The Problem(s) with Democrats

By Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet. Posted November 22, 2004.

Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of interviews that AlterNet plans to publish as part of its "Take America Back" coverage, which tries to make sense of the 2004 elections and put forward the best ideas on how to move ahead.

"The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America" offers an unflinching assessment of the sorry state of the Left, the undisputed power of the conservatives, and the future of America – a future, the authors predict, that will be dyed an even deeper red. Reading the book is a bit like going to the dentist after a very long time: the prognosis is always gloomy and it's usually your own damn fault.

Yet "The Right Nation" is a must-read for anyone on the left willing to undertake the soul-searching required to figure out where we are and what went wrong. Its authors, The Economist's U.S. Editor John Micklethwait and its Washington correspondent Adrian Wooldridge, offer a clear-eyed perspective, undiluted by sentimentality or partisanship.

They chart the transformation of America, from the dawn of the New Deal era under FDR, through the triumph of liberalism in the 1960s, to the rise of a powerful conservative movement over the past three decades. The rise of the "Right Nation," the authors argue, is explained not just by the effectiveness of the conservative strategy, but also the failures of the Left, which include top-down liberal policies of the 1970s that went too far, too fast.

Today, the problem, says Wooldridge, is not hubris but intellectual timidity. He points out that the Democratic Party has responded to conservative gains either by turning into LINOs (Liberals In Name Only) or, failing that, by simply opposing the conservative agenda without offering one of its own. His message to liberals: get a grip and, more importantly, a couple of bold, new ideas.

While we may not all agree with Wooldridge's sense of what these ideas might be – given his affection for centrist politics a la Clinton – he does force us to ask ourselves some tough questions. What are the limits of liberalism in a society shaped by individualism and free enterprise? Will traditional liberal policies – more spending, greater benefits – work in an era of global capital? What can we learn from our own history of successes and failures?

Wooldridge spoke to AlterNet from his office in Washington D.C.

In the book, you predicted that a George Bush victory would mark the beginning of decades of Republican hegemony. But even you didn't expect him to do much better than scrape by. So does your prediction hold truer than ever?

I think the fact that he's won, and the circumstances under which he won – a bad war, a stuttering economic recovery, a net loss of jobs – does reinforce the idea that we're in for a period of conservative hegemony. But you shouldn't confuse Republican hegemony necessarily with conservative hegemony. The center of gravity is conservative which makes it much more likely that the more right-wing of the two parties will win. But you could have a Democratic White House and still have a dominance of conservative ideas.

The ruling ideas of our time are conservative, just as in the '60s, when politics was marching in the liberal direction. So even if you had a Republican president, as you did with Richard Nixon, he was pursuing essentially big government, liberal policies.

You're saying it becomes irrelevant which party ...

Not irrelevant ... What you had in the 1960s was a real belief that government was a benevolent force which could help solve people's problem. That belief has gone on much of the left, as well as on the right. So the context, the zeitgeist, if you want to put it so pretentiously, is conservative, just as the zeitgeist in the 1960's was liberal.

The "right nation" is in the driving seat and part of the reason is – as you point to in the book – the failure of the left. You argue that the lurch to the left of the Democratic party during the Johnson administration sparked a revolt among average Americans who are inherently more conservative. Is the message of the book that a lot of ideas of the left are simply too liberal for America?

I don't believe all the policies that one identifies with the 1960s were failures. What I mean by "overreach" is, firstly, pushing against certain basic American instincts, such as belief in hard work, belief in individual responsibilities, suspicion of the government.

I think the civil rights movement was a huge success and it's permanently changed the nature of America. The backlash against the civil rights movement did not stick because it was in keeping with a fundamental American value, which is that you should judge people on their individual abilities rather on their race or creed.

But there's not much emphasis in this country on making sure that people don't fall too far below the average. Once government becomes interventionist in the European sense – tries to be more redistributive and egalitarian – then it's likely to fail because it's pushing against a very fundamental American instinct.

Another way that the left overreached – in a way that has been permanently damaging to its cause – was in its lack of sensitivity to worries about law and order. In the late 1960s early 1970s, the crime rate and the murder rate is soaring, but the courts seem to be on the side of the criminals, in protecting their rights, rather than on the side of ordinary citizens.

Lakshmi Chaudhry is senior editor of AlterNet.

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