(00:00:00) The time is 12 (00:00:01) o'clock. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Anita Pam push president of the College of Saint Catherine and a member of the Minnesota meeting board of directors. It's a pleasure to welcome all of you to Minnesota meeting today. We also extend a welcome to the radio audience throughout the Upper Midwest who are hearing this program on Minnesota Public Radio broadcasts of Minnesota meeting are made possible by the law firm of Oppenheimer wolf and Donnelly with offices in Minneapolis. St. Paul and major cities in the United States in Europe. Minnesota meeting is a public affairs Forum which brings National and international speakers to Minnesota. members of Minnesota meeting represent this communities leaders from corporations government Academia and the professions this Minnesota meeting will be unusual. There will be no speeches instead the entire one-hour meeting will be an exchange between you and the panel of speakers joining us today are three of America's leading liberal thinkers and contributors to a new Journal of opinion the American Prospect. Robert kuttner is an author and columnist he writes about economics for the new Republic and other usually liberal Publications. Paul Starr is a professor of Sociology at Princeton University. And is the author of 1984 Pulitzer Prize winner for nonfiction the social transformation of medicine. Our third panelist is Deborah Stone a professor of Law and social policy at Brandeis University and the author of several books on social policy and politics. We are sorry to say that Cass sunstein a professor at the University of Chicago School of Law was unable to make the trip to the Twin Cities today. I hope you all have had a chance to look at the material at your seats introducing you to some of the ideas raised in the first issue of the American Prospect and are loaded with questions for our panel John Elwood a professor of public management and political science at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey. Institute will moderate today's discussion. Jane mrazek will also be moving among you to take questions now turn things over to dr. L would John. (00:02:30) Good afternoon. I was asked to make a ask a few questions about the future of American liberalism given our panel and rather than trying to sort of agree on what is liberalism which is probably a fruitless task. Let me relate three stories that I believe reflect three major challenges that the founders of the American Prospect have to face. The first story is personal in 1979. I was drafting a congressional budget office report on Constitutional Amendments proposed constitutional amendments to limit expenditure growth and prohibit budget deficits. This is pre gramm-rudman in the first paragraph of that report. I put in the following line today some feel that government is the problem rather than the solution. When my draft was reviewed by a lot of fancy people at the time there was General agreement that this was a silly statement and I was challenged to prove that anyone who was a serious political figure would hold should stupid views a decade later. The view that government is the problem rather than the solution is the dominant view in this country. This sea change is probably the most significant Legacy of the Reagan Era. In fact, this leads to my first question or challenge to the editors of the American Prospect. How will you re-establish a belief in the usefulness of State action or as Paul star puts it in the introduction to the first edition of the journal how will you re-establish the creative use of government for common purpose? The Second Story which happens to be one of my favorites is told by Robert Cairo in his first volume of his life of Lyndon Johnson Cairo relates that lbj's Congressional career basically was made by his ability to work through a series of legal and political obstacles to the building of a thing called the Marshal Ford damn in the Texas Hill Country the basic deal which LBJ and a whole series of people who later became rather famous made is that the heart of interest group liberalism. And in fact, it's currently reflected in the S&L crisis in this country. And that deal was that Johnson directed government Aid to very conservative and Cairo actually says racist, Texas businessman and lawyers Aid that made these businessmen and lawyers very rich and Powerful in return for their support for Public Power and for housing for poor Hispanic Americans, or as one of lbj's political mentors, put it give Herman the damn give Linden the housing project okay to deck in the last two decades has seen the rise of micro economic techniques to analyze the benefits and costs of public policies. That's what we teach at the Humphrey Institute. In fact one General thrust of these studies is a desire to make governmental programs more efficient by doing a better job of targeting their benefits on the quote truly needy unquote the difficulty for liberals. However, is that what is good economics is often poor politics those programs that are highly targeted Aid to families with dependent children food stamps the WIC program, which is in the news today receive the least political support while those programs that are not targeted at all have risen to Motherhood status Social Security Medicare veterans benefits. This has put liberals in a trap the neoliberals of the Washington monthly variety and folks who work at the Brookings Institution, for example by advocating ever tighter targeting to achieve greater efficiency have helped undermine public support for domestic governmental activity. But those liberals who reject the neoliberal view in my