citizens whose
political views have been formed in ways of which various elites disapprove. A particular problem of our age has been the astonishing effort to
craft a vision of public life in which America's religious traditions play no
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important roles, by ruling out of bounds political (and sometimes moral)
arguments that rest on eiqsliddyreligiousbases." Nowadays, one hears
quite commonly the argument that it is morally wrong—perhaps even constitutionally wrong, a violation of the Establishment Qause of the First
Amendment—^for you to try to "impose" on me your religiously based moral
understanding. Usually this argument is stressed in the context of the abortion battie. Of course, had this ever been a seriously defended principle of
American public life, we would never have had the abolitionist or dvil
rights movements, to name only the most obvious two.
When I make this point, as I often do, in lecturing about politics and religion, I often get an answer that goes something like this: "But nobody can
reason with these religionists. They say that So-and-so is God's will, and
what can you say in retum?" I am always saddened by this answer, because,
as a professor at a university, I run into many dosed-minded people, and
few of them need divine command as an excuse. But nobody tries to ban
them from public debate for their dosed-mindedness. Besides, this vision
of how religious people reason is a caricature. That there are some who
cannot be reached by reason is doubdess tme. The notion that most rdigious people are that way seems to me a quite unfounded insult
A further argument I hear is of this type: "The difference is that the civil
rights laws that were supported by religious people, unlike the abortion
restrictions that are supported by religious people, do not infringe on anybody's fundamental rights." So I point out that the distinction isfalse,that
the civil rights laws infringe on the fundamental right of property, by idling
people that they may not segregate in restaurants or holds they happen to
own. The fact that it is a good and honorable and just infringement of
those rights does not change thefactthat it is an infringement of those
rights.
Typically, I am next hit with this one: "Yes, but therightto property is less
important than the ri^i to privacy." Now, apartfromthe upper-middle-dass
bias inherent in that proposition, one can at least say that therightto property is mentioned in the Constitution. The right to privacy is not, and
although I count myself as glad that tberightexists, I am not so hypocritical as to pretend that something odier than aratherimcomfortable judicial
alchemy put it there and keeps it there. Besides, it would be crude governance indeed to build a hierarchy of constitutionalrights—theseare important, those are trivial—and then to say, as a matter of law, that religious opinion can be taken into account in the infringement of some but not others.
I am not suggesting that the pro-lifereligionistswho demand access to
the public square deserve to prevail. But I do believe in fair procedures.
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There is an air of design about the date of the discovery of a rule against
religious politicking: after the civilrightsmovement (which rdied on il
heavily) and before the maturity of the pro-life movement (which relies on
it heavily). We have spoken of consistency as crucial to a truly reflective
integrity, but I have yet to fmd the pro-choice advocate who will condemn
the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., for daring to ask the sute to impose
his religiously inspired vision of equality on dissenting segregationists who
might prefer to serve only whiles at their lunch counters and hotels. In fact,
when Iraisethis point, I am generally told that King's vision was not really
religious—that it was grounded in . . . wdl, natural law or something (his
repeated ciutions to Scripture and theology notwithstanding). Of course,
the Roman Catholic Church could argue diat its opposition to abortion is
notreallyreligious but is grounded in . . . well, natural law or something
(repeated citations to Scripture and theology notwithsunding). But nobody
on the pro-choice side would say that this fact gets the Church off the
Establishment Clause hook.
It does not matter whether one sees the pro-life movement as in any
sense the intellectual heir of the dvil rights movement. (Indeed, one of the
genuine political ironies of our day is that both the pro-choice and pro-life
sides can daim a spiritual and intellectual connection to the dvil rights
movement.) The point,rather,is that a politics of integrity must be consistent in its rules instead of fixing the rules so that one side gets to win. If it
is bad to have religious advocacy in the public square, then it was as bad
for the Reverend Manin Luther King, Jr.. as it is for the Reverend Pat
Robertson.
To be sure, the image of religion in our public life is badly tamished
nowadays by the tendency of some Christian conservatives to pour the
most virulent anathemas ufxjn those who disagree with dieir politics." (Of
course, many secular liberals do the same.) Although the religious voice
bdongs in American politics, it will be an ineffective and scary voice as
long as it seems to be a mean-spirited voice. Moreover, advocates of a
strong rdigious presence in American public life must bear in mind that
the freedom of religion, our guarantee of rdigious pluralism, is one of the
great glories of our Constitutioa Consequendy, any suggestion that there
is a single best or even official Americanreligion(for example, the "Chris"I am convinced, both by the people I have met as I travel and lecture on religion
and politics and by reviewing survey data, that the often strident voices of the leaders of some conservative Christian groups are represenutive of the convictions of
oniy a relatively small number of the members.
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tian nation" rhetoric) is not only an offense against religious liberty; it is
also, if offered as a basis for govemment policy, blaiandy unconstiwtional.
However, the rhetorical excess of some conservatives hardly justifies
die antireligious sentiments expressed by some liberals. A strong tradition
among liberal intdlectuals, at least since John Dewey, has been to treat
religious faidi as a kind of primitive superstition, if that faidi governs (or
even suongly influences) one's public moral and political sunces. Too
many liberal theorists, as I have noted dsewhere, wriie and speak of rdigion widi a kind of elitist despair,recognizingthat it is a force in the worid
but seeming to wish diat il would go away." This tendency puts one in
mind of Pliny die Younger, who, early in die second century, wrote a letter to the Roman Emperor Trajan on the treatment of (2hristianlty, which
he called "a depraved and exuavagant superstition." He U'ied to get people to see reason, Pliny wrote, even on pain of torture or deadi, but despite
his efforts, he complained, "(t]he contagion of this superstition has spread
not only in the dties, but in the villages and rural districts as well."" To
which one might simply add: Ah, blessed contagion! Would dial we had
more of it!
More to the point, it does not ultimaidy matter how many thoughtful
scholars and journalists aigue that it is wrong to have rdigious rhetoric in
the public square. It is simply there. Hume argued dut one cannot derive
an ought from an is, I would answer that you carmot defeat an is with an
ought Millions of American citizens seem to have decided that die language of dieir faidi is the language widi which diey fed most comfortable,
and so we must, under ourfirstprindple of integral politics, take diem as
diey are,ratherthan commanding diem to become somediing else.
5. We must be willing to talk about right and wrong without mentioning
the Constitution. I say diis as a longtime teacher of constitutional law and as
one who truly loves our foundational document, die greatest and most successful die world has known. A politics of integrity must certainly respea the
fundamental (and constitutional) ri^ts of its citizens, and must be vigilant in
protecting those rights, even when they are exercised by those we disdain:
Nazis, for example, or serial killers. But we must never make die moral mistake of supposing dial because I have dierightto do somediing, you lack
the right to criticizeroefor doing it To pretend that the existence of constitutional protection for an action immunizes die actor against moral criticism
is blatandy unintegral: it as much as says to free and equal dtizens. "Shut up
about your prindples!"
Individualrightsare a good thing, but to make a cult of individualism
can lead to sodal disaster. It is no acddent that the United States has both
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3 19
the highestrateof abortion and the highestrateof private ownership of
firearms in the world, for we live in a nation that has made a cult of individualism. Our well-known national inability to engage in moral conversation means that once a right exists, nobody seems to feel comforuble urging that it not be exercised. No wonder people who are concerned about
the harm that firearms do see no alternative to banning them; no avenue
exists for a discussion of die possibility dial die "right" to own them should
be exercised with greater discretion. And no wonder opponents of abortion believe they must try to make the procedure illegal; not only is there
no significant forum for moral suasion against the exercise of the "right"
but courts have latdy cooperated in destroying such limited fomms as do
exist, by issuing orders that civil libertarians would countenance in no
other context intended to keep pro-life demonstrators suffidendy far from
abortion dinics that their message is likely to be ineffective."
We know that our cult of individualism is out of control when a
respected federal judge issues an order—as happened in New Jersey—
making it impossible for a town to keep a homeless man widi offensive
body odor from making the public library an unpleasant place for others.
It is as though once an individual has made up his mind to do a thing, no
matter how tasteless orrepulsive,nobody else has legal recourse.
Newton Minow, who as head of the Federal Communications Commission in the 1960s coined the phrase 'vast wasteland* to describe the offerings of nertvork television, hasraisedsimilar concerns about the direction
therightsrevolution has taken. Minow cites the example of a student at a
Califomia university who dcdded to attend classes naked. When challenged on his conduct, the student offered as his defense the First Amendment" Now, 1 am not convinced that the freedom of speech can plausibly
be read to shield public disrobing. Even if it can, however, Minow points
out that the existence of First Amendment protection says nothing at all
about whether the student was doing something wise or unwise, offensive
or inoffensive, right or wrong. So there Ues the point: diat I have arightto
do something does not deprive you of yourfreedomto criticize me as
harshly as you like. In particular, it grants me no protection whatsoever
from moral critique of what I choose to do."
