The New Liberal Agenda

By TODD GITLIN

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Essay: The Liberal Moment, by E.J. Dionne Jr.

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OPINION

The new liberal agenda

It is a pleasure to respond to E.J. Dionne Jr.'s essay now that it can truly be said that liberals and the left face the greatest political opening since the 1960s. We ought to be in for a time when civil discussion about our nature and principles can proceed without being mistaken for self-flagellation or for the giddy presumption that liberalism is bound to prevail. The world is in too much jeopardy for the latter and the dilemmas too difficult for the former.

The easy part for liberals now, intellectually, at least, is that George W. Bush has concentrated our attention on what happens in the world when governments both fail and overreach. As partisans of the Party of Reason, liberals start in a strong position now that the conservative movement, which thrives on rancor against the brie-Chablis-Volvo-latte crowd, has painted itself into a corner, a Confederate corner at that, by trying, as the Columbia University journalism dean Nicholas Lemann noted in a recent New Yorker article, to repeal the gains of the Progressive Era.

The Christian right's contempt for reason found a counterpart in the Republicans' contempt for government except as an occasion for plunder. Stanley B. Greenberg, the Democratic pollster, is surely right that Democrats have to push for accountability along with good governance. But liberals also have to fight back against the demonization of government. Bill Clinton did that more effectively than generally recognized, and it can be done again.

So we liberals are now poised to present ourselves as we are -- to start with, as pragmatic advocates of intelligence and thoughtfulness. As Dionne points out, that is more a continuation of Clinton's 1990s self-presentation as an opponent of the "brain-dead policies of both parties" than a radical departure. But it ought to be no small element of the liberal counteroffensive.

That said, it's worth restating the Princeton sociologist Paul Starr's point that "the exhaustion of conservatism is not tantamount to a liberal revival." The country is not conservative in the Bush-Karl Rove sense, but neither (excepting a scatter of ZIP codes) is it liberal in the Dennis Kucinich sense.

As I argue this month in my new book, The Bulldozer and the Big Tent: Blind Republicans, Lame Democrats, and the Recovery of American Ideals (Wiley) -- following valuable research by Scott Winship, a graduate student at Harvard University -- public sentiment tilts toward the progressive side on domestic policy though not necessarily (at least as of 2004) on foreign and security policy. For the foreseeable future, liberals will need to cohabit with more conservative (though rational) elements in a big tent.

Left-liberal principles, it seems to me, begin with these:

• Universal provision of the fundamental requisites of a decent life, starting with universal health care, rock-bottom income supports, and more equality.

• Public incentives for the development of sound alternatives to fossil-fuel energy.

• The restoration of government encouragement to unions.

• Smart counterterrorism, which entails providing security without swelling abuses of executive power.

• The right to abortion and contraception. The democratic social-market contract is not a suicide pact, a penury pact, or an invasion of bedrooms.

If Dionne is right that "a revival of liberalism depends upon a coherent approach to globalization," I guess I join the ambivalence caucus, for I am not sure what a coherent approach would be. Idealists and realists, in Dionne's sense, have a lot more debating to do -- and they need to make their cases in terms that a very-much-noneconomist like myself can understand and weigh.

I see no merit to liberal evasion of foreign-policy quandaries. On certain foreign-policy principles, liberals need to be crystal clear. In brief:

• A rapid and orderly phase-out from Iraq is the quid pro quo for improving America's ability to diminish jihadi potential. And crucially, given the damage that a benighted war has done to Iraq, we are obliged to make decent provision for Iraqis who will be further jeopardized as we leave.

• America should move heaven and earth to bring Israelis and Palestinians into negotiations that achieve peace and security for two states.

• Humanitarian intervention ought to be multinational, regional where possible, proportionate to the danger, self-limiting, and rare.

• America ought to promote democracy and freedom in other countries with an eye to helping, not endangering, human-rights activists.

• Finally, both for its own sake and to help the cause of nonproliferation, we ought to help restrain the possession of, and the threat to use, nuclear weapons.

Obviously, there will be hard cases where liberal principles collide with one another, but there was never a day when leaders of states could make policy by pushing buttons simply labeled with the names of principles. Here's to the righteous, honest, clear, and fearless facing of contradictions!

Todd Gitlin is a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University.