view. Anyway all too often Advocate programs that are perceived to reflect poor economics or governmental inefficiency. Thus my second question or challenge to the three individuals who form this new Journal is what is the liberal platform that combines good economics with successful politics? My third story is from David. Brinkley's book on Washington DC during World War 2. According to Brinkley during the war someone in the Pentagon decided that military parades were an unnecessary luxury given the needs of the nation when FDR heard of the order. He immediately countermanded it on the grounds. The Parade's were good for public morale and besides he liked military parades. Okay, if one reads Brinkley and in fact lots of other offers authors on FDR one a struck by the degree to which FDR loved it appears genuinely loved the symbols of American patriotism since Hubert Humphreys passing. It is hard to find a national liberal politician who acted in felt like Roosevelt on this issue. So my final question is where is the national liberal leader who likes military parades or in the broader context to make it a policy issue? How can liberals come to terms with the fact that the American people have always been patriotic to the point of chauvinism? Okay. So my general goal here was to ask these sort of three questions to give the panel to sort of hit these soft balls out of the park and then open it up to you. So why don't I turn it over to the panel at this point who wants to start? (00:07:57) Well, perhaps I could start by saying as something (00:08:02) this gets that are by the way for the radio audience. (00:08:04) It is a mark of the present age that you could suggest that in the past decade distrust of government has become the dominant View and that liberals have seemed unpatriotic. In fact ever since Ronald Reagan. It seems to be the mark of authentic Patriot to distress the government. Whereas those who have some confidence in government who might think for example, it might be trusted with a little bit more money. Well, they're not exactly subversive but it does does raise suspicions about them. We think that the change in the world the end of the Cold War the collapse of Communism drastically changes these issues of patriotism and And National interest because it's true that when the when the when the Great issues were those of military competition it did seem I think incorrectly but it did seem perhaps as though liberals didn't stand up for America's interest. But the more that we shift from a world of military competition to World economic competition where the question becomes the economic strength and resources of the American people their skills inventiveness all of which depends on their education we come back to a variety of things that it seems to me Liberals are very strong on and that the the power and security the United States will increasingly depend on on our capacities is people and and those in turn depend on how much we are willing to invest in people what were willing to do at home and consequently it brings those Use of the American interest back in our court and I think we can play very well in that Court the kind of liberalism that I think we represent is is is a hamiltonian liberalism. If you will, it's a liberalism that emphasizes investment but investment in people and we think this relates to your second question about social and economic policy. We think there are a variety of ways in which an intelligent social policy today can contribute to the long-term growth and strength of the United States and that relates to education. It relates to healthcare. It relates to all these areas. (00:10:41) Anybody else want to speak to (00:10:42) this? Well, let me tell a brief anecdote myself. There was a cop Kutner for the radio audience law. There was an article the other day in the Boston Globe and the lead of the article went something like this Washington seems to have changed course the issues on the agenda are things like parental leave Clean Air child care, but let's not use the L word. Nobody uses the L word. The L word is political death and there seems to be a kind of mandatory ritual of atonement where Liberals are supposed to take responsibility for everything that went wrong with the country during the past 20 years. And even when they Embrace policies or for that matter, even when conservatives Bryce Embrace policies that are essentially liberal. The ritual is you come up with a euphemism. You call it Progressive or you call it neoliberal or you come up with a new word. We think we ought to call it liberal. We also think that to have a lot of little ideas as Gary Hart's new ideas slogan in 1984 suggested or Michael Dukakis is famous line that the American people are not interested in meteorology. They're interested in confidence to try and suggest new ideas on specific public issues that are divorced from a few Big Ideas, George Bush's Vision thing is a fatal mistake because the public wants to know where you're coming from public wants to know what your values are what your core beliefs are and liberalism as I conceive it certainly going back to FDR begins with a few Big Ideas that I have. (00:12:31) Out of (00:12:31) potency today. The free market is very powerful very important. The price system is an important way of signaling demands, but doesn't do everything there is some social things that it doesn't accomplish. It doesn't always expand resources efficiently or just lie so that you need a balance between market and polity or market and Civil Society. Secondly, the only instrument of a democratic polity that we have to work with is government. And if you believe that then liberals like us