Even the philosophers of the Enlightenment, jusdy credited with modernizing our understanding of freedom to indude rights against the sute,
understood this point John Locke, for example, suted as his first prindple
that men bdong not to ihemsdves but to God—meaning that the exercise
of freedom is to be guided by God's commands. Indeed, our modem
notion offreedomin the sense of an exercise of free will is largely a Chris-
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tian invention (see chapter 14). The Greeks had no/^oncepdon of will,
which explains Aristode's maddening insistence on describing virtue as a
habit. Christianity needed it, however, to allow human beings a free choice
to accept or reject God's offer of grace. And freedomrighdyused, of
course, meant freedom to follow G o d . — —
As a matter of secular ediics, die proper critique of die use of freedom—
ofrights—isnot necessarUy dial it ignores our particular vision of the will
of God (aldiough we also must not rule dial critique out of bounds). Whatever die source of the moral critique of how we use our freedom, however, die existence of die Constitution should not be treated as a moral
shield. For die Constitution is but a reminder that we possessfreedomto
choose; it does not tdl us which choices are best
And just as we must be willing to criticize die exercise of constitutional
rights when they are used immorally, we must resist die temptation to run
to amend the document every time we do not like what is going on. At
diis writing, American conservatives seem to be lining up to support a
greai trilogy of amendments: die Balanced Budget Amendment, die Religious Equality Amendment, and die Flag Desecration Amendment If a
cause is just, it seems, die Constitution is the place where we are supposed
to enshrine it Right now, it happens diat liberals want to enshrine dieir
programs through the courts and conservatives theirs through the amendment process, but, in reality, both sides are up to die same antidemocratic
factional mischief. Conservatives and liberals have grown intoxicated widi
constitutionalism, staggering togedier along die same drunkenroute,pn>pelled by the same bleary logic: die way to make sure dial we win is to
place our program beyond die reach of politics. But democracy is not
about making sure dial we win (see my eighdi prindple). Democracy is
about making sure that every voice is heard,tiiatno voice is privileged,
and that everybody plays by the rules.
I wonder sometimes what Madison, who worried so much about factiousness, wouldtiiinkif given die chance to ponder our edifice of constitutionalrights.Pcriiaps he would decide dial our heavy reUance on die language of rights is simply die crowning jewd in die work diat he and die
odier Founders began. On die other hand, 1 worry dial he would say that
by placing so much emphasis on die rights the Constitution protects, we
actually promote the rise offactions,because, with all free to do as they
like, there is less and lessreasonfor people to work together—as Madison
openly hoped they would—^in the national interest
Do not mistake my point Of course there are prindples that should be
beyond the reach of democratic politics. Of course there are rights widi
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whidi no majority should be aUowed to tamper. But a diriving democracy
must insist diat die set of untouchable icons be as small as possible Nowadays, die temptation of power is to do just die opposite, to make die set
« large as possible. Infact,die temptation is to place oZT our causes
beyond thereadiof democratic politics, lest someftituremajority disturb
our worii. But if ever we allow diat to happen, we certainly cease to be a
democracy.
6. Ourpohtics must caU us to our higher selves. The debasement of political language is paniculariy embarrassing when die negativity is being spread
by our deaed representatives. The matter is only made woree when we
diink diat even die polite ones seem too often to be caUing us to sdfishness.
In a poUtics of integrity, we must cry torespondto politicians who call us to
our highestradierdian lowest selves; in particular, we must respond to
politidans who talk of die national interest and our shared obligations, not
merely those who promise to enrich us.
The trouble is dial, nowadays, every politician tries to enrich us. The
devil's definition of an honest politician (and quite an unfair definition at
dial) is one who suys bought. Nowadays, diis notion must seem depressmgly cynical. Yet somediing very dose lo it captures die unhappy political
spirit of our selfish age. Most Americans seem to diink an honest politician
is one who will buy our votes widi promises of wealdi and dien go on to
complete the purchase.
The wealdi widi which politicians make dieir dectoral purchases comes
in a variety of fonns, but nearly all of diem play lo our selfish instincts.
Conservatives tend to promise tax cuts, which iransUte to more money for
good, honest, hardworking Americans, and less for die despicable them,
who may be demonic bureaucrats or demonized welfare cheats, according
to one's taste. Liberals promise entidements and, belter yet, constitutional
rights, which translate to more freedoms for good, honest, hardworking
Americans against die despicable them, who nowadays are likely to be
wealdiyfat-catsor what liberals sadly persist in labeling die "religious
right"
Promises of bodi kinds offer somediing for die voter, and so appeal to
our lower instincts.* (Remember our discussion in die previous chapter of
Brown v. Hartlage.) Nddier kind offers die vision of a better nation, except
in die narrow sense that die nation is bener when it gives us precisely what
•I am well aware of the poUtical science literature arguing that appeals of diis kind
arc precisely what politicians should be doing If govemment is to aggregate private preferences, I simply disagree.
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we desire. In odier words, neidier kind calls us to duty. One longs for die
poUu^ candidate who is willing to say. more dian diree decades after
John Kenned/s assassination: "Ask not what your country can do for you
Ask what you can do for your country." At dietime,die borrowed phrases
sounded a litde hokey. Looking back, diey sing witii an optimism about
America diat today's cramped and self-regarding politics altogedier lad;
One reads fromtimetotimediat dianges in die economy are to blamedial 11 ISfarharder to be generous of spirit or genuindy optimistic in a
nation diat is undergoing dierapidand unseiding economic evolution widi
whidi America cuirendy wresdes. If mie, diis explanation is a sad one
Holding to our prindples of duty and service andregardfor odiers is most
important attimesof stress; after all, as we have seen, integrity is not
integrity if it is never tested.
7. We must listen to one another. A politics of integrity is a politics in
whidi all of us are willing to do die hard woric of discernment, to test our
views to be sure diat we are right. As we have already seen, diis in turn
implies a dialogue, for in die course of our reflections. espedaUy in a
democracy, it is vital to listen to die views of our fdlow citizens. If our discernment is genuine, dicn so must our listening be, which is why our sevendi prindple, simply put, is diat all of us must listen with our ears, not
with our mouths.
2.0
By diis I mean diat we must strive to avoid an enor I confess to committing aU dietime:die error of allowing odiers to speak only because we
need to hear dieirj^iews in oKler to be able to reftue diem. In tme dialogue, as Martin BuBeTSk pointed out, we not only seek to persuade die
__otherbut we allow ourselves die possibility of being persuaded by tiie
otiiei^An integral politics certainly needs dtizens who listen; odierwise,
the dialogue itsdf becomes poindess.
The o-ouble is diat we may lack die capadty for tmly open and dioughtfill dialogue. I do not say we have lost It; I am not convinced we ever had
it. But what we did have and seem to have forgotten is a strong tiadition
favoringtiieold saw "I disapprove of what you say but I wUlfightlo die
deadi for your right to say it." Our public dialogue—our very languagehas been debased duough die move toward increasing negativity and even
hostility, so dut, in an argument, diefirstweapon we reach for is often die
most extreme: "That'sridiculous!"or "He's such an idiot!" or "She's fidl of
it!" or "I've never heard anydiing so crazy in my life!" Missing are such stalwarts of civility as "I'm sorry, but I must respectftilly disagree" or "Let's talk
about diisftirther"or "I might not go as far as diat, but I do see your point"
Having lost die talent for aig:ument, we call names instead. But dialogue in
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T O W A R D " AN INTEGRAL POLITICS
an integral pohtics must be dvU; if we lose die dvUity dut integrity
demands, we trade die possibility of persuasion and compromise for die
certainty of provocation and alienation.
In a dry deaner one day I witnessed a vehement argument between a
customer who fdt a shin had not been adequatdy cleaned and die owner
who was defending his staff. The customer did not want to pay. The owne^
wanted his money. In dieir mumalftuy,neidier one came up widi die
obvious solution: diat die deaner should try again,freeof diaige to get
die stam out. Our politics can be dial way too: we are so busy bdng angiy
at one anodier dial it does not occur to us to try to find ways to work
together.
People on dierightseem to diink diat die nastiness of our public discussions is diefaultof people on die left; people on die left seem to diink
dial it is diefaultof people on dieright.But diere is plenty of blame for
all of us. When we are told, as we often are, dial affimiative action is as
bad as Jim Crow, we arefacinga cmd absurdity; when we are told, as we
often are, diat only aradsicould be troubled by affirmative action, we are
facing anodier. I struggle, hani. witii my own habit of conduding dial peo
pie who disagree widi me on die important pubUc issues of die day are
obviously deserving of my condemnation. I stmggle to understand dieir
points of view, even, as Buber suggested, to seardi for empadiy. I do not
daim to do it very wdl. What is depressing is how solidly that faUure
places me in the American mainstream.
8. Sometimes the other side wins. This is, perfiaps, die most important
prindple of an integral democratic politics, and yet litde need be said about
it. The point is simple: in die end, politics comes down to votes. Somebody
wins and somebody loses. In practical terms, dial means diat die people
have picked one andrejecteddie odier. Integrity requires us to admit die
possibility (indeed, die likdihood) diat we lost not because of some shameless manipufation by our vUlainous opponents, and not because of some
failure to get our message across, but because our fdlow dtizens. a basicallyrationalbunch, considered botii our views and diose of die other side
and dedded diat diey liked die odier side's better.
To be sure, now andtiiendie odier side cheats, as Richani Nixon ti-ied
to do (and maybe succeeded) in 1972. and as some say Joseph Kennedy
did on behalf of his son John in I960 (aldiough evidence is diin). But we
cannot deduce cheatingfromdie fact dial we lost And when bodi sides
play by die rules, one would hope diai die losers would have die integrity
and fortitude to say to die winners, "Congratulations; I'll see you in two
years" (or four, or six, or whatever),radierdun, "Oh, no, die forces of evil
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have triumphed, monsters are in die streets, and die Republic is at an
end"-wh,di isroughlydie tone of far too mudi postelection commentary
from bodi sides of die political aisle,
"Here, die people mle," pronounced Gerald Ford after Nixon's resignation m August 1974. TTie faa is one dut an integral politics cannot afford
to forget.
