Let me begin by admitting that if fortune decrees that the next president of the United States must be another conservative Republican, I’d certainly rather it be John McCain than George Allen, Tom Tancredo, Newt Gingrich, or most of the other current right-wing heartthrobs. But have no illusions: McCain is a very conservative Republican who […]
Mark Schmitt
Posted inColumns
The Progressive Generation Gap
Not long ago, i attended a meeting of 20 or so progressive advocates and experts on a major policy issue. I looked around the room and realized that I was, I’m quite sure, the youngest person there. And that’s happened before. But I’m 43 years old. It’s fun to feel like a prodigy, but I’m […]
Posted inColumns
When Liberals Must Conserve
“We need a message.” “We need a philosophy.” “We need a simple statement of what we believe, just like the right has.” No meeting of progressives lasts long before these sentiments are expressed. Sometimes a committee will be assigned to frame the new message. The result might be a crisp but banal statement of uncontested […]
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History Lesson
The question of the week seems to be, Can Democrats nationalize the 2006 congressional election the way Republicans did in 1994? Modernized counterparts to Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” are being prepared, slogans tested, and national issues developed for an assault on the profoundly weakened beachhead of the GOP autocracy. As is so often the […]
Posted inSpecial Report
We’re All Environmentalists Now
For the environmental community, “The Death of Environmentalism” hit last year with the force of a tsunami, leaving its audience so taken aback by its sweeping, cocksure condemnation of their decades of selfless struggle that they could barely think about it rationally, even when they accepted its basic truth. On the other hand, among progressives […]
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It Takes a Democrat
Most liberals will open Senator Rick Santorum’s new book, It Takes a Family, in the same spirit that we approach Dianetics or The Washingtonienne: looking for the outrageous parts. And while there’s no entry for “man-on-dog” sex in the index — apparently Santorum has thought better of his assertion last year that if the Supreme […]
Posted inColumns
Lesson Learned
Someday soon, when it can no longer be denied that the Bush administration’s effort to phase out Social Security is dead, the president might call his team into the Oval Office for a postmortem. “What went wrong?” he’ll ask. “I want complete honesty.” (Did I mention that this conversation is fictional?) Fingers will be pointed: […]
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The Legend of the Powell Memo
The story of the Rise of the Right is the great fable in recent American politics, one that is endlessly revised as it is told and retold by its participants and by envious observers from the left bank. In recent versions, a central place in the story has been given to a memo written in […]
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“Death” and Resurrection
Ever since it debuted at a conference of environmental funders in Hawaii shortly before the election, a report titled “The Death of Environmentalism” has been infuriating the legions of nonprofit professionals who make their living in the “green” world. And it is easy to see why. Starting with the report’s cover, embossed with a Chinese […]
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Remember When?
As the vague outlines of President Bush’s Social Security privatization plan rise up in the mist ahead of us, a question naturally comes to mind: What did Democrats do the last time a conservative Republican president proposed massive changes to Social Security? That is, how did they fight back against Ronald Reagan in the early […]