have a particular responsibility to make sure that government is accountable and efficient. We also have a responsibility to reclaim and rehabilitate not just the service delivery side of government but the deliberative side of government which is in terrible disrepair today. It's ironic that people who call themselves conservatives have almost nothing to say about Extra pair of democracy itself. So this is almost like investing in the stock whose value has become artificially depressed as the conservatives of the William Buckley generation. Did we think the pendulum has swung so far that it's about ready to swing back and rather than looking at the need for environmental regulation or childcare or universal health insurance or all of these other programs that are essentially popular but that a lot of politicians feel they have to camouflage as something other than liberal. We see them as an opportunity to teach as an opportunity to reinforce the Public's intuition that the market all by itself doesn't do everything and I think in that respect the public is ahead of the politicians. So we hope to play something of the role that conservative journals and think tanks did in the He's in the 70s During the period when conservatism was in the political Wilderness and to make the L word a good word and to make liberalism something we can feel (00:14:41) proud of. Mr. Stone. (00:14:46) Thank you. Let me tell you a couple of anecdotes give you some perspective on American politics from the eyes of foreigners. I took the bus from New Haven to Boston earlier this year the bus left a quarter of seven and the taxi driver who brought me to the bus station said to me why are you taking the bus? Why aren't you taking the train? And I said because the bus gets me there early as early as I need to be and there isn't a train that will get me there. He said but don't you know, the bus station isn't open it won't be open and it's raining out and you won't have any place to go and I said but there's a bus schedule Decor 07 you in the bus station isn't open. He said no, they can't open it. Otherwise the homeless people would come and sleep there. Finally, I waited outside the bus station in the rain with some other people a young French man got off the bus as it arrived was terribly thirsty went to get a soda out of the machine and the Machine didn't work and he hardly spoke English and we converse a little bit and he was shocked at the lack of facilities in the United States in transit and public transportation. Last week I gave a talk to some German politicians who were visiting the United States to learn about American politics and policy and I was talking about Healthcare. They were shocked when I told them that no one has an obligation to provide health insurance to employees in the United States or to anybody in the United States and that no doctor has an obligation to treat someone no hospital has an obligation to treat someone who shows up at the door. This I think that as I look around and counter people from outside the United States who look at our system. It gives me the sense a new sense from their Vision at the total the total lack of communal institutions and basic infrastructure in the United States. I think as Minnesota is probably one of our exceptional Minneapolis is probably one of our exceptional cities as you look around here, but what we need to rebuild and think about structuring are the kinds of Institutions that serve individuals but individuals can't make for themselves schools housing Healthcare public transit. Those are basic things that make a society productive and they require government if they're to happen at all. over here from Harry Boyte (00:17:27) Paul starts invocation of hamiltonian liberalism suggests a certain unresolved tension. I've picked up in the first issue of American Prospect which is an interesting issue, I think provocative and challenging but of course Hamilton said that Society is divided themselves into the rich in the well-born in the mass of the people give to the first the permanent chair in government. And it raises it seems to me that the kind of unresolved tension between a kind of populist language or rhetoric in the magazine and a liberal tradition, which has not at all been a necessarily popular in the sense of engaging themes of power democracy or participation. And after all in the in the 80s, it's not only the conservatives have been mean-spirited and narrow. It's also that they invoked a kind of tradition of popular sovereignty and autonomy and power especially in relationship to the state the welfare state or the therapeutic state which tends to turn people into clients and you see this in Policy area after policy remits Jack Kemp who's after all championing tenant management and public housing or it was George Bush's Campaign which challenge to kind of logic of daycare which thought government should be the providers and Bush argued that people should have choices and should have power over those kind of decisions. So I want to pose the question. How are you going to deal with this powerful theme that conservatives have tended to rise much more consistently than liberals in the last couple of Decades of the the theme of popular power and participation, especially in relationship to the client state. (00:19:17) Well, I think a lot of the problems a lot of the political problems of liberalism date from the choice in the 1960s to emphasize issues of civil rights and poverty for very good reasons, but which have positioned liberalism in the minds of many Americans as the group that Advocates the interests of minorities chiefly and we have (00:19:42) suffered (00:19:42) accordingly