Tomasky, editor of American Prospect, I trust, means well but his endless twining of small r-republicanism is utterly irrelevant to the times, together with his distorted view on the conditions for big D-Democrats to endorse the universal “common good” in the mire of particularism of the current political climate, which appears to exhale “enough of Bush,” yet despite his low popularity, even censure is taboo. When push comes to shove, the reality is that the common voter is incapable of being inspired by an enlightened self-interest — and I doubt there ever was.
Because the nation was in such dire straits in 1933, the New Deal became possible predicated on the view that there was nothing to lose and something, anything required a united front to overcome the miserable failure of an irrational capitalism foreign to common good and equal justice. The war, too, helped sustain this drive to lift a nation toward purposeful action. Because of this astounding united drive for over a decade, the euphoria — this national patting on the back for a job well done — continued up to the mid 60s by rewarding the dedicated war effort with low cost housing, generous labor laws and education. It all ended not only with Nam, but with the “Johnsonian formulation” that led to the avenging southern strategy and the abrupt narrowing of the common good by the pandora’s box of the “million pieces” of self-oriented interests.
With plenty of bread on the table and the industrial rise of the south, the old biases and pettiness returned — even to the extent of fluff like family values, guns, and reawakening of religion. Far from Reagan being a common do-gooder, his hierarchic thrust was to unravel all the good that came before, in particular the greatest contribution to the common good, the Roosevelt tax index, for which by the way Kennedy’s 70% margin had set the stage. Reagan then set the stage for Bush W to further wreak havoc on the fairness of taxation with the phony rebate of $300 to most while the top bracket hauled away thousands. Clinton’s “health-care fiasco” was owing to a principle of common good that soured only because the majority selfishly guarded what insurance they had and the hell with the then 35 million without whose pain was not felt.
Tomasky’s “noble discontent” over Democrats’ “old habits” of parsing the common good at the expense of a unifying principle lacks acumen in the reading of the so-called common people who no longer rally round workers’ rights and America’s national industrial pride while favoring misguided war, guns, Wal*Mart, pro-life, hummers, not to mention terminating affirmative action and public education. We are far from a new, greatest generation in accepting the wisdom of the common good.
Copyright © 2006 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: April 24, 2006.
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