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Does Liberalism Have a Future?

Think Tank Transcripts:Does Liberalism Have a Future?

ANNOUNCER: 'Think Tank' is made possible by Amgen, recipient ofthe Presidential National Medal of Technology. Amgen, helping cancerpatients through cellular and molecular biology, improving livestoday and bringing hope for tomorrow.

Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, theRandolph Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

MR. WATTENBERG: Hello, I'm Ben Wattenberg. As we head into the1996 presidential election, some issues already seem to have beensettled, at least rhetorically. It's not whether to balance thebudget, it's how soon. It's not whether the government should beshrunk, it's how much it should be shrunk. It's not whether welfareshould be reformed, it's how.

Now, these are conservative ideas in the saddle. Is liberalism inretreat?

Joining us to sort through the conflict and consensus are: E.J.Dionne, author of 'They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives WillDominate the Next Political Era'; Ronald Walters, chairman of thepolitical science department at Howard University and author of'Black Presidential Politics in America'; Todd Gitlin, professor ofsociology at New York University and author of 'The Twilight ofCommon Dreams'; and Will Marshall, president of the ProgressivePolicy Institute.

A few weeks ago on this program, we looked at the future ofconservativism. The question before this house: Does liberalism havea future? This week on 'Think Tank.'

MR. WATTENBERG: This is not the first time that liberalism hasbeen declared dead. Listen to this. Quotes: 'Liberals meet inWashington these days, if they can endure to meet at all, to discussthe tragic outlook for all liberal proposals, the collapse of allliberal leadership and the inevitable defeat of all liberal aims.'End quotes.

Does that sound like 1995 or 1996? Archibald MacLeish wrote thosewords in 1944.

Well, so where is liberalism today? Since World War II, a centralidea of liberalism was to strengthen the role of the federalgovernment. But here is what President Bill Clinton, a Democrat andoften described as a liberal, has to say about that.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: (From videotape.) The era of big government isover. (Applause.)

MR. WATTENBERG: Affirmative action, another hallmark of recentliberalism, is unpopular and under attack. In California, a statewidereferendum seeks to ban it entirely. And critics, like our panelistTodd Gitlin, argue that some liberals are so hung up over issues ofrace, ethnicity and sex, the so-called identity politics, that thebroader liberal coalition has been fractured.

And finally, economics. Liberalism promised that governmentintervention would result in growth and job security. But in an eraof global competition, high technology and downsizing, economicproblems seem immune to liberal remedies. Union membership, forexample, is seeking. Economic insecurity is rising. The governmentseems paralyzed.

Well, that's a nice picture. Let us go around the room once,starting with you, E.J. Dionne. Is liberalism dead or does it onlylook dead, which is almost the title of your book?

MR. DIONNE: I think liberalism is coming back to life, almostprecisely for the reasons you said, that when people are goingthrough a period of economic insecurity and uncertainty, they lookfor some new rules and they look for some help to seize theopportunities of a new era. In the past, that's when they've turnedto liberal progressive politicians, and I think they're going to doso again.

MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. Will Marshall. Alive, dead, moribund?

MR. MARSHALL: Well, a certain kind of liberalism, New Dealliberalism, interest group liberalism, I think is moribund, or atleast we should regard it as being in an honorable retirement. Thequestion then is, how does liberalism adapt itself to a whole new setof national challenges? And the good news for liberalism is that thealternative today, anti-liberalism, doesn't address those challenges,either.

MR. WATTENBERG: Ron Walters. Alive, dead?

MR. WALTERS: Well, I think that it can't die. I think also itdepends on how you actually define it. You can't have a liberalismwhich is dead with respect to interest group politics because thiscountry is multiculturalizing, so is the globe, and so you really dohave to have a philosophy which looks for the expansion not only ofgovernment, but for the expansion of opportunity.

MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. Todd Gitlin.

MR. GITLIN: I think liberalism has hopes. And what is going tomake the difference in terms of whether it converts its hopes intoactuality is whether it convinces enough people that if they don'tget serious about finding some common dream, that they will justlapse into the arms of big business and all of the reasons why biggovernment came into existence in the first place.

MR. WATTENBERG: Your common dreams, as I understood what RonWalters said, are not Ron Walters' common dreams.

MR. GITLIN: We have to have a discussion about what common dreamsare. I mean, I think there will be a debate. Republicans will say thecommon dream is that everybody gets to be an entrepreneur. I thinkthat's ridiculous, but that is an idea about what people have incommon.