in the support that we can get from many middle class lower middle class people who somehow believe that the Liberals have deserted them no longer speak for their interests when I suggested that we represent a kind of hamiltonian liberalism, which is not a phrase that any anybody else here has used. I meant that we wanted to orient social policy toward the larger National Twist toward concerns of the future of economic growth and so forth that means emphasizing concerns of children for example, and to do so in a way that brings in many of the people who have felt deserted or abandoned by the liberalism of the last several decades. Now when you talk about populism and representing the forces from the bottom up liberalism would not be what it what it is. If it didn't represent a force counteracting the inequalities generated by the market and of course, we believe in in in trying to correct those inequalities not only of income but also of power and of improving the opportunities for participation that exists not only in government but in many other Tutions in our in our society. We need to present those issues in a way that makes clear that we are not arguing for a kind of special interest but for the broader interest (00:21:32) And I asked the rest of the panel whether they agree with the (00:21:34) hamiltonian mom. Well you can You know the hamiltonian Jeffersonian debate. Has so many different strands to it. I think Herbert Crowley's book the first editor of the new Republic back during World War 1 talked about using hamiltonian means for Jeffersonian ends meaning using government to serve Ordinary People. I think you can get a little bit trapped in a false dualism at its best liberalism has helped broker and alliance between a government that serves people and a participatory kind of political Community you say to yourself. What is the most participatory institution in the lives of most middle-aged people? Probably the PTA and the PTA even for people who aren't terribly active in their neighborhoods is sometimes the first time they meet their neighbors. What's the PTA? It's a voluntary participatory Association operating in symbiosis with a public institution. You can go back to the labor movement. 30s which got an enormous boost thanks to the Wagner Act which was a piece of federal legislation. You can think of all we owe you can think of tenant managed public housing you can think of Public Health Service positions. So I would hope that our kind of liberalism bridges over that that dualism that it number one thinks of the government as something useful as a manifestation of political democracy and also as an engine of a more equal society and of opportunity, but at the same time it cherishes the sort of civic participation And vitality of government and a voluntary institutions in their deliberative Incarnation, which is going down the drain according to every indicator. You can point to whether it involves people's actual participation or whether it involves people's voting or even something as basic as filling out a census form. The the country is becoming less of a Civic society and more of a purely Market Society where everything is for sale where everything is subject to the laws of supply and demand so I think the task for us is to rehabilitate both government and Democratic participatory politics. (00:24:21) Okay, we now have a question from Don's dry very general question of Miss Stoner any of the others as the Eastern Bloc countries and the Soviet Union make major changes in their economics and politics. Do you see them modeling after us capitalism or some other Western democracy? (00:24:45) I think you're going to see a very confused period for your to I mean what they what they are familiar with is communism and they know that it is an economic disaster and the opposite of Communism apparently is Milton Friedman. So you're going to have a romance with primitive. Laissez-faire. I think the comparison that is most instructive in this regard as with the 1940s when Western Europe was in ashes after the war the initial American response was to let the private sector do the job of reconstruction and it was only when the Prague coup happened and the Communists were at the gates that we realized that these countries needed massive assistance and that the free market wasn't going to do the job and we had to help the Europeans to find a middle ground. And unfortunately the Communists aren't at the gates now is a bogeyman because the Communists are finito. And so you have no deus ex machina to give us a reason for overcoming our normal view that let the free market do everything. I suspect that in Eastern Europe after a year or two of trying mass unemployment and this bizarre situation where the goods are in the shops, but nobody can afford them that Eastern Europe will come back to a middle ground and I think the models not surprisingly are the countries of Western Europe where you don't have homeless people sleeping in bus stations that are locked up and I mean if I don't know if make the Coke machine work is the equivalent of making the trains run on time, but Western Europe has infrastructure that functions it has social services that functions and it also has very Dynamic capitalism. So I think the model that they have in mind when they peered over the Berlin Wall was in Austria or West Germany or Sweden. And not not Milton Friedman's economics textbook or mass unemployment or not being able to afford to see the doctor. These views are popular. That's what keeps calling me and I don't know why more of our leaders don't appreciate that. These views are basically popular and start doing some leading. (00:27:08) Thank