Ideas are the lifeblood of any political party that wants to
renew itself, get elected, and effect change. The
Democratic Party's greatest moments have ridden on a
surge of intellectual creativity that charged up the voters
and, in fact, changed the country.
Roosevelt in 1932, Kennedy in 1960, Johnson in 1964, and
Clinton in 1992 are perfect examples of the power and success of ideas-driven politics. The DLC was founded on the
premise that, in politics and governing, it's ideas that really
matter. Fortunately, with a new outpouring of work by progressive
thinkers and strategists, the Democratic Party has
an opportunity to head in the same direction again today.
Over the spring and summer, the arrival of important
new progressive books and two new journals has given
notice that, even as the conservative project stalls and sputters,
the intellectual force is with the Democratic Party.
After six years in the Bushy wilderness, the cogitating energy
of our party is again reaching critical mass.
First came Will Marshall's much-lauded national security
book, With All Our Might, which has put leading Democrats
on the record as reclaiming the muscular internationalism of
previous Democratic presidents, such as Truman and
Kennedy. It establishes a clear alternative to both the blinkered
militarist approach of the Bush administration and the
sometimes isolationist tendencies of the Democratic left. The
book's 19 authors -- including Marshall, who edited it -- represent
a significant portion of the Democratic Party's foreign-policymaking
bench, thus defining the playing field for all
others who enter the present debate.
Next arrived Peter Beinart's The Good Fight, a call for a
return to the Democrat-led hawkish liberalism of the Cold
War. Beinart's thesis harks back to the late 1940s, when
thinkers such as Arthur Schlesinger Jr., John Kenneth
Galbraith, and Reinhold Niebuhr shaped a doctrine --
adopted by Truman -- that promoted liberalism at home
(on civil rights, for example) as a prerequisite to a liberalism
abroad that rejected and never excused totalitarianism.
This was a sharp break with those on the party's left who
made excuses for the excesses of communism in the name
of ideological solidarity. Today's Democratic Party needs
to embrace a similar new liberalism, Beinart argues, rather
than being conflicted over its role as the world's pre-eminent
power.
In addition to these foreign policy books, a much-anticipated
new domestic policy book by Rep. Rahm Emanuel
(D-Ill.) and Bruce Reed is due out in late August. Entitled
The Plan, the book is a compendium
of big ideas that will challenge
the country to leave behind the inertia
of the Bush years and pursue a
new, ambitious domestic agenda.
At a stroke, it seems, Democratic
centrists have set the new terms of
the debate on both foreign and
domestic policy. They've once again
defined the Democrats as the party
of ideas.
At the same time, two new political and policy magazines
have appeared, generated by some of the Democratic
team's most seasoned thinkers and analysts: William
Galston, Ruy Teixeira, Stan Greenberg, Andrei Cherny, and
Kenneth Baer. Titled The Democratic Strategist and
Democracy:A Journal of Ideas, these
two join the existing array of progressive publications that
tilt toward long-form analysis and policy formation, plus
fact-based electoral strategizing. The writers in their first
issues range all across the progressive spectrum, from
Harold Meyerson on the left to Brad Carson in the center.
And, to the surprise of even the editors who chose them,
these authors -- known for many strenuous disputes over
the years -- often have more in common than in disagreement.
The very fact that Robert Borosage and Will Marshall
can appear in the same magazine is emblematic of a party
that remembers how big its tent really can be.
Not only does intellectual surge put conservatives on the
defensive, it answers and challenges those who are confused
about what the Democratic Party stands for.
The timing could not be better. With this year's midterm
elections looming and the run-up to the presidential
primary season coming soon thereafter, Democrats have
an exceptional opportunity but also a daunting task: to
come up with a body of ideas that are both good for governing
and good for winning. That's why it's so healthy to
be having a rigorous intellectual debate right now. It raises
the discussion beyond the tactical. And it helps prevent
a cockamamie swerve out of the mainstream; once ideas
become the playing field, it's hard for a party to go off the
deep end.
In short, the long-awaited revival of the Democratic
intellectual tradition -- overwhelmed in recent years by the
conservative din -- has begun. Such a revival promotes
unity, creates focus, and lifts the party's debate out of the
blogosphere mosh pit. If ideas are the lifeblood of successful
politics, Democrats are very much alive these days.