INTERLUDE: THE ABORTION DISTORTION
Perfups diis is die place to pause and note dial in order to get an integral
politics back on trade, we have to stop allowing so much of politics and
pnnciple to be dictated by die nation's moral divisions over abortion rights.
In particular, die press must end its abortion hang-up, its tendency to
treat abortion as die most important domestic issuefacingAmerica—somediing almost nobody else believes. When President Qinion announced his
1993 nomination of Rudi Bader Ginsburg to die Supreme Court, I happened to be in my car; die same was tiue when I heard die news of his
1994 nomination of Stephen Breyer to die same u-ibunal. In each case, die
announcer treated die audience to useless speculation as to each jurist's
views on abortion—but mentioned no odier issue likely to come before
die Court, We heard nodiing about die nominee's views on affirmative
action orfreespeech or die separation of powers or die deadi penalty or,
for diat matter, interstate banking (which probably affects more people
more direcdy dian any oftiiesesexier issues do). Only abortion.
Yet die number of people who consider diis die most cmcial work of
die Supreme Court is probably quite small. Cenainly die number of voters
(especially on die pro<hoice side) who rank die abortion issue as foremost among dieir dectoral concerns borders on die minuscule.-*! do not '
mean to suggest dut abortion is a trivial matter, eitiier as a matter of constitutionalism or as a nutter of ediics. The media, however, should recognize dial diere are odier issues as or more vital to die lives of die American people and stop treating diis as die cmcial faa dut we must know
about Supreme Court nominees.
Abortion distorts our political dialogue in otiier ways as wdl. So passioruidy do committed advocates care abouttiieissue dut they offer misleading analyses of die data—dius sacrificing integrity in die interest of die
cause. Bodi die pro-life and pro-dioice sides tend to offer broad generalizations about die opinions of die American people on die subjea, generalizations that are not so much wrong as woefully misleading. Thus the
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pro-life side will point out dut a solid majority of Americans say dial killing
a fetus is as bad as killing a diUd-indeed, in some suiveys, a majority says
dut a fetus is human from die moment of conception.* This is an acairate
reading of die survey data. But die pro-choice side wiU point out dut a
solid majority of die American people opposes banning abortion, and diis,
too, is an accurate reading of die survey data.
These data sets may appear to be coniradiaory, but, in inidi, die American people haveresolveddiem. Indeed, die data have been consistent for
more dian twenty years—in short, since Roe v. Wade^is dedded in 1973"
What die data show is diat if you add togedier aU die people who believe
abortion should be banned and all die people who believe diat abortion
should be an unfettered choice, you still have less dian half die American
people. Strong majorities of Americans support a number of restrictions on
abortion: waiting periods, parental permission for minors, and die like.*!
This compromise position, moreover, is more or less where die Supreme
Court, which activists on bodi sides condemn for its often shaky decisions
has positioned die constimtional law of abortion.f=ri;Sre is no obvious
son why die Court's decisions have to reflea die views of die American
people, and die justices do dieir most courageous work when diey stand
in opposition to die polls; neverthdess, activists on bodi sides, who seem
to diink public opinion important, would do die nation a favor if diey
behaved less like die Ravenna forgers we discussed in chapter 7 and more
like people of integrity.
Our abortion-centerednessftjrtherdistorts our politics by making us seem
less dvi] than we are. The abortion debate suffers quite famously from tiie
rfietoric of demonization: die rdigkjus zealots who intimidate women and
murder doctors against die baby killers who are perpetrating America's own
Holocaust. And much of die media's rdentiess assault on die so-called religiousright(what a biased term) seems abortion-centered. When you leave
die abortion issue, diere are relativdy few subjects of our politics on which
Christian conservatives seem significantiy out of step witii die views of die
larger sodety. (There are a number of issues on which I disagree widi the
Christian conservatives, but I am willing to admit, as I wish more liberal
activists were, dial I am often disagreeing widi a majority of my fellow citizens as well.)
To die media, abortion seems to be die dassic example of an arena in
which, all too often, die argumenutiveratchetturns only one way—and
not merely on die editorial pages. A number of newspapers have adopted,
as a matter of style, die tenn "anti-abortion" to refer to members of die prolife movement, and die term "abortionrightssupportere" to refer to mem-
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bers of die pro<hoice movement. This dedsion is troubling because by
usmg diese terms, die newspaper takes sides in die controverey. One side
becomes/orsomediing, die odier against. It would be as logical to call die
pro-life side "fetalrightssupporters" and die pro-dioice side "anti-fetus "
or to call gun-control supporters "anti-gun rights," or. for diat maacr to
call supporters of historical preservation laws "anti-private property" But
nobody, least of aU a major newspaper, would countenance sudi nonsense.
Except in die case of abortion, where die mass media make no pretense to die usual neutiality. Now, I am not an adamant pro-lifer
aldiough I do tend to find mudi of die pro-dioice argument questionbeggmg and. ultimately^estingas solidly » r^. r,.,,;^
undiscussable premises/But die b i a s ^ e press on die abortion issue
iS depressing. In diis book, diereaderwill already have noticed. I use die
terms pro-choice to refer to people who favor proteaion of abortion
rights over protection of fetal rights and pro-life toreferto people who
favor protection of feul rights over proteaion of abortion rights. My reason IS simple: absent a complete collapse of linguistic integrity (tiut word
agam), I am willing to call people and groups what diey want to be
called.
If our politics is to become a politics of integrity, we must not allow one
issue to generate so many of diertUesand so much of die rhetoric, from
eidier left or right Paniculariy die abortion issue. It is shameftiltiiatso
many odierwise prindpled liberals and conservatives have made abortion
a litmus test of genuine commitinent As Jean Bedike Elshtain has noted:
'Dealing with abortion . . . cannot be compared to building a great interstate highway system or desegregating die schools. ? Hut die reason is not '
diat our divisions over die issue are insuperable. The reason is dut abortion is one of die few moral issues in American history about which it is
possible to say, widi no sense of irony, dut bodi sides are right
THE DUTIES OF THE PEOPLE
The greatest error of all in considering how to buUd an integral politics is
CO judge die integrity of our politics by die integrity of our politidans. In
an dectoral democracy, what nutters far more is die integrity of voters; in
particular, what maaers is die wiUingness of dtizens first to envision a
national purpose and dien to vote consistentiy in ways dut willftutherit
We, die People of die United States (as die first line of die Constitution
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reads), when we do less, are already making impossible die politics of
integrity dut die nation needs.?
The point is not diat politics would not benefufroma healdiy dose of
mtegrity—it would—or dut politicians do not deserve criticism when diey
faU to display it-diey do. The point is dut die nature of integrity in polities is properiy understood as refen-ing to more dun an individual's consisiency to his or her own internal compass. Politics, more dun any odier
mstitution of our sodety except diefamily,rests on an integrity diat
focuses outward, toward being tiue to odiers. ndier dun inward, toward
being tme to one's own self.
Bob Heriiert, die New York Times columnist, has argued dut die obhgation of blade people who face what he describes as a hostile t>oUtical atmo,-^
phere is to vote-and vote and vote.^lftiis would^em to be a sensible pre- "
scription for everybody, espedally fortiiosewho have a complaint about
what die government is doing. If you don't like it, go out and do somediing
about it Get involved. Vote. Cast a ballot, preferably an informed one. That
surely is at minimum what integrity demands of die dtizen.
But aU of diis may seemradierpie-in-die-sky. In our busy worid, tiie
peoiliar secret of our dectoral politics may betiiatdespite our partisan
furies, die day-to-day lives of most Americans remainrelativdyunaffected
by die outcome of national dections. Iftiiisis so, diere is no obvious reason to suppose dut we wdl do die hard work diat isrequiredto alter our
choice for rational ignorance (see chapter 12). Even if die fullest praaical
information is die key to an integral eleaoral politics, we may lack a ready
base of reliable sources to get it. History has taught us dut we cannot rdy
on die candidates diemsdves to campaign in accordance widi die mles for
integrity. Instead, we have come to rdy on our mass media of communication, shdtered and liberated by die First Amendment's protections, for
unbiased and useftil infomution about our politics, which means dut if
journalists do not do dieir jobs widi integrity (see chapter 7), we. die people, can hardly be expected to do ours.
But diis criticism can go too far. If we, die dtizens of die United Sutes,
are to be people of integrity, dien we cannot, past a certain point, blame
our poUtidans for misleading us or our media for misinforaiing us. If we
are too busy or too cynical to go out and do die hard work of democracydie work of digging up die facts instead ofrelyingon otiieis to spoon-feed
diem to us—dien we can hardly compbin when odiers take advantage of
our political laziness or incompetence.
Still, die final tmdi bears repeating: we cannot expea our politicians to
create a poUtics better dun we are. If we die dtizens, as we consider gov-
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emance, think only of our own narrow interests, whether expressed in terms
of "our" tax dollars or "our* constitutionalrights,we can hardly expert to
find a government, at die local, sute, or national levels, diai operates widi a
rieeded vision of national purpose. Instead, we will fmd a politics as
parochial and selfish as we are. hi a democracy, it is not only tme dut people tend to get the government they deserve; it is also true that people tend
to get the politics they deserve.