you Bob. I'm just to remind our radio audience. You are listening to Minnesota meeting on the stations in Minnesota Public Radio. Today. We're hearing from Paul Starr Deborah Stone and Robert kuttner three contributors to a new Journal of public opinion. The American Prospect have a question here from Rick pocket. (00:27:24) Yeah, the last tax year. I (00:27:29) believe the people in this room and this isn't to larger (00:27:31) room paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to finance the federal deficits that we have built up in the last decade. Each of us in this room will have to pay an additional thousand dollars each at least to bail out the Savings and Loan industry when I argue with my conservative friends about whose fault. This is I have difficulty because I have to remember that it was the Democratic Congress that adopted the tax cuts of the early 80s. It is the Democratic Congress that has (00:28:07) refused to propose new tax (00:28:09) increases or to propose the spending cuts necessary to keep us from accruing additional interest expense in the future and it is the Democratic Congress that deregulated the Savings and Loan industry that has caused. The big bailout that we have to go through with now whose fault is it? And and and what do we do to solve the problem? Especially when you consider that more incumbents in the US Congress will be re-elected in the next election. Then we will be re-elected in the Moscow that are in the in the so-called communist government of (00:28:52) Russia who would like to both explain take responsibility and I'll give some solutions. Well, there has there has been one party that has been the party of tax of phobia for the last decade and I don't see any reason why you should put all the blame on the on the Democrats in Congress. The crucial choices were the ones made back in 1981, which have created a structural deficit that has paralyzed decision-making in this country for decades. We have really imprinted this false sense of national impoverishment that we cannot undertake to deal with a variety of problems or even meet opportunities that arise elsewhere in the world like those in Eastern Europe because we just can't afford them. But we still are a very rich country and the and the fact is we're not in overtaxed country by comparison. With our friends in Western Europe who have done very well economically over the last decade like the West Germans so nobody likes to pay taxes, but that is that is not something which which we should feel is is so great an obstacle that we cannot think about dealing with any of these problems. Also some of the some of the changes that we need in this country are are changes that would actually bring things under better Financial control like changes in healthcare. One of the points that many people have been making in recent years. Is that look here. We are in the United States with some 38 million people without health insurance Millions more who have very inadequate coverage and yet we are spending more than eleven percent of the gross national product on Health Care compared with 9% in West Germany compared with eight and a half percent in Canada and yet these are Countries with universal health insurance. How is that possible? It's because universal health insurance has acted as a system of financial control in those countries and effective social policies can actually be a means of fiscal discipline and that that that sense we have lost here and we need to recover. But (00:31:19) that sure I mean happily this magazine is is the American Prospect not the Democratic party Prospect and I don't think we have to feel particularly in need of apologizing or defending for everything the Democratic party did Democratic party in Washington at least often makes me weep when I look at how shell-shocked it has been for the past 10 years and how unable it has often been to provide an alternative now take the S&L crisis. Where did it come from? The first part is the whole romance with deregulation as the solution to all else if you look at what the Savings and Loan bailout is costing it dwarfs by a magnitude of perhaps 10 fold all of the other economic benefits that our claim for all of the other four of deregulation half a trillion dollars bail out. So the first culprit is the view That Was Then in Vogue that anything that can be deregulated ought to be deregulated. And this was a particularly Republican view one that intimidated the Democrats a lot of other wise sensible Democrats felt that they had to be part of this wave to they had to believe in deregulation to so the Savings and Loans were deregulated on both the asset side and the liability Side Of The Ledger they could put their interest rates up a half a point above somebody else's interest rates without increasing their Capital except after a time lag and a 200,000 dollar savings and loan could become a ten billion dollar savings and loan almost overnight then on the investment Side Of The Ledger those constraints were removed and they could go out and invest in almost anything. They want it to those Democrats who were not philosophically intimidated. Were bought and sold by the SNL Lobby and So Reagan and his people were philosophically leading the charge the Democrats were either too intimidated or too much beholden to subject very loudly and by the time everybody woke up a lot of the damage had been done. So I think in partisan terms, yes, the culpability can be shared but an idiot logical or philosophical terms. This was brought to us by conservatives. This was brought to us by people who think that the free market can do no wrong who think that the textbook model of a person