被保守右派執政已久的美國，自由派響往已經的自由派總統終於露出署光！一個世代的改變 正將開始，歐巴馬的當選，是不是劃下一個從雷根以來標榜的新右派、以財團企業利益為導向的市場主義，正面臨有史以來最大的挑戰及挫敗，而人民正在嚐其苦果。自由派寄望歐巴馬開始一個真正屬於中產階級人民的政府，開始新政策，一個屬於自由民主派的時代終於等到了？！
With Obama's rise, a progressive revival
By Alan Brinkley
Friday, January 16, 2009
'A Long Time Coming' The Inspiring, Combative 2008 Campaign and the Historic Election of Barack Obama By Evan Thomas Illustrated. 220 pages. PublicAffairs. $22.95; ￡10.99.
The Plan Big Ideas for Change in America By Rahm Emanuel and Bruce Reed 201 pages. PublicAffairs. Paper, $13.95.
Obamanomics How Bottom-Up Economic Prosperity Will Replace Trickle-Down Economics By John R. Talbott 218 pages. Seven Stories Press. Paper, $16.95; ￡10.99.
Obama's Challenge America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency By Robert Kuttner 213 pages. Chelsea Green Publishing. Paper, $14.95.
Formost of the last eight years, and indeed for much of the last threedecades, American liberals have been on the defensive - so much so thatmany have renamed themselves "progressives" as if to ward off the taintof their beleaguered past. Political books from the left haveflourished since 2001, but almost all of them have been critiques ofthe Bush administration,interrupted briefly and halfheartedly by the Kerry campaign of 2004.But with astonishing speed during the 2008 campaign, and largely inresponse to the rise of Barack Obama, the liberal-progressives havebegun to mount a full-throated revival.
In the absence so far ofan actual Democratic presidency, hopeful liberals have focused on theextraordinary success of Obama's campaign and on a highly optimisticinterpretation of his rhetoric. Three of the books discussed in thisreview were written and published (with great speed) before or justafter the election, and the other is a recently republished agenda forliberals that first appeared shortly after the 2006 congressionalelections. Together, they offer a portrait of how liberals have comeprospectively to envision the Obama presidency as a transformativemoment in American history.
For sheer speed and competence, themost impressive of these recent books is Evan Thomas's "'Long TimeComing,"' compiled from the reporting of the political writers of Newsweek (a magazine for which I occasionally write). A perceptive, smoothly written and generally fair-minded account of both presidential campaigns,it is, nevertheless, a contribution to the creation of the superheroimage that has surrounded Obama over the last six months. In describinghis important speech on race in March 2008,for example, the Newsweek writers (who are far from alone) describe a"tour de force," the "sort of speech that only Barack Obama couldgive." Afterward, "he found everyone in tears - his wife, his friends,hardened campaign aides. Only Obama seemed cool and detached."
Reportersfollowing McCain, most of whom appear to like and admire the candidate,focus nevertheless on the lurching, ad hoc and often self-destructivequality of the Republican campaign. They write with slightly disguisedscorn of the reckless choice of Sarah Palinas the vice presidential candidate, and about McCain's own seeminglydesperate efforts to find an issue, any issue, that might work. The Democratshad enormous advantages entering the 2008 campaign, and almost anycandidate they might have chosen would probably have defeated theRepublicans. But Newsweek makes a persuasive case both for theexceptional quality of the Obama campaign and for the ways in which it displayed skills that will be of value in the White House.
Inmany respects, "The Plan," by Rahm Emanuel and Bruce Reed, a blueprintfor a revived progressive agenda, is the most interesting of the recentpolicy books, largely because one of its authors is soon to be the White House chief of staff.In other ways, it has a dated, almost quaint, quality - a book writtenin 2005, first published in 2006 and quickly republished in 2008without revision and thus without reference to the epochal financialcrisis that will undoubtedly dominate the first years of the Obamapresidency. It includes a de rigueur critique of the Bushadministration's policies and an intelligent, if predictable, laundrylist of policies that a Democratic presidency might make possible.Among them are the unachieved Clinton-era idea of mandatory nationalservice, a watered-down proposal for universal health carefor children only, a plan for supporting college costs for middle-classfamilies. It promotes "fiscal responsibility and an end to
corporate welfare as we know it," which largely translates into repealing the Bush tax cuts and strengthening corporate and financial regulation.
Obama,of course, has proposed bolder plans - among them universal access tohealth care for all citizens and an expanded vision of a green economywith a more aggressive timetable (proposals that may have roughsledding during a historic recession). Emanuel and Reed reject whatthey consider the sterile choice between "more risk, more reward" (theconservative prescription) and "no risk, just reward" (the liberalprescription). Their prescription is "more responsibility, less risk,"and "more work, more reward." What has been lost, they fear, is "thequiet unshakable faith in progress" that shaped American hopes forgenerations.
In the turbulent years since the publication ofEmanuel and Reed's book, a sudden and powerful shift has occurred inthe goals of hopeful liberals. The financial catastrophe of the lastyear has strengthened their belief in the need to challenge theapparently discredited "trickle-down" economic orthodoxy that hasdominated much of the last three decades and to create an economy thatstrengthens the working and middle classes. The importance of a"bottom-up" economy is the central argument of John R. Talbot, a formerinvestment banker turned writer and commentator. His faith in Obama's commitment to Talbot's own economic beliefs is almost without limit.
Thebook weaves excerpts from Obama's speeches and writings into animplausibly specific and coherent set of policies that Talbot insistsare the core of the new president's agenda. It includes many of thesame proposals that liberals and progressives have been promoting foryears, but at its heart is Talbot's belief that Obama willfundamentally transform economic life to serve the needs of the lessaffluent majority of American citizens.
Robert Kuttner, an accomplished economics writer and a founding editor of the liberal magazine The American Prospect, is more skeptical. Obama, he argues,is a "work in progress," at times an embodiment of the most expansiveprogressive hopes, at other points a moderate centrist movingcautiously and politically through the thickets of his time. Kuttnersees great potential in Obama's leadership and rhetorical skills, buthe worries that he will not act boldly enough to attack the financialcrisis. He is equally concerned about the longer-term future. Thatfuture will, he argues, require a major restructuring of the Americanfinancial markets through a significantly enhanced federal regulatoryregime and "structural reforms in labor-market and trade policy as wellas health and energy." And it will require not just a short-termstimulus but a long-term investment in institutions and infrastructure.The current crisis will, he insists, require a truly
transformative presidency - no less transformative than the New Deal.
Runningthrough almost all the recent literature from liberal-progressivewriters in 2008 is a long-deferred concern of the left: inequality.Thirty-five years ago, the American economy - for decades before agreat engine of growth and an effective vehicle of upward mobility -began to move onto a different path. Instead of providing growth moreor less evenly across the population, it began to concentrate incomeand wealth in the upper brackets. This was not a product solely, oreven primarily, of government policy, but part of a global shift in theways markets worked. But American public policy through most of the subsequent years not only tolerated, but actively promoted, this growing inequality.
Theprogressives who have hitched their wagons to Barack Obama's star wantmany things from him. But among the most important of their hopes isfor a shift in how wealth and income are distributed. But undoing theforces that have created a generation of mounting inequality will noteasily give way to incremental solutions. One of the great triumphs ofObama's campaign and election is that he has made it possible tobelieve that such accomplishments are within the nation's reach. One ofthe great dangers of his victory is that it may have createdexpectations far beyond what any one man, or even any one nation, canrealistically hope to achieve.
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