Edmund Burke warned, famously, dial all that is needed for the forces
of evil to triumph is for enough good people to do nothing. When we
retreat into cynicism or fatalism, we fertilize die ground from which evil
springs. I have friends who believe dut die forces of evil triumphed in
1994. I have friends who believe that die forces of evil were defeated in
1994, Bodi groups of friends, I diink, are wrong. But diere is evil abroad
in die land, as there is evil at work in the human soul. If we do not demand
of our politics sufficient integrity to keep evil at bay. we will wake one horrible morning and stare the triumphant evil in the face—^in the mirror.
�LEARNING FROM
THE FIFTIES
Contemplating the turmoil and stress of the last three-and-a-half
decades, many Americans idealize the easeful golden days
of the 1950s. But as our author shows, the price of
security and community may he higher than most
Americans are now willing to pay.
BY A L A N
M
EHRENHALT
ost of us in America believe a few simple propositions that
seem so clear and self-evident they scarcely need to be said.
Choice is a good thing in life, and the more of it we have, the
happier we are. Authority is inherently suspect; nobody
should have the right to tell others what to think nrJiow to behave. Sin
isn't personal,-it's social; individual-human beings-are-creatures of the
society they live in.
Those ideas are the manifesto of an entire generation in America, the
generation bom in the baby boom years and now in its thirties and forties. They are powerful ideas. They all have the ring of tmth. But in the
past quarter-century, taken to excess, they have landed us in a great deal
of trouble.
The worship of choice has brought us a world in which nothing we
choose seems good enough to be permanent, and we are unable to resist
the endless pursuit of new selections—in work, in marriage, in front of the
television set. The suspidon of authority has meant the erosion of standards
of conduct and dvility, visible most clearly in schools where teachers who
dare to discipline pupils risk a profane response. The repudiation of sin
has given us a collection of wrongdoers who insist that they are not responsible for their actions because they have been dealt bad cards in life. When
we declare that there are no sinners, we are a step away from dedding that
there is no such thing as right and VkTong.
We have grown fond of the saying that there is no free lunch, but we
forget that it applies to moral as well as economic matters. Stable relationships, civil classrooms, safe streets—the ingredients of what we call com«
8 WQ SUMMER
199 5
�munity—all come at a price. The price is mles, and people who can enforce them; limits on the choices we can make as individuals; and a willingness to accept the fact that there are bad people in the worid, and sin
in even the best of us. The price is not low, but the life it makes possible is
no small achievement.
Not all that long ago in America, we understood the implidt bargain,
and most of us were willing to pay the price. What was it really like to live
under the terms of that bargain? Would we ever want to do so again?
I
n 1975, after a long but singulariy uneventful career in Illinois politics, a round-faced Chicago tavern owner named John G. Fary was
rewarded with a promotion to Congress. On the night of his election,
at age 64, he announced his agenda for everyone to hear. " I will go
to Washington to help represent Mayor Daley," he declared, "For 21 years,
I represented the mayor in the legislature, and he was always right."
Richard J. Daley died the next year, but Fary soon discovered the same
qualities of infallibility in Tip O'Neill, the Speaker of the House under
whom he served. Over four congressional terms, Fary never cast a single
vote against the Speaker's position on any issue of significance. From the
leadership's point of view, he was an automatic yes.
And that, in a sense, was his undoing. Faced with a difficult primary
challenge from an aggressive Chicago alderman, Fary had little to talk
about other than his legendary willingness to do whatever he was told.
The Chicago newspapers made sport of him. "Fary's lackluster record,"
THE
i
FIFTIES
9
�one of them said, "forfeits his claim to a House seat." He was beaten badly
and sent home to his tavern on the Southwest Side to ponder the troubling
changes in modem political life.
It was not an easy thing for him to understand. The one principle John
Fary had stood for during 30 years in politics—obedience—had come into
obvious disrepute. The legislator who simply followed the mles as they
came down to him invited open ridicule as a mindless hack.
No quahty is less attractive in American politics these days than obedience—not foolishness or deceit or even blatant cormption. There is no
one we are more scornful of than the office-holder who refuses to make
choices for himself. There are bumper stickers all over Washington that
say, in big block capital letters, QUESTION AUTHORITY. There are none
that say LISTEN TO T H ^ BOSS.
John Fary made a career out of listening to the boss. Of course, he didn't
have much alternative. In the Chicago politics of the 1950s, you could either be part of the machine, and entertain a realistic hope of holding office, or be against it, and have virtually no hope at all. Fary actually began
as something of an upstart. In 1951, he ran in the 12th Ward as a challenger
to the Swiiurski family, which more or less dominated ward pohtics in alliance with other machine Ueutenants. After that unsuccessful campaign, however, Fary made his accommodations to the system; he had no other choice.
If Fary ever chafed at the mles of his constricted political world, he
never did so in public. He seemed content voting with the leadership,
gratified to be part of an ordered political system, content working behind
the bar at his tavern when he was not practicing politics in Springfield or
Washington. He didn't appear to give much thought to the possibilities
of doing it any other way. When he achieved passage of the one notable
legislative initiative of his long career, a state law legalizing bingo, he celebrated by inventing a new drink called "Bingo Bourbon" and serving it",
to his customers on the house.
I
n the years when John Fary was building a political career out of loyalty on the South Side of Chicago, Emie Banks was making his baseball career on the North Side. From the day he joined the Chicago
Cubs in the fall of 1953, Banks was special: skinny and not very powerful looking, he swung with his wrists and propelled line drives out of
Wrigley Field with a speed that sometimes seemed hard to believe.
The 1950s were a time of glory for Emie Banks—40 home mns year
after year, two Most Valuable Player awards in a row, gushing praise on
the sports page—and yet, in other ways, his rewards were meager. He
played on a string of terrible Cubs teams, so he never came close to appearing in a World Series, and because the fans didn't buy many tickets.
Alan Ehrenhalt, executive editor of Governing magazine, is the author of The United
States of Ambition: Politicans, Power, and the Pursuit of Office (1991). TTiis article
is adapted from The Lost City: Discovering the Forgotten Virtues of Community in
the Chicago of the 1950s, which will be published this September by Basic Books.
Copyright © J995 by Alan Ehrenhalt.
10 WQ SUMMER
199 5
�the Cubs weren't very generous about salaries. Compared with mediocre
ballplayers today. Banks was woefully underpaid, even in the real-dollar
terms of his time. In 1959, the year he recorded his second straight MVP
season, the Cubs paid him $45,000.
But Banks never considered leaving the Cubs and going to another
team. He couldn't, because he was not a free agent. The Cubs owned him,
and according to the baseball mles of the 1950s, his only options were to
accept the contract they offered him or leave baseball altogether. Like John
Fary, he really didn't have any choice.
If Banks spent any time worrying about his limited choices, it didn't show.
The Cubs were his team, they had lifted him out of the weedy fields of the
Negro leagues, and he belonged with them. After a few years in Chicago, he
became-famous not only for hisTTome mns but for his loyalty and enthusiasm. He loved to tell reporters about the "friendly confines" of Wrigley Field.
Warming up before a doubleheader on a bright summer day, he would say
two games weren't enough. "Let's play three!" Banks would exult.
W
hat John Fary is to the present-day politician Emie Banks is
to the present-day ballplayer. You can compare him, for example, to Rickey Henderson, who in the last 15 years has
stolen more bases than anyone in the history of the game.
Henderson will-be in the Hall of Fame someday, as Emie Banks already
is. Unlike Banks, however, he has been paid fabulous salaries, and the
arrival of free agency has allowed him to jump from team to team in search
of money and World Series appearances. And yet he has never seemed
content with his situation. Everywhere he has played he has expressed his
fmstration with his contract, the team management, the fans, and even,
sometimes, his own play. The market has made Rickey Henderson free,
and it has made him rich. It just hasn't made him happy.
The-differences between Emie Banksrand Rickey Henderson are, of
course, partly a matter of temperament Some people are content by nature, and some are restless. In another sense, though, the two ballplayers
are a metaphor for the changes in American life over the past 40 years. We
live today in a time of profuse choice, with all the opportunity and disillusionment that it brings. Emie Banks and John Fary lived in a world where
choice was much more limited—where those in authority made decisions that
the free market now throws open to endless individual re-examination.
This observation applies not only to baseball and politics but to all of
the important personal relationships in life. In an average year in the 1950s,
the number of divorces in America was about 10 per 1,000 marriages—
barely a third of what it was to become by 1980. This was not because divorce was impossible to obtain—although it was difficult in a few states—
or because it made anyone an outcast in the community. It was because
divorce was simply not on the menu of options for most jjeople, no matter how difficult or stressful life might become. The couples of the 1950s
got married on the assumption that it was their job to make things work the
best way they could. Like Emie Banks and John Fary, diey played the hand
they were dealt and refrained from agonizing over what might have been.
THE
FIFTIES
11
�People just stayed married 1 • PW^EW
f ^E W
o c T o 111 i •
DN
S D^AW
YM
in the 1950s, to their spouses,
to their political machines, to
their baseball teams. Corporations also stayed married—to
the communities they grew up
with. Any one of a thousand
B Mt MSTvcT ArrwMrr
examples could illustrate this
I COUIT Of LAST MSOVT
point, but one will do: the story
of the Lennox Corporation and
""m U.$*iO«DCIl'f*T1»i.
its hometown, Marshalltown,
-t. • DM*. fM>.* * • - « Iowa.