making an economic decision saying gee there are 25 SNL's in town. This one gives me an eighth of a point more but this one might be slightly riskier. If I look at its capital asset ratio. Come on, that's not how life Works, especially when you throw in Deposit Insurance, which was the one thing that it deregulate in. They kept upping the ceiling of Deposit Insurance because that's what the Savings and Loan Lobby wanted and that's what makes what made the whole game work. So this is another one of these strands the free market doesn't do everything perfectly and one of the things it does badly is run thrift institutions and it's no accident that no other country has had an S&L Scandal because no other country went through this insane Romance of utopian deregulation. (00:34:45) Okay. We now have a question from Felix Phillips. This question is for Professor Stone particularly, but I'd be glad to hear what the Magazine's view might be on the question that was raised by a Harvard law professor. Recently Derek bill. I think his name was who happens to be (00:35:02) black and who started a boycott of his duties (00:35:07) because as I understand it, there is no black woman Professor (00:35:11) on the faculty at Harvard and I think his position is that the faculty (00:35:17) is hopelessly (00:35:18) inadequate without a black female (00:35:21) Professor to act as a role model (00:35:24) and the generally be representative of (00:35:27) that group on the faculty. I wonder what your view (00:35:30) would be of that protest and of that view as a female and as a (00:35:36) law professor (00:35:38) raises the whole question of civil rights and discrimination, I think most of most of my colleagues in Academia who I've talked to about that think that His particular action is unfortunate it into it kind of puts hovered in a the law school in an impossible position. There is a black woman visiting Professor. They're currently and he's kind of pressuring for her to be hired. She in fact feels terrible that she's been cast into the public Limelight this way and it doesn't want to be hired under those circumstances those kind of circumstances, but the the issue is really a much much larger one, which is the issue about discrimination in the society and the kinds of laws we've had to deal with it. I think that our civil rights tradition in the United States is ironically very consistent with conservative principles that is a civil rights claim or a discrimination claim is a fundamentally individualist claim. It's an assertion by somebody And I want to be judged for myself on my own characteristics and my own achievement. I don't want to be judged and treated according to stereotypical views of a group of which I happen to be a member. So the fundamental claim and the fundamental fight in discrimination law is one that is seeking to elevate basic principles of individual Merit and achievement but because of our history and because of some I think Tendencies and all societies to have stereotypical views about minority groups groups have to come together as groups and press claims to raise Consciousness and sometimes get the help of the state to be treated as individuals and be regarded that way. I think we need we need civil rights policy and our leaders seem to feel this. Well, we're on the verge of passing a Civil Rights Act for people with disabilities raises the same kinds of issues about people simply wanting to participate in the marketplace to the best of their abilities. Thank you for pastors. Don't we have no less than seven questioners right in the two tables alone. So we'll go go as quickly as we can Bonnie pick Joe. No, I'm really impressed. I came here today hoping you convinced me that liberalism had some chance of success in this country and I'm hearing what you say about the need for it and philosophically I agree with you as a leftover 60s liberal. I have trouble and as a local politician, I have trouble seeing the hope of your Viewpoint coming back into American politics. I mean, we have the majority of the citizens that I work with and the people that I counseled professionally want to make money. And as you say we live in a society where everything is for sale in the price is getting higher. How can liberalism make a comeback in this country? Who wants to take that one on? Wanting to make money and we are we are interested in amplifying the opportunities that they that they have we're interested in amplifying the rewards for effort in the in a in a variety of different areas and and public policy has a role in creating an environment where effort will be rewarded where where where where opportunities will be created where they will be made available to people who don't have them so I don't really think there's an inconsistency there and I think you have grounds on which to to appeal to those to those people. We are not interested in in a kind of Nanny government that tells people what they ought to want. We assume people are better at judging what they want but on the other hand the the market left to itself will not give them a lot of what (00:40:02) they Okay. We have a question from Harvey McClanahan. Professor star would you comment please on how the conservatives have been so successful in implanting in the National Consciousness that what liberals really want to do is give money to minorities. And how the Liberals can create a substantial majority by having people understand that it's the needy rather than minorities. How important is racism in this how much is economics and how much is racism let's talk about it. (00:40:40) Well, I think I think you're absolutely right that that a large element of this does have to do