My idea and many other people's idea is that what people have incommon is that they have certain obligations to the maintenance of asociety that's whole and certain needs, which include life, libertyand the pursuit of happiness, but also a right to a decentlivelihood, a right to security of person, a right to publicinstitutions, like schools and public transportation, that peopleneed to live.

I don't know if we disagree on that, but I think a lot of peopledo agree on what's happened in the recent years.

MR. WATTENBERG: Ron goes beyond that, is that correct?

MR. WALTERS: I would certainly go beyond that. I think he's rightin terms of the dream, but I think the difference is between thedream and the reality. When you look at the reality -- we share thedream, but the reality is that some people are much closer to thedream than others, and therein lies the problem. Are you going tohave a definition of liberalism which only gives us sort of anintellectual vision of that dream, or are you going to have adefinition of liberalism which is functional? And if you do, you'vegot to run up against the ability of government to provide expandingopportunity.

MR. WATTENBERG: Yeah, but you are saying, on a race-specific orgender-specific or ethnically specific grounds, is as a way tomeasure?

MR. WALTERS: I would say yes. Otherwise, you really don't have ameasuring rod. You can't define it, I think, only by economicopportunity. You've got to look at these groups that are coming intosociety, immigrants included, and say to yourself, if thedemographics are right, by the year 2050, only 52 percent of thiscountry is going to be white. So there is a tremendous continuingdiscussion about the nature of America, about the changes that aregoing to go on, and therefore the basis of liberalism.

MR. GITLIN: Excuse me, but those demographics aren't right.There's no way to predict how people are going to feel about who theyare two or three generations hence. What will it mean to be white?What will it mean to be Hispanic? There is a tremendous amount ofintermarriage already. The confidence with which these claims aremade by the Census Bureau I think is scientifically invalid.

MR. DIONNE: What I'd like to say is if you go back to --

MR. WATTENBERG: I think you're right.

MR. DIONNE: If you go back to sort of what the liberal idea hasbeen on these subjects, the issue is not, are we going to be an allquota society or a color-blind society where we pretend there's nosuch thing as racism? Liberals have always asserted that culturalpluralism is a good thing, recognizing the enormous contributions ofthe all groups to this country, that that's a good thing; that racismis a particular problem that we continue to have.

That's very different from saying that we want to racialize everyquestion, that every issue, whether it's public schools or publictransportation or how you're going to get a job, that these are allracial questions. Most African-Americans don't think that way, mostwhite people don't think that way, most Hispanics don't think thatway.

Now, I think liberals have always asserted that we respect thefact that we've got to do something about racism, which is aparticular problem. We also respect the fact that we are one countrythat has always had a common dream, as Todd has said.

MR. MARSHALL: I agree that that's a traditional view of liberalismand one we desperately need to get back to, but it's not the currentview. Liberalism today is bound up with the notion of biology isdestiny and the politicization of all issues around this corrallingof people into racial, ethnic and gender categories.

And I think that's a tremendous liability to contemporaryliberalism because what it does is it prevents us from having thekind of civic empathy that we need to have, prevents us from lookingbeyond our group identity toward some broader community. And I thinkbefore we get back to that, it's going to be impossible for Democratsand liberals to reconnect to the economic anxieties and aspirationsof the middle class. And that, after all, is the big politicalchallenge we're facing.

MR. WALTERS: But you know, I think that will only happen when youreally do address the issue of groups. You can't leap over groupsbecause groups were the basis of a certain sense of subordination inthis country. Slavery was based upon groups. At the time of themanumission of slaves in 1865, 90 percent of all blacks were inslavery. There was a group basis of that subordination.

And so if you look even down as far as 1960 and ask how manyblacks made the average family income, it was only 5 percent.Ninety-five percent, as the basis of subordination of blacks, didn'tmake even the average family income. So you can't then leap over, 30years later, to start talking about individuals unless you deal withthat basis of group subordination, which is part of the legacy ofthis country.

MR. WATTENBERG: Let me just go back to what we said in the setuppiece and just see if we are in agreement on that, that the currentconsensus in the country is that we do want a balanced budget, thatwe do want to reduce the size of government, that we do want seriouswelfare reform, and that in fact those ideas and many others that wecould all list are in fact -- have their roots in the conservativeideology, and that seems to be the way the country is going.

MR. DIONNE: Yes, Americans in principle think we shouldn't run abig deficit. But we just had a controlled experiment in 1995. And theRepublicans said, okay, we want to cut back the growth in Medicare,Medicaid, education spending, we want to cut back on environmentalregulations. And the electorate quite clearly said, wait a minute,that's not what we think we voted for in 1994. So the public -- sure,the public wants fiscal sanity, but it also believes that a lot ofthese things, including things you helped fight for when you workedfor LBJ, have been successful programs that they want to save.