In 1895, David Lennox invented a new kind of steel fur-~
nace and set up in business
l HCWMUT-HH Wi«»i
making them in Marshalltown.
i QUEST rWI ADWCMTURC
As the years went by, his company prospered as a manufacturer of boilers, and later, air
conditioners. The Lennox Corporation became a reliable
source of respectable factory
jobs that enabled generations
of blue-collar families to enjoy
the comforts of middle-class
life. Its managers helped with countless local fairs, fund drives, and schoolbuilding campaigns.
Lennox probably could have improved its profit margins in die 1950s by
moving to a place where labor was cheaper, but its leadership never thought
of diat. The company was married to Marshalltown. Eventually, tiiough,
Lennox did begin looking around. In the late 1970s it moved its corporate
headquarters to Dallas, arguing that a small town in centi-al Iowa was inconvenient for its executives to fly in and out of. The factory stayed where it was.
In 1993, Lennox grew even more restless. It announced that it might
have to dose the Marshalltown plant altogether. Not because the company
was losing money or facing any other sort of crisis, but just because the
time had come to seek out the best opportunities. The fact that
Marshalltown's very survival might depend on Lennox was of no consequence. "Stiictly a business decision," the company vice president said.
In the end, Marshalltown managed to keep Lennox—with what
amounted to a bribe of $20 miUion in subsidies paid by a local govemment
that badly needed the money, to a profitable corporation that really didn't.
But the lesson is clear: long-standing relationships don't keep a factory
open any more. "In terms of the moraUty of the sihiation," the mayor of
Marshalltown said, "it's just a fact of Ufe."
There are, of course, technological reasons why companies have gotten wanderlust in the last couple of decades. Computers and telecommunications have made it possible to assemble products almost anywhere in
12
WQ
SUMMER
199 5
�the world. But threatening to move a profitable company out of its historic
home wasn't done in the 1950s mostly because it wasn't thinkable, in the
same way that it wasn't thinkable to cancel employees' vacations or fire
them at age 50 or-55 when^their productivity began to decUne. Those actions also would have improved the bottom Une. But they were gross infringements on the enduring relationship between worker and manager
that factory employment was supposed to be. Breaking up that arrangement was not on the menu of options.
I
f it is true to say of 1950s America that it was a world of limited
choices, it is also fair to call it a world of lasting relationships. This
was as tme of commerce as it was of sports and poUtics, and it was
nearly as tme of the smallest commerdal transactions as it was of the
big ones.
When John Fary was not busy at poUtics, he was the proprietor of the
3600 Club, at the comer of 36th Street and South Damen Avenue, in the
Back of the Yards neighborhood of Chicago, where his father had m n a
tavern before him. Fary Uved in an apartment above the bar and operated
the place himself most of the time.
There was a saloon like Fary's on virtually every block of his neighborhood during most of the years of his life. Each saloon was a sort of
community center, a place where stockyards workers, factory workers,
cops, and city patronage employees repaired at the end of the day to rest
THE F I F T I E S
13
�and to recycle their earnings back through the neighborhood.
When it came to picking a saloon to pah-onize, these people achially
had quite a bit of choice. Just within walking distance there were a dozen
possibilities. Fary's own brother operated a similar establishment a couple
of blocks away. But once a customer picked his bar, because he liked the
smell of it or liked the people he found there, it was his. The market was
not a factor. He didn't switch to another tavern because he heard that
Hamm's was available on tap for five cents less. The residents of this neighborhood weren't hard-nosed consumers in the current sense. They had a
different view of what was important in life.
I
t takes only_the briefest of excursions back into the daily routine of
an imaginary family in John Fary's neighborhood, circa 1957, to dem-""
onsh'ate that theirs was indeed a different sort of life altogether.
,
From the meal that started off the moming, in which the selection
of cereals was tiny and the bread was always white, to the recreation in
the evening, provided by a TV set that received four stations, most of them
carrying a westem or a quiz show at any given moment, this family lived
in a worid where choice was highly limited and authority meant something
it does not mean any more. It was a worid ior which Wonder Bread and
black-and-white TV are appropriate symbols, and no room needed to be
made for Pop Tarts or toaster sti^del, the Nashville Network or CNN.
If the breadwiimer in this family drove to work in the moming, he ahnost
certainly did it without the benefit of radio h-affic commentators advising him
on the best way to get there. One of the Chicago radio stations actuaUy did
instihJte a h-affic alert feahire in 1957, with a poUce officer hovering above the
dty in a heUcopter, but most of die people who heard it were bewildered about
what to do with Qie information. Wherever they were going, they had very
few routes to choose from: the option of selecting the least congested fi^eeway
did not exist for most of them because the freeways themselves did not yet
exist. They chose a dty sh-eet and stayed on it imtil they reached their destination. Lf it was slow, it was slow.
Nor did this breadwinner have many choices, whether he worked in
a factory or an office, about when to start the workday, when to take a
break, or when to go to lunch. Those decisions, too, were out of the realm
of choice for most employees in 1957, determined by the dictate of management or by the equally forcefiil strichires of habit. How to arrange the
hours on the job was one of the many questions that the ordinary workers
of the 1950s, white-collar and blue-collar alike, did not spend much time
agonizing over.
The wife of this breadwinner, if she did not have a job herself, was
likely to devote a substantial portion of her day to shopping, banking, and
the other routine tasks of household economic management. Like her husband, she faced relatively few personal decisions about where and how
to do them. Chances are she took care of her finances at a place in the neighborhood, where she could deposit money, cash checks, and, at the end of
the quarter, enjoy the satisfaction of recording a regular savings dividend.
She knew the teUer personally—the teller had been with the bank as long
14
WQ SUMMER
199 5
�Jil
as she had, if not longer.
But it was also likely that
she knew the manager as
well, and perhaps the
owner. Once she opened
an account, there was no
need to re-examine the
issue, no reason to check
on what the competing
bank further down Archer Avenue was offering
for her money. They all
offered about the same
thing anyway.
Shopping, in the
same way, was based on
associations that were, if
not permanent, then at
least stable for long periods of time. The grocer
was a man with whom
the family had a relationship; even if his store was
a small "supermarket,"
shoppers tended to personalize it: "I'm going
down to Sam's for a
minute," women told
their children when they
left in the aftemoon to
pick up a cartful of groceries. Because of fair-trade agreements and other
economic regulations, the neighborhood grocery of 1957 was in fact reasonably competitive in price with the new megagroceries in the suburbs,
but price was not the important issue. Day-to-day commerce was based
on relationships—on habit, not on choice.
If this Chicagoan had young children, there is a good chance she
also spent part of her day on some school-related activity, volunteering around the building or attending a meeting of the PTA. When it
came to schools, her family likely faced one important decision: public
or Catholic. Once that choice was made, however, few others remained.
The idea of selecting the best possible school environment for one's children would have seemed foreign to these people; one lived within the
boundaries of a district or a parish, and that determined where the children went to school. If St. Cecilia's or Thomas Edison wasn't quite as
good as its counterpart a mile away (fairly improbable, given the uniformity of the product)—well, that was life.
It should not be necessary to belabor the question of how all these rituals
have changed in the decades since then. Our daily Uves today are monuments
THE
I
FIFTIES
15
�to selection and to making for ourselves decisions that someone above us used
to make on our behalf. We breakfast on choice (sometimes on products UteraUy named for it), take any of several altemafive but equaUy fmsbating routes
to work, shop in stores whose clerks do not know us, bank in baidcs where
we need to show identification after 20 years because the teUer has been there
two weeks, and come home to a TV that offers so many choices that the newspaper can't devise a grid to display them aU.
I
n the past generation, we have moved whole areas of life, large and
small, out of the realm of permanence and authority and into the
realm of change and choice. We have gained the psychological freedom to ask ourselves at any moment not only whether we are eating the right cereal but whether we are in the right neighborhood, the right
job, the right relationship.
"
This is, of course, in large measure a function of technology. Birth control pills created new sodal and sexual options for women; instantaneous communication by computer made possible aU the global options of the foodoose
corporation. And it is in part a function of simple affluence. Choices multiply
in tandem with the doUars we have to invest in them.
But our love affair with choice has not been driven solely by machines,
and it has not been driven solely by money. The baby boom generation was
seduced by the idea of choice in and of itself.
Most of us continue to celebrate the explosion of choice and personal
freedom in ourtime.There are few among us who are wiUing to say it is
a bad bargain, or who moum for the rigidities and constrictions of American life in the 1950s.
A remarkable number of us, however, do seem to moum for something
about thattime.We talk nostalgically of the loyalties and lasting relationships that characterized those days: of the old neighborhoods with momand-pop storekeepers who knew us by name; of not^having to lock the
house at night because no one would think of entering it; of knowing that
there would be a neighbor home, whatever the time of day or night, to help
us out or take us in if we happened to be in trouble.
There is a longing, among miUions of Americans now reaching middle
age, for a sense of community that they beUeve existed during their childhoods and does not exist now. That is why there is a modem movement
caUed communitarianism, and why it has attracted so many adherents and
so much attention. " I want to Uve in a place again where I can walk down
any street without being afraid," Hillary Rodham Clmton said shortly after becoming first lady. " I want to be able to take my daughter to a park
at any time of day or night in the summer and remember what I used to
be able to do when I was a Uttle kid." Those sorts of feelings, and a nostalgia for the benefits of old-fashioned community life at the neighborhood
level, are only growing stronger as the century draws to a close.