with race (00:40:46) and (00:40:48) I think there might be some differences amongst us on some of these issues. So I don't presume here to speak for everyone (00:40:56) else. I think we have (00:40:59) paid a tremendous price for the way. We framed many issues beginning back in the 1960s and particularly issues, like like like affirmative action, which have produced this identification of liberalism with the interests of minorities and that have led these other groups to feel excluded by that by that liberals and I don't I don't believe that affirmative action has achieved the purposes that people held out for it at the beginning. Yes. It has increased the representation of minorities in Professional positions and certain other jobs, but it has not done very much for the for the poor for the for the Blackboard for the ghetto underclass that has done virtually nothing and as a result of having favored policies like that. We have lost the support of people who could have been supporters of liberal policies policies, which would have benefited them and benefited blacks and other minorities as well. And so I think I think we need to change the emphasis and that's that's partly what what I've been suggesting to move away from a politics that seems to exclude large numbers of people and instead to emphasize those policies and those ideas that have a broader base broader constituency and that can reclaim what liberalism had Back in the New Deal which was majority philosophy do other members want to talk (00:42:45) about let's let's set the (00:42:46) scene in the 1988 presidential campaign liat water does his focus groups at just in case he wasn't aware of it already make sure he understands exactly what are all of the Achilles heels of liberalism first. He uses liberalism as a one of my son calls us where dirty word to caucus is just a liberal and then he defines what a liberal is a liberal is someone who cares too much about minorities who doesn't care about crime and who's not particularly patriotic. How do we sum all of that up? Well, we have the Willie Horton ad which identifies blacks with criminals and identifies liberals with not caring about letting rapist out on the street and then to caucus has handed up nice slow pitch on a talk show. What would you do if if Kitty were raped and he says well even if Kitty were raped I still don't believe in the death penalty instead of saying I would just kill the guy myself. Seeming like a like a real person and then then just in case there's any doubt that liberals aren't Patriots. We have the Pledge of Allegiance and we have a Dukakis a bush at a flag Factory and to caucus has asked what about the Pledge of Allegiance? And he says in his populist way even a first-year law student should know why Tada Tada Tada so given that liberalism had some policy Achilles heels. It has let conservatives run away with symbols. Liberals are patriots. Liberals are not Patriots to Liberals are patriots. We we believe in this country. We believe in the Constitutional system. We have we believe in all the great things this country has done and can do and we have to do a better job at getting back some of the symbols we have to do a better job at conveying a sense of concern for the ordinary man and woman, which liberalism of Late has not done a very good job doing we don't have to do that at the cost of giving up our principles which is the neoliberal remedy neoliberal remedy is to become a little more conservative and be a little more muddled about what it is that we believe and on that point. I think the neoliberal Washington monthly view that all government money should be targeted to the certifiably needy is profoundly destructive in several distinct respects its destructive first of all, because if you have a program that is restricted to the certifiably needy you have to stay certifiably needy in order to keep getting the assistance. So it has the perverse effect of ghettoizing Plantation izing people who receive any kind of Public Assistance. Secondly, it's politically lethal because it undermines the support precisely among non poor people that is needed to get any assistance to poor people. And to get any support for broad public spending at all. It's the universal programs like Medicare like Social Security that help everybody which happened to disproportionately help for people to Social Security helps poor people four times as much as all other programs put together because the formula gives you a higher pension if you were poor then if you were Rich relative to what you weren't Medicare helps poor people disproportionately, even though it's a universal program because all of a sudden when somebody who's poor turns 65, they end up being treated like everybody else which is an enormous uplift for someone who's poor. So this targeting idea is profoundly wrong. We have a wonderful piece in the in the upcoming issue by Professor Theta Scotch pole (00:46:31) on on (00:46:32) how you can Target benefits to the poor within the framework of universal programs, but we have to wage these struggles we have to wage these fights intellectually. I'm not running for office. I may sound like I'm running for office. But I'm not I think the role that we have to play as intellectuals or as magazine editors is to contest these claims at the level of ideas and begin to put a little spine back in the in the backs of (00:47:00) politicians. Thank you Bob. We're listening today to Paul Starr Deborah Stone and Robert kuttner three contributors to a new Journal of political opinion the American Prospect and our guests are addressing the Minnesota meeting today and trying to answer the question will American liberalism