MR. GITLIN: The thing about it is Americans want everything atonce. They want all these things. They want apple pie, but they alsowant -- they want pie ala mode. They also want health care, they alsowant raising of the minimum wage, they also want a lot of things thatthey think they're entitled to get.

MR. MARSHALL: It's so important that we don't let this notion thatany attack on bureaucratic liberal programs is a conservative one.Take welfare, for example. Fundamental welfare reform is somethingthat 80 to 90 percent of the people of this country are for. It cutsacross all racial and class lines, and it doesn't -- you don't haveto be conservative to want to reform the welfare system. DanielPatrick Moynihan and other notable liberals have been trying to do itfor decades.

MR. WATTENBERG: Yeah, but the notable liberals who ran theCongress in 1993 and 1994 were not anxious to reform welfare. Youknow that better than anyone.

MR. MARSHALL: I do.

MR. DIONNE: They didn't pass health care reform, either. Theyfailed in Congress.

MR. MARSHALL: I'm not saying that liberals are not defendingfailed bureaucratic programs. They are, and that's one of theirprincipal -- or another liability. My point is that the alternativeall too often is simply kind of a mirror image agenda on the rightthat says let's tear down the liberal achievement edifice that theybuilt over the last 60 years, but they don't have any idea about whatthey're going to replace it with. And that's where they keep failing.It's a dismantling agenda, not an agenda that replaces programs thataren't working with approaches that hold out more promise.

MR. WATTENBERG: Let me ask a tactical question. As we have thisdiscussion in mid-April, for all the moaning about how poorlyliberalism is doing, Bill Clinton is beating Bob Dole in the polls byabout 12 to 15 points. Is Clinton riding high because there is aresurgence of liberalism or because he has, at least cosmetically,made a U-turn?

MR. DIONNE: How about neither? I mean, I think in one sense, BillClinton defined himself first with a -- he had a fight with theRepublican Congress and he said, Look, I stand for this, this, this,and this, I disagree with them on that. Wherever you stood on theissues, I think that helped give him a presence in this country. Itwas something people respected. He could define himself against theRepublicans.

I think secondly, a lot of these things he's talking about -- forexample, throwing criminals out of housing projects, talking aboutthe family -- he's done that since 1992.

MR. WATTENBERG: You don't feel that in 1993 and 1994, when you hada Democratic president, Clinton, and an all Democratic Congress, thathe went substantially to the left of what he ran on? Because hebelieves that.

MR. DIONNE: See, I don't think the voters -- if you look atClinton's first two years, I think a lot of voters did not say hewent too far to the left or too far to the right. They say, Gee, theDemocrats failed; they said they'd give us health care reform and itfailed, they said they'd give us welfare reform and it failed, theysaid they'd give us political reform and it failed, they said they'dhelp give us job training and education and that kind of got shrunkin the budget. So I think a lot of voters pull back not because ofthe ideological stuff, but because they sense, Gee, we expected morefrom these guys.

MR. WALTERS: Let me just say, these were the seeds of 1994, too.That accounts for the election of 1994. But in seizing a conservativemandate as a reaction to that, what happened is I think that the NewtGingrich politics hit a wall. And I think that's what the Americanpeople are responding to.

MR. MARSHALL: What the polling shows now, interestingly, is thatRepublicans are down, there's no question about it. Something intheir rush at the budget and this array of programs, many of whichare still popular, scared a lot of folks and they are down. ButDemocrats have not gone up correspondingly. I mean, that's the erawe're in now. We're in a three -- you know, it's a three-way splitnow. There's a huge group of unaffiliated, nonaligned voters who holdthe balance of American politics. That's why I would be mostunconfident if I were a Democratic strategist now about thistemporary uptick in Bill Clinton's popularity ratings.

But let me go back to the point E.J. made. I mean, E.J.'s rightabout the failure of Clinton and the Democratic Congress to deliver,but the problem is much more fundamental than that. The DemocraticParty and contemporary liberalism is defending a regime that's dying.It's defending an old top-down, bureaucratic way of solving problemsthat people simply lack confidence in. It's the same problem, Ithink, of parties of the democratic left in Europe, which is why manyof them have been out of power for a long time. We've got to thinkthrough what governance means in a new era and find new ways ofsolving problems. That's what the public's looking for. That's thekind of --

(Cross talk.)

MR. WATTENBERG: Wait. Hold on a minute.

MR. GITLIN: Parts of the government work well. You know, you callSocial Security for advice, you are going to get it much faster thanif you call a lot of private corporations. People want the governmentto be active. They want the government to get results. They'repragmatic about where the results come from.