The very word community has foimd a place, however fuzzy and imprecise, aU over the ideological spectmm of the present decade. On the Left, it is
a code word for a more egahtarian sodety in which the oppressed of aU colors are induded and made the benefidaries of a more generous sodal wel-
16 WQ SUMMER
1995
�fare system that commits far more than the current amount to education,
pubUc health, and the eradication of poverty. On the Right, it signifies an
emphasis on individual self-disdpline that would replace the weUare state
with a private rebirth of personal responsibUity. In the middle, it seems to
reflect a much simpler yearning for safety, stability, and a network of stable,
reUable relationships. But the concept of community has been all over the pages
of popular journalism and poUtical discourse in die first half of the 1990s.
Authority is something else again. It evokes no similar feelings of
nostalgia. Few would dispute that it has eroded over the last generation. Walk into a large public high school in a typical middle-class suburb today, and you will see a principal who must spend huge portions
of the school day having to cajole recaIci-_
trant students, teachers, and staff into ac-cepting
direction
that, a generation
ago, they would have
accepted unquestioningly just because the
principal was the
principal and they
were subordinates.
You will see teachers
who risk a profane
response if they dare
criticize one of their
pupils.
Or consider the
mainstream Protestant church. We
haven't yet reached
1
i'-.C-'i
the point where
1
J.-4fi^'.congregants
curse
their minister in the
same way high school
students curse their teachers, but if it is even a faintly liberal congregation, there is a good chance that the minister is no longer "Dr." but
"Jim," or "Bob," or "Kate," or whatever diminutive his or her friends
like to use. Putting ministers on a level with their congregations is one
small step in the larger unraveling of authority.
Authority and community have in fact unraveled together. But the
demise of authority has brought out very few mourners. To most Americans of the baby boom generation, it wiU always be a word with sinister
coimotations, calling forth a msh of uncomfortable memories about the
schools, churches, and families in which baby boomers grew up. RebelUon against those memories constituted the defining event of their generational lives. Wherever on the political spectmm this generation has
THE
FIFTIES
17
�landed, it has brought its suspicion of authority with it. "Authority," says
P. J. O'Rourke, speaking for his baby boom cohorts loud and dear, "has
always attracted the lowest elements in the human race."
The suspicion of authority and the enshrinement of personal choice are
everywhere in the American society of the 1990s. They extend beyond the
routines of our individual lives into the debates we conduct on topics as
diverse as school reform and corporate management.
O
f all the millions of words devoted in the past decade to the
subject of educational change, hardly any have suggested improving the schools by putting the rod back in the teacher's
-hand or returning to a curriculum of required memorization and classroom drill. The center of the discussion is the concept of school
choice: the right o^ families to decide for themselves which schools their
children will attend. Many things may be said for and against the concept
of school choice, but one point is dear enough—in education, as in virtually every other social enterprise, individual choice is the antithesis of
authority. It is a replacement for it.
Similarly, one can comb the shelves of a bookstore crowded with
volumes on corporate management without coming across one that
defends the old-fashioned pyramid in which orders come down from
the chief executive, military-style, and descend intact to the lower
reaches of the organization. There are corporations that stiU operate that
way, but they are regarded as dinosaurs. Corporate hierarchies are out
of fashion. The literature is all about constructing management out of
webs rather than pyramids, about decentralizing the decision process,
empowering people at all levels of the organization. The words "command and .control" are the obscenities of present-day management
writing.
As they are, more broadly, in economic thinking. Five years ago,
few Americans were familiar with the phrase "command economy."
Now, virtually all of us know what it means. It is the definition of a society that fails because it attempts to make economic decisions by hierarchy rather than by the free choice of its individual citizens. It is the
most broadly agreed-upon reason for the abject failure of world communism. The communist implosion both reinforced and seemed to
validate our generational suspicions about hierarchy and authority in
all their manifestations, foreign and domestic, the American CEOs and
school principals of the 1950s almost as much as the dictators who made
life miserable in countries throughout the world.
What has happened in education and economics has also happened,
not surprisingly, in the precincts of political thought. There has in fart been
a discussion about authority among political philosophers during the past
two decades, and its tone tells us something. It has been a debate in which
scholars who profess to find at least some value in the concept have
stmggled to defend themselves against libertarian critics who question
whether there is any such thing as legitimate authority at all, even for duly
constituted democratic governments. " A l l authority is equally illegiti-
18 WQ SUMMER
1995
�mate," the philosopher Robert Paul Wolff wrote in a landmark 1971 book.
In Defense of Anarchy. "The primary obligation of man," Wolff argued, "is
autonomy, the refusal to be ruled." It is only a sUght exaggeration to say that
the record of debate on this subjert in the 20 years since has consisted largely
of responses to Wolff, most of them rather tentative and half-hearted.
Meanwhile, the revolt against the authority figures of the prior generation has spilled out all over American popular culture, into books
and movies and television programs. A prime example (one of many)
is Dead Poets Society, the 1987 film in which Robin Williams starred as
an idealistic young prep school teacher of the 1950s who unwittingly
brings on tragedy by challenging two monstrously evil authority figures: the school's headmaster and the father of its most talented drama
student. The student commits suicide after the father orders him to give
up acting and prepare for a medical career; the headmaster fires the
teacher not only for leading the boy astray but for organizing a secret
coterie of students who love art and literature and seek to study it outside the deadening rigidities of the school's official curriculum. The
message is powerful: true community is a rare and fragile thing, and
authority is its enemy. The one way to achieve tme community is to
question authority—to break the mles.
The message of Dead Poets Society cuts across the normal ideological barriers of Left and Right, uniting the student Left of the 1960s and
the Reagan conservatives of the 1980s. At its heart is a mortal fear of
arbitrary rules and commands, of tyrannical fathers, headmasters, and
bosses. E. J. Dionne made this clear in his 1991 book. Why Americans Hate
Politics, quoting the 1970 lyrics of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young:
"Rules and regulations, who needs 'em/ Throw 'em out the door." That
song was in fact a tirade against Richard J. Daley. But whether it was
left or right hardly mattered. Itjwas a song against authority.
The words of such songs may have long since been forgotten by
most of those who listened to them, but the tune is stiU in their heads,
even as they have grown into affluence, respectability, and middle age.
It expresses itself in the generational worship of personal choice—in
speech, in sexual matters, in human relationships of every sort.
I
f there were an inteUectual movement of authoritarians to match that
of the communitarians, it would be the modem equivalent of a subversive group. The elites of the country, left and right aUke, would
regard them as highly dangerous. The America of the 1990s may
be a welter of confused values, but on one point we speak with unmistakable clarity: we have become emancipated from social authority as
we used to know it.
We don't want the 1950s back. What we want is to edit them. We
want to keep the safe streets, the friendly grocers, and the milk and
cookies while blotting out the political bosses, the tyrannical headmasters, the inflexible rules, and the lectures on 100 percent Americanism
and the sinfulness of dissent. But there is no easy way to hav^ an nrderly world without somebodv making the rules bv which order is
�preserved. Every dream we have about recreating community in the
absence ot authority will turn out to be a pipe dreamin the end.
T
his is a lesson that people who call themselves conservatives
sometimes seem determined not to leam. There are many on the
Right who, while devoting themselves unquestioningly to the ideology of the free market, individual rights, and personal choice,
manage to betray their longing for old-fashioned community and a worid
of lasting relationships. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan was one of them. His
1984 re-election campaign, built around a series of "Morning Again in
-America" TV commercials featuring stage-set small-town Main Streets of
the sort Reagan strolled down in youth and in Hollywood, was a small token of communitarian rhetoric in the midst of a decade of uru-aveUng standards, both economic and moral. But when people tell us that markets and
unlimited choice are good for communities and h-aditional values, the burden of proof is on them, not us.
Once the pressures of the global market persuaded Lennox Corporation that it had the moral freedom of choice to make air conditioners wherever in the world it wanted to, the bonds that had tied it to a small town
in Iowa for nearly a century were breakable. Once McDonald's begins
serving breakfast in a smaU community and siphoning off business from
the Main Street cafe that always provided a moming sodal center, that cafe
is very Ukely doomed. There is nothing we can do—or want to do, at any
rate—that will stop McDonald's from serving breakfast. Once Wal-Mart
turns up on the outskirts of town and undersells the local hardware and
clothing stores. Main Street itself is in
trcjuble. People do not want to destroy
their historic town centers, but they are
rarely wiUing to resist the siren caU of
cheaper light bulbs and underwear.
It is the dismptiveness of the market that has taken away the neighborhood savings and loan, with its familiar veteran tellers, and set down in its
place a branch of Citibank where no
one has worked a month and where the
oldest depositor has to sUde his
driver's Ucense imder the window. It is
market power that has replaced the
locally owned newspaper, in most of
the cities in America, with a paper
whose owner is a corporate executive
far away and whose publisher is a
truddle manager stopping in town for
a couple of years en route to a higher
position at headquarters.
In its defense, one can say that the
global market onslaught of the last two
20
WQ
SUMMER
19 9 5
�decades was technologically inevitable, or, more positively, that it is the
best guarantor of individualfreedom,and that individualfreedomis the
most important value for us to preserve. Or one can say that the market
puts more dollars in the ordinary dtizen's pocket, and that, after aU, tine
bottom Une should be the bottom Une. But, in the end, there is no escaping the reality that the market is a force for dismption of existing relationships. To argue that markets are the tme friend of community is an inversion of common sense. And to idealize markets and call oneself a conservative is to distort reality.
