The Problem(s) with Democrats

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.