I think that what liberalism has to make sure it doesn't do is tosacrifice its soul, and its soul has rested on a matter that wehaven't really talked about yet, which is a real conviction aboutequality, equality of persons, equality in access to opportunity,equality in an absolute rejection of discrimination. And I think it'sextremely important, whether Bill Clinton wins or not, that that sideof the liberal vision not be sacrificed.

MR. MARSHALL: That's very true, and I agree entirely, but I wantto make a distinction between ends and means. You're exactly rightabout equality. That's the soul. That's -- we have to maintain thatcommitment. But it doesn't follow that there's one monochromatic wayof going about that.

MR. GITLIN: Right, but let's say we want to make sure that it'sabsolutely intolerable to discriminate in employment or housing orlending. How are you going to do that without calling a governmentagency in to enforce the law?

MR. MARSHALL: Well, of course no one's saying repealanti-discrimination laws. That's not what I'm --

MR. GITLIN: No, we have laws, but they're not enforced. We needenforcement.

MR. MARSHALL: They should be enforced. I agree with stepped-upenforcement. But my point is, there are lots of things that we'retrying to do in government, some of them under the rubric ofequality. Let's take our social welfare policies, which we know now,the evidence is overwhelming, that they've been failing, they'vebecome dysfunctional, they've begun to underwrite problems in innercity communities. And yet we've been unable to come to grips withthose problems and re-imagine the way we try to lift people out ofpoverty.

MR. GITLIN: See, that --

MR. WATTENBERG: Let me just interrupt here for a moment. You know,there's an old saying, 'If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be abus,' okay, 'but she doesn't have wheels.' You guys, particularlyyou, Will, but many of you, certainly you, E.J., just now, aresaying, oh, if liberalism would just change this and just change thatand just recognize that you really have to do welfare reform and youhave to do this and you have to do that, then they would be back --but that's not what liberals have been doing for 30 years. They'vebeen going bananas by my light. Yes?

MR. DIONNE: But we're not talking about years. We're talkingabout, I think --

MR. WATTENBERG: They wouldn't be liberals.

MR. DIONNE: -- a real reform in the way -- look at Todd's book,for example. Take Todd's book, 'The Twilight of Common Dreams.' Toddwrote a very good critique of a certain style of multiculturalism,and it was a critique from the left, because he said, the problemwith this is not just the things the conservatives say about it, theproblem with this is that in fact it takes our eye off the ball of agenuinely fair and equal society. That's -- Todd's book is an exampleof this.

I think some of Will's ideas have been accepted by large numbersof liberals about the need to --I mean, for example, all the stuffWill has written about civic life and the importance of strengtheningour civic sense and third sectors in society. Some of those ideasstarted on the right. They didn't all come from the right. Actually,some of them came from the new left, but this notion that you need astrong civic life, that's popular, too.

MR. WALTERS: But you know, you've got an intellectualism of boththe left and the right here, which I think is wrong, because so muchof this really is spinning without the people who are reallyaffected. When you come to assess things like poverty, yes, you'reright, Will, a lot of people want changes in the welfare system, butthe fact is you cannot say that it didn't do what it was designed todo. The fact that people want to change it now is quite anotherdiscussion altogether. They want to turn it into a jobs program. Now,we had a jobs program and Reagan killed it, so that now they want toturn the welfare program into a jobs program. That's fine.

But we really have to be honest about the ideological currentswhich come through and change things. We can't say that everythingfailed because these things haven't. We have to talk to the peoplewho came through welfare and who made an honest living today out of awelfare system that worked for what it was designed to do.

MR. WATTENBERG: If Senator Dole wins the election in November of1996, you will have for the first time in at least 70 years aRepublican conservative -- mainstream conservative president, aRepublican conservative Senate, House, sympathetic Supreme Court,control of the governorships, and probable control of the statelegislatures and state legislators, as well as the mayors of LosAngeles and New York. This is unheard of in contemporary Americanpolitics, unheard of. If that happens, and that's just on theelection of Dole, is liberalism really in the ditch for a long timeto come, because won't the other guys really get their shot?

MR. DIONNE: Well, first of all, that's like, 'If my grandmotherhad wheels, she'd be a bus.' I mean, you are positive --

MR. WATTENBERG: Oh, no. That's just one election. That's who'sgoing to win the election.

MR. GITLIN: If one of her wheels falls off, she'll be in a ditch.

MR. DIONNE: No, but two things. One, that scenario you justdescribed is actually Clinton's ace in the hole, because what all thepolls show is the country really is uncomfortable with the prospectof this kind of unified conservative government because they thinkthey'll go too far.