What is tme of market worship is tme in a larger sense of personal
choice, the even more precious emblem of the baby boom generation.
While, like the authors of Dead Poets Society, we may wish to place community and unrestricted choice on the same side of the sodal ledger, the
fact is that they do not belong together.
Wal-Mart offers a bonanza ofchoice: acre upon acre of dothing and hard- ~
ware, dishes and stationery, detergent and Christmas ornaments, the option
of choosingfromamong dozens of models and manufacturers, a comucopia
that no Main Street store can compete with even if it can somehow compete
on price. Such businesses are built not on choice but on custom, on the familiarity and the continuingrelationshipthat buyer and seUer create over a long
period oftime.The Main Street cafe owed its existence to the irrelevance of
choice—to the fad that it was the one place in town to go in the moming^
Perhaps that meant that the price of eggs or the incentive to cook them perfecdy wasn't what it might have been under a more competitive arrangement.
But its sheer staying power provided people with something intangible that
many of them now realize was important.
The standard argument against this idea is a simple one: when aU is
said and done, people are entitied to what they want. If they preferred the
cafe or the hardware store on Main Street, they woidd drive Wal-Mart and
thefranchiserestaurantS:Gut of business. If they vote with their stomachs
to have breakfast at McDonald's, what business is it of a bunch oL
communitarian eUtists to teU them they ought to go somewhere else for
the sake of tradition?
T
his is a beguiling argument, hard to counter, and yet it is much
too simple. People want all sorts of contradictory things. They
want to smoke and be healthy, to buUdoze forests for lumber and
StiU have the trees to look at, to have dieir taxes cut without losing any govemment benefits. The fart that they want to buy their hardware at the lowest cost doesn't mean they want their downtown commerdal distrid to faU apart. What they want is unlimited consumer choice and
a stable, thriving dovmtown aU at the same time. Unfortunately, such a
combination is impossible.
To worship choice and community together is to mistmderstand what
community is all about. Community means not subjecting every action in
life to the burden of choice but rather accepting the familiar and reaping
the psychological benefits of having one less calciUation to make in the
course of the day. It is about being Emie Banks and playing for the ChiTHE F I F T I E S
21
�cago Cubs for 20 years, or being John Fary and sticking with the Daley machine for life, or being one of John Fary's customers and sticking with his tavem at 36th and Damen year in and year out. It is being the Lennox Corporation and knowing that MarshaUtown, Iowa, wiU always be your home.
It would be a pleasure to be a basebaU fan today and not have to read
every faU about a player who won the World Series for his team and is now
jumping to another team that has dangled a juider contrart in front of him.
It would be nice to have some of the old loyalty back—to be able to root
for Ernie Banks instead of Rickey Henderson. But the stability of Ernie
Banks's world depended predsely upon its limits. Restoration of a stable
baseball world awaits the restoration of some form of authority over it—
not, one hopes, the rigid wage slavery ofjhe reserve clause, but some form
of authority nevertheless. In baseball, as in much of the rest of life, that is
the price of-stability. The price is not low, but the benefit is not small.
It would simUarly be a pleasure to allow one's children to watch television or listen to radio without having to worry that they wiU be seeing
or hearing obscenity, but here too the market has assumed a role that used
to be occupied by network authority.
Consider television in the 1950s. Certainly no one could plausibly claim
that it was not in the grip of market forces. But beyond certain boundaries,
the market simply did not operate. No doubt there would have been considerable viewer demand for a pornographic version of Some Like It Hot,
or perhaps a version of 20,000 Leagues under the Sea in which Kirk Douglas
was eaten alive in CinemaScope by the giant squid.
Those things were absentfromtelevision in the 1950s not because no one
would have watched them but because there were sanctions against their being
shown. There was someone in a position of authority—in this case, a censor—
who stepped in to overrule the market and declare that some things are too
lurid, too violent, or too profane for a mass audience to see.
It is in the absence of such authority that five-year-olds can conveniently watch MTV or listen to Howard Stem, and 12-year-olds can buy
rap albums that glorify gangsterism, murder, and rape. It is a matter of
free choice. Obscenity and violence sell, and we do not feel comfortable
ordering anyone, even children, not to choose them. We are not yet willing to pay the price that decency in public entertainment will require. But
if children are not to gorge themselves on violent entertainment, then it is
an inconvenient fact that someone besides the children themselves must
occupy a position of authority.
S
ome readers will no doubt object that I am portraying the 1950s
as a premodem, precapitalist Eden. I am not that naive. Nobody
who spends any time studying the period—nobody who lived
through it—can entertain for long the notion that it was a time
when people were insulated from market forces. The 1950s were the decade of tail fins, mass-produced suburban subdivisions, and the cormption of television quiz shows by greedy sponsors. The market was immensely powerful; it was the enemy that an entire generation of postwar
social critics took aim against.
22 WQ SUMMER
1995
�In the 1950s, however, a whole array of social institutions still stood
outside the grip of the market and provided ordinary people with a cushion against it. In the last generation, as sodologist Alan Wolfe and others
have eloquently pointed out, that cushion has disappeared. The difference
between the 1950s and the 1990s is to a large extent the difference between
a sodety in which market forces chaUenged traditional values and a sodety in which they have triumphed over them.
And the dedsiveness of that triumph is written in the values that the
baby boom generation has carried with it from youth on into middle age:
the belief in individual choice and the suspidon of any authority that might
interfere with it.
O
f course, there will be quite a few people to whom none of this
makes any sense, people who beUeve that individual-choice is
the most important standard, period; that no sodety can ever
get enough of it; that the problem in the last generation is not
that we have abandoned authority but that there are stiU a few vestiges of
it yet to be eradicated. Many of these people caU themselves libertarians,
and arguing with them is compUcated by the fart that they are nearly always intelligent, interesting, and personally decent.
Libertarian ideas are seductive and would be nearly impossible to
challenge if one thing were tme—if we lived in a world full of P. J.
O'Rourkes, all of us bright and articulate and individualistic and wanting
nothing more than the freedom to try all the choices and experiments that
life has to offer and express our individuaUty in an endless series of new
and creative ways.
But this is the libertarian faUacy: the idea that the world is fuU of repressed libertarians waiting to be freed from the bondage of mles and
authority. Perhaps, if they were right, life woidd be more interesting. But
what they failed to notice, as they squirmed awkwardly through childhood
in what seemed to them the straitjacket of school and family and church,
is that most people are not Uke them. Most people want a chart to follow,
and are not happy when they don't have one, or when having learned one
as children, they later see people all around them ignoring it. While the
legitimacy ot any particular set of mles is a subject that philosophers will
always debate, it nonetheless remains tme, and in the end more important, that the uncharted life, the life of unrestrirted choice and eroded authority, is one most ordinary people do not enjoy leading.
There is no point in pretending that the 1950s were a happytimefor
everyone in America. For many, the price of the Umited Ufe was an impossibly high one to pay. To have been an independent-minded alderman
in the Daley machine, a professional basebaU player treated unfairly by his
team, a suburban housewife who yearned for a professional career, a black
high school student dreaming of possibiUties that were foreclosed to him,
a gay man or woman forced to condurt a charade in pubUc—to have been
any of these things in the 1950s was to Uve a life that was difficult at best
and tragic at worst. That is why so many of us stiU respond to the memory
of those indignities by saying that nothing in the world could justify them.
THE
FIFTIES
23
�It is a powerful indichnent; it is also a selective one. It is often said that
history is written by the winners, but the tmth is that the cultural images
that come down to us as history are written, in large part, by the dissenters— by those whose strong feelings against Ufe in a particular generation
motivate them to become the novelists, playwrights, and sodal critics of
the next, drawing inspiration from the injustices and hypocrisies of the time
in which they grew up. We have learned much of what we know about
family Ufe in America in the 1950s from women who chafed under its restrictions, either as young, college-educated housewives who found it
unfulfilling or as teenage girls secretly appalled by the prom-and<heerleader sodal mUieu. Much^if the image of American Catholiciife in those
years comes from the work of former Catholics who considered the church
they grew up in not only authoritarian but destmctive of their free choices
and creative instincts. We remember the inconsistencies and absurdities
of life a generation ago: the pious, skirt-chasing husbands, the martinisneaking ministers, the sadistic gym teachers.
I am not arguing with the accuracy of any of those individual memories. And yet, nearly lost to our coUective indignation are the milUons of
people who took the mles seriously and tried to Uve up to them, within
the profound limits of human weakness. They are still around, the tme beUevers of the 1950s, in smaU towns and suburbs and big-dty neighborhoods
aU over the country, reading the papers, watching television, and wondering in old age what has happened to America in the last 30 years. If you
visit middle-dass American suburbs today and talk to the elderly women
who have lived out their adidt years in these places, they do not teU you
how conshirted and demeaning their Uves in the 1950s were. They teU you
those were the best years they can remember. And if you visit a workingclass CathoUc parish in a big dty and ask the older^parishioners what they
think of the church in the days before Vatican II, they don't teU you that it
was tyrarmical or that it destroyed their individuaUty. They teU you they
wish they could have it back. For them, the erosion of both commimity and
authority in the last generation is not a matter of intellectual debate. It is
something they can feel in their bones, and the feeling makes them shiver.