the No No of the 80s become the yes the 90s. We now have a question from Matthew little (00:47:22) My question to some extent has been at least alluded to but I'd like to know a little bit more directly during the 80s. The a word formative action has become almost as much in disfavor as the other word and our which seems to which is important has been since the 60s when it was first designed for a blacks in America and I Professor Stone seem to be indicating that perhaps if we would abandon that then we'd have better chance of getting back into the mainstream. It's always with the l word. My question is what what is the faith of the concept of affirmative action during the 90s, but do you perceive that we and Dabio divorcement from the from that the L word and a word could be divorced to make the whole situation better. (00:48:33) I certainly wasn't suggesting a meeting to suggest that we should abandon affirmative action. I think it's a misunderstanding in this country about the way from an infection has been used many people think that there's been broad scale use of quotas in any any institutions schools universities workplaces. And so on most of the strong affirmative action programs that have been put in place under court order have been put in place in companies or universities that have had a demonstrated egregious history of discrimination. They've been before the court several times before they've refused to comply with mild record. Orders and it's those are the cases that you read about the comfort of the Supreme Court. Those are companies or universities that have had explicit discriminatory policies in the past and have substituted more hidden discriminatory policies after 1964 when they were no longer allowed to discriminate explicitly. I think that affirmative action programs are necessary in those kinds of cases. I also think that that and we may have some disagreement here. I think that it's extremely important that we use whatever mechanisms we can to integrate people who are different with the mainstream and not just people of different color but people of different National background people with handicaps with physical differences with cultural differences and gender differences the the only way That people are going to be accept people with differences will be accepted less conflictual e in the future is if we interact with each other and have exposure to each other and we may need some nudges in that direction (00:50:38) Paul. Do you want to comment on that given your different views? (00:50:41) Well, I think there's a distinction to be made between affirmative action cases which have to do with the enforcement of anti-discrimination Law and affirmative action as a general method or strategy for for advancing the interests of an artist and it's the second with which I have some disagreement and I think actually a lot of this is going to be moot because of Supreme Court decisions in the next in the next decade and so that it's as a practical political matter that cannot be the strategy for those who really care about these issues. (00:51:22) Okay. We have a question from Claire (00:51:24) Rumple. There were ample st. Paul. How is your periodical going to be different than the ones that you contribute to now as writers? Well, I'm glad you asked (00:51:33) that you might I'm very glad you asked that I will well as long as I and all the listeners of Minnesota Public Radio or off the Record (00:51:43) Bob, can we just repeat the question (00:51:45) question is how does this what why is this journal different from all other journals because of the conservatism of the prevailing mood in the last 10 or 15 years everything in this country has moved a little bit to the right. We felt that there really was no other publication. That provided a platform for what we conceive of as mainstream liberalism that there were liberal magazines that had become more conservative. There were magazines that were that were socialists that were self isolating from the mainstream debate. And while there were a lot of magazines that were willing to publish the likes of us. This is one of the virtues of tokenism. You can make a great career as a token. There wasn't really a journal that was willing to do long serious. Hopefully well written pieces where the whole added up to more than the sum of its parts where the where the journal as a whole was a voice of liberalism in the same way that say the public interest quarterly was a voice of neoconservatism where the Washington monthly was a voice of neoliberalism. So we felt it was time for something like (00:53:02) this good. Thank you have a question here from Gary Miller lie lie. (00:53:07) Thank you during the 60s. I was one of those college students. That was somewhat politically active. I have a professor friend at a local College was amazed and little bit distressed by the seemingly lack of concern about any type of political issues social or otherwise in the students, which they deals with on it daily basis and I'm wondering if Professor Stone and stock a comment particularly about their experience on campus and if there is if that's their experience if young people just don't seem to be very interested in political social issues now and have soul. What can we do to get them back into thinking about these types (00:53:49) of issues. I have to say briefly my I taught at MIT for quite a while and what one thing that amazed me was extraordinary concerned about environmental issues there from students in all different departments. And we I ran an internship program and we had no trouble finding students who wanted to go into public and nonprofit internships in the summer to put