To go back to your history, you worked for LBJ. A lot of the stuffyou guys did worked for the country. Medicare worked, food stampsworked, civil rights worked, voting rights worked. This is a goodlegacy.

MR. WATTENBERG: I agree with that.

MR. DIONNE: There's nothing to be ashamed of in this legacy. MR.WATTENBERG: I agree with that. Don't you think that many of thoseprograms were carried by liberals over the edge too far?

MR. DIONNE: Well, how too far? I mean, has Medicare gone too far?Is it too expensive? Sure, all -- the whole health system is. Has itgone too far? I don't think so.

MR. GITLIN: These programs were popular at a time when the countryfelt rich, the country was unrivalled, and Americans felt, well,let's do more of the same, there's no bad price for it. Today peoplefeel you can't have everything at once, but this doesn't mean thatthese were not great achievements. It also means that they have to bereformed. But nobody's willing to get rid of them.

MR. WALTERS: That's what I mean by change in the intellectualmood, and I think we have to look at the forces that were responsiblefor that. I mean, you had -- in two or three decades, you had adownturn in the economy. You've got people now who are very afraid,and I think that when people get afraid, they start changing theirevaluation. It's not that the programs changed, it's that theevaluation has changed.

MR. WATTENBERG: What would you -- if you had to -- if you had aparagraph to tell liberals how to govern and recapture the mainstreamof American thought and action, what would you tell them to do?

MR. DIONNE: I think the main concerns for Americans right now areboth economic and moral. The economic is a sense of economicinsecurity and worry, as President Clinton said, that people who workhard and play by the rules aren't going to be rewarded. That in turnis a moral question.

Now, I think liberals have to be unabashed about saying thateconomics and morality are linked and that if we want liberalism torevive, it's going to have to do what it did for about a hundredyears in our country, which is tell people to use government not tomake people dependent, but to enhance people's opportunities, to letthem seize the chances in this new era, and to create a sense thatthe rules are fair that they're competing under.

MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. Todd.

MR. GITLIN: I would say liberalism has to support the fiber of thecountry. It has to be committed to those institutions which increasethe access of all people to their common human heritage, and thatincludes reinvented government, government that works, and it alsoincludes unions and it includes public schools and it includesmetropolitan government and all of those forces that enable Americansto live in a world with each other.

MR. WATTENBERG: Ron Walters.

MR. WALTERS: You've got to show people a vision of the future.You've got to show them that this country is becoming more diverse. Idon't think you can roll that back. I don't think we need to befrightened of it. I think we need to have a rational vision of whatthis country is going to be like, and I think that we have to locatesomewhere the source of our economic fears, I think, because you cansay that the white males are leading a conservative revolution, butat the end of the day, someone has to explain to them in non-racialterms, non-immigrant terms, what is happening to them. And I thinkthat once we get some of these explanations right, I think thenliberalism can show the path to leadership, and government has toplay a role.

MR. WATTENBERG: Will Marshall, you're batting cleanup.

MR. MARSHALL: I think liberalism has to adapt. It's got toidentify itself once again as the party of innovation and newthinking. For about the last 20 years, we've been in rear guardpositions, defending the old achievements, unwilling to admitcriticism of them and unwilling to offer something better. Until weget into the arena and fight, you know, the battle of persuasion withthe American people that we have better ideas that are updated to newcircumstances, we're not going to be competitive electorally.

MR. WATTENBERG: If it had wheels, it would be a bus. Thank youvery much, E.J. Dionne, Will Marshall, Todd Gitlin, and Ron Walters.And thank you.

And now we would like to announce Part Two of our bumper stickercontest. In Part One, we asked viewers to make up bumper stickerslogans for or against President Clinton. For example, theanti-Clinton winning entry was: 'Clinton: 99 percent fact free.' Apro-Clinton entry was: 'Clinton sax beats Dole-drums.'

This time we are looking for bumper stickers for or against theRepublican nominee, Bob Dole. So please send your entries plus anyother comments or questions to: New River Media, 1150 17th Street,NW, Washington, DC, 20036. We can be reached by e-mail atthinktv@aol.com or on the World Wide Web at www.thinktank.com.

For 'Think Tank,' I'm Ben Wattenberg.

ANNOUNCER: This has been a production of BJW, Incorporated, inassociation with New River Media, which are solely responsible forits content.

'Think Tank' is made possible by Amgen, recipient of thePresidential National Medal of Technology. Amgen, helping cancerpatients through cellular and molecular biology, improving livestoday and bringing hope for tomorrow.

Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, theRandolph Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. END

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