T
o be sure, America is full of people wiUing to remind us at every
opportunity that the 1950s are not coming back. Ozzie and Harriet
are dead, they like to say, offering an instant refutation to just
about anyone who ventures to point out something good about
the social arrangements of a generation ago—conventional famUies, traditional neighborhoods, stabler patterns of work, school, poUtics, reUgion.
AU of these belong, it is said, to a worid that no longer exists and cannot
be retrieved. We have moved on.
And of course they are right. If retrieving the values of the 1950s means
recreating a world of men in fedora hats retuming home at the end of the
day to women beaming at them with apron and carpet sweeper, then it is
indeed a foolish idea.
But the real questions raised by our journey back to the 1950s are much
more compUcated, and they have nothing to do widi Ozzie and Harriet or Leave
24 WQ SUMMER
1995
�It to Beaver. They are questions Uke these: can we impose some conti-ols on
the chaos of individual choice that we have created in the decades since then?
Can we develop a majority culture strong enough to teU its children that there
are mappropriate ways to behave in a high school corridor, and that diere are
programs that eight-year-olds should not be free to watch on television? Is
there a way to releam the simple truth that there is sin in die worid, and that
part of our job in Ufe is to resist its temptations?
The quickest way of dealing with these questions is to say that the genie
is out of the bottle and there is no way to put it back. Once people free themselves from mles and regulations, taste the temptations of choice, they wiU
never rehim to a more-ordered world. Once they have been told they do
not have to stay married—to their spouses, commimities, careers, to any
of the commitments that once were made for life—they will be on the loose
forever. Once the global economy convinces corporations that diere is no
need for the personal and community loyalties
they once practiced, those loyalties are a dead
letter. So we will
be told many
times in
the
years to come.
But is it tme?
Is the only sequel
to sodal disorder
further disorder?
There are other
scenarios, if we do not mind making a leap to look for them.
—
It is always dangerous to stack up decades one against the other, but
it is remarkable how many of the laments and nostalgic reflections of the
1990s sound curiously Uke those of one particular time in the history of
America in this century. They sound Uke the rhetoric of the 1920s.
Seventy years ago, the best-selUng book in America was Mark SulUvan's
Owr Times, a fond chronide of everyday Ufe before the Great War and a lament for the lost community of those years. 'Treceding the Great War,"
SuUivan said, "die world had had a status—an equiUbriimi." Since then, the
most prominent feature of social life for die average American had been "a
discontent with the postwar commotion, the turbulence and unsetdement that
surrounded him and fretted him; it was a wish for setded ways, for conditions that remained the same long enough to become familiar and dear, for
routine that remained set, for a world that 'stayed put.' "
More than anything else, Sidlivan believed, the eroding values of the
1920s had to do with technology—with the automobile and the methods
of mass production that had transformed the American fartory in the first
quarter of the 20th century. So it is more than marginaUy interesting that
the creator of those methods, Henry Ford, spent the 1920s mourning soTHE
FIFTIES
25
�cial change as much as anyone. In 1926, he began the construction of
Greenfield VUlage, a historic replica of the place where he had grown up,
complete with gravel roads, gas lamps, and a country store. " I am trying
in a small way," Ford explained, "to help America take a step . . . toward
the saner and sweeter idea of life that prevailed in pre-war days."
Ford beUeved that the pace of living had somehow accelerated beyond
easy comprehension or control. So did milUons of other people who were
less responsible for the change than he was. "In our great cities," the finander Simon Straus worried early in the decade, "people break down in
health or reach premature senility because of late hours, loss of sleep, fast
pleasures, and headlong, nerve-racking methods of existence."
— The-sense of debilitating change and coUapsing^mles-was not simply
an idea loose in the popular culture of the 1920s; it was central to the most
sophisticated intellectual debate. Walter Lippmann talked about the "acids of modemity" undermining traditional tmths and authoritative standards. Joseph Wood Kmtch, in The Modern Temper (1929), argued that science had broken life loose from any moral compass altogether.
In the years since, historians who have studied the 1920s have
stmggled to come to terms with its palpable tension and longing for a simpler time. Two decades ago, Roderick Nash set out to write a new book
about the period after World War I variously described as the "Roaring
Twenties" and the "Jazz Age." He ended up with The Nervous Generation
as his title. "The typical American in 1927 was nervous," he wrote in one
chapter. "The values by which he ordered his Ufe seemed in jeopardy of
being swept away by the forces of growth and change and complexity."
It was a point reminiscent of one made a few years earlier, by the historian WiUiam Leuchtenburg, in The Perils of Prosperity (1958). Two things
about the 1920s stood out most clearly to Leuchtenburg: the loss of commimity^and the loss X)f authority.
"The metropolis had shattered the supremacy of the smaU town,"
Leuchtenburg wrote, "and life seemed infinitely more impersonal. It was
proverbial that the apartment-house dweUer did not know his neighbor....
In the American town of 1914, class lines, though not frozen, were unmistakable..Each town had its old families.... The world they experienced was comprehensible. The people they saw were the people they knew.... Moral standards were set by the church and by the family. Parents were confident enforcers of the moral code. By 1932, much of the sense of authority was gone."
I
t was easy to dismiss those who moumed the sodal losses of the 1920s
by telUng them that they were indulging in flights of nostalgic fantasy. The Great War was a social as well as a political watershed; the
horse and buggy was gone, and so was the America it represented.
Anyone who bothered to point to the communitarian virtues of life before
the war ran the risk of being tmmped by the aU-purpose Ozzie and Harriet
rejoinder: "Forget it. Those days are over."
And they were, in the same sense that the 1950s are gone today. But
nobody on either side of the argument had any due as to what lay ahead
in the two decades that would follow: extraordinary group effort and so-
26 WQ SUMMER
1995
�cial cohesion in the face of the massive challenges of the Great Depression
and another worid war, back to back. The 1930s and '40s not only produced
real commumtanan values but generated real leaders and authority figures whose amval appeared as unlikely in the individuaUst era of the 1920s
as it does amid the individualism of the 1990s.
It would be foolish to minimize the tensions and divisions that existed
m Atnenca all through the Great Depression and war years, or to suggest
that those years somehow represented a retum to the innocence of the time
before Worid War I. Still, it seems fair enough to say that, under the pressures of crisis, the country developed a sense of cohesion and stmctures
ot authonty that seemed lost forever only a few years before
Of course, suggesting that community and authority tend to rehim in
fSn' J"''"
"^^y reassuring or relevant argument for the
1990s, a time when both depression and world war seem remote prosperts
But could the moral erosion of the present time be, in its way, a crisis sufficient to nval war or economic collapse? And if so, might a swing back to
older values be a plausible response? Perhaps that is not so farfetched.
T
here is an even more interesting case, if one is wiUing to cross the
ocean to look for it.
The year 1820 in England was a time of notorious disrespert
for the very highest levels of authority. The king and queen were
national laughingstocks, exposed as such by a sensational divorce trial that
documented the shipidity of both. The poUtical system was distiiisted as
a cesspool of cormption, with seats in Parliament bought and sold at the
coristituency levd by private wealth, and the Church of England was
widely regarded as a bastion of clerical privilege rather than rdigious
devotion. The culhiral superstars were artists such as Byron and SheUey
notonous for their rejection of what they considered obsolete standards
'
1 . 1
^"'^ sexual moraUty: Byron boasted pubUcly of having slept
with 200 women in two yeaj-s, while Shdley was a wifeswapper and
founder of a free love colony. The countiy was in die midst of a widespread
and poorly concealed wave of opium addiction that was disabling some
of Its most promising talents.
England's conservative social critics of that time lamented the disappearance of authority, community, and aU the bonds that had made the
p ace Uvable in the 18th cenhiry. "The ties which kept the different classes
Of society m a vital and harmonious dependence on each other," WiUiam
Wordsworth wrote, "have with these 30 years either been greatly impaired
or wholly dissolved."
o
/
r
Wordsworth was referring to the 30 years since the events that tiiggered the French Revolution and launched a revolution in manners aU over
the Westem worid. To most thoughtfiil people, 1789 had been a watershed
that set "modem times" off from an old regime that grew fainter and more
remote with each passing year. To talk to them about a "rehim" to the arrangements that prevailed before 1789 would surely have struck them as
an exercise in fantasy.
Certainly few of them bdieved that, a generation later, England would
THE F I F T I E S
27
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Don Baer
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Office of Communications
Don Baer
Date
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1994-1997
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<a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/show/36008" target="_blank">Collection Finding Aid</a>
<a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7431981" target="_blank">National Archives Catalog Description</a>
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2006-0458-F
Description
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Donald Baer was Assistant to the President and Director of Communications in the White House Communications Office. The records in this collection contain copies of speeches, speech drafts, talking points, letters, notes, memoranda, background material, correspondence, reports, excerpts from manuscripts and books, news articles, presidential schedules, telephone message forms, and telephone call lists.
Provenance
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Clinton Presidential Records: White House Staff and Office Files
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William J. Clinton Presidential Library & Museum
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537 folders in 34 boxes
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["Assessing the Condition of American Democracy" Jan. 7, 1996 (Binder)] [1]
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Office of Communications
Don Baer
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2006-0458-F
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Box 31
<a href="http://www.clintonlibrary.gov/assets/Documents/Finding-Aids/2006/2006-0458-F.pdf" target="_blank">Collection Finding Aid</a>
<a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7431981" target="_blank">National Archives Catalog Description</a>
Provenance
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Clinton Presidential Records: White House Staff and Office Files
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42-t-7431981-20060458F-031-004-2014
7431981