A dominant theme of recent conservative blogs is that the election of Barack Obama in no way signifies a liberal revival. They continue to insist that the nation tilts right and that Obama won only because George Bush was so incompetent, the media loved Obama, McCain did not appeal to the GOP base, and whatever other reason they can dream up.
As usual they are full of you know what. The country never did tilt to the right. The right turn myth is something this election may hopefully put to bed for good.
Even the Democrats have bought into the myth, as recent statements by Nancy Pelosi seem to imply. Democratic strategy over the last decades has focused on moving to the right. Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004 and even Hillary Clinton in 2008, like many Democrats, held to the tenuous assumption that the party had to move right to appeal to a larger number of Americans. So Democrats became like someone trying to get into an exclusive club who takes on all the airs of an upper class snob, their copycat manners apparent to everyone but themselves. For many Americans this adoption of appearances seemed a cynical move calculated only to win votes, which only fed the mistrust and bad feelings a lot of people had about politics.
Then there is the Democratic Leadership Council which has always predicted itself on the right turn myth. In 1990 Bill Clinton became chair of the DLC. His first act was to preside over the formulation of the 1990 New Orleans Declaration. This document would become the blueprint for Clinton’s future and that of the Democratic Party. The most telling of these principles are:
We believe the Democratic Party’s fundamental mission is to expand opportunity, not government.
We believe that economic growth is the prerequisite to expanding opportunity for everyone. The free market, regulated in the public interest, is the best engine of general prosperity.
Yet what if, in fact, contrary to the Republican myth, the rightward tilt had nothing to do with the Republicans and everything to do with the Democrats? In that campaign Dean was asking a very relevant question: What if the whole Hollywood production that has been titled “America’s Right Turn,” was nothing more than a phantom, a marketing creation, a fad, right up there with Pet Rocks and Cabbage Patch dolls? What if the strategy of the Democratic Party was merely like one of those bad Hollywood sequels, Rocky VIII, Crocodile Dundee Does Kansas City, Superman Redux? What if there was an error on the part of all the pundits who have made American politics a cacophonous squawk like a huge flock of crows descending on a particularly foul and rotting corpse?
Polls over the last decade seem to indicate this theory has some validity, for a majority of Americans consistently have supported measures strengthening Liberal America’s four cornerstones including increasing funding for education, fewer tax cuts for the wealthy, opposition to media concentration, and increased protection of voting rights.
But it is not just the present but the past that the GOP has tried to rewrite. In their zeal to roll back the reforms of the New Deal and the Progressive Era, the GOP has preached a “survival of the fittest” individualism straight out of the 1890s. The GOP preaches that government programs do not work, that the New Deal was a fraud and only World War II brought the nation out of the Great Depression.
Much of the recent popular impression of American history has been built around an icon that people worshiped with all the fervor of true believers. The central theme of that icon was rugged individualism, a belief that in our own time has perverted into the anti-government, anti-welfare prejudices that have warped everyone from talk radio zealots to the Bush Administration and both the Republican and Democratic parties.
Historical research is also learning that the myth also may not be true. Perhaps the most influential historical work I have read in the last four year is Delivering Aid: Implementing Progressive Era Social Welfare in the American West by Thomas Krainz. In an impressive series of accompanying tables, Krainz shows that long before the New Deal four Colorado counties provided aid ranging from $4.97 to $30.90 per month to almost 2,000 people. Perhaps the most fascinating table shows the number and percentages of people sent away without aid, with Lincoln County being the highest at 32.91% while the other counties have numbers in the single digits.
A friend is completing a book about North Dakota in which he cites the meeting minutes Big Meadow Township which had a similar program. My friend observed:
The township board also considered charity cases even before a welfare program was systematically organized at the state level. There was a very limited welfare program, but welfare nevertheless. Lack of funds prevented the township from doing much, but even when they did nothing, they gave the requests serious consideration.
The Republicans have never believed in equality. They have believed that somehow “the market” would allow the “best” to rise to the top. We all know what the market did to American workers before the government stepped in to level the playing field. Using government to level the playing field was the idea that created the modern Democratic Party.
In the past year we have again learned that bitter lesson, for a belief in letting the markets run free is what has created the mess we are in just as it created the Great Depression and the Depression of 1893. Contrary to right wing bloggers who insist America is still tilted right, any doubt about that should be erased by the election of Barack Obama and polls showing that the economy was voters’ number one concern.
The writers of those right turn myth articles ought to take a look at that exit poll data. First, it shows only a minority of Americans--around 30%–label themselves as conservative. Second they show that in terms of income the only group that went for McCain was those making over $100,000. In other words, the only people turning right are those who ride in limousines or drive Mercedes while the majority of Americans are traveling in a different direction.
Besides the exit polls there are the opinions of various pundits. There is wordsmith Peggy Noonan’s memorable phrasing:
But let’s be frank. Something new is happening in America. It is the imminent arrival of a new liberal moment. History happens, it makes its turns, you hold on for dear life. Life moves.
George Packer writes in the New Yorker:
For the first time since the Johnson Administration, the idea that government should take bold action to create equal opportunity for all citizens doesn’t have to explain itself in a defensive mumble. That idea is ascendant in 2008 because it answers the times. These political circumstances, even more than the election of the first black American to the highest office, make Obama’s victory historic.:
But where Packer titles his article “The New Liberalism,” there is in fact nothing new about it. Liberalism is quite simply the belief that one function of government is to keep the playing field level. That value lies at the very heart of the American experiment. It serves to level the playing field when those with power and money seek to tilt things in their direction, to assure that the votes are counted fairly, to maintain a free and open “marketplace of ideas,” to stimulate our society to positive ends whether in the arts or research, and to provide an equal education so that every American not only starts from the same point, but also has the same opportunities every step of the way on into college and even professional school and work.
THE fundamental value of equality is THE fundamental American value. If you polled the American people very few would argue with that, making equity the so-called “moderate” or “middle-of-the-road” value. If you don’t know what those roots are then spend some time searching online for the speeches and works of those who made the modern Democratic Party. What you will find running through all of these leaders is a commitment to equity.
The turn to the right is a myth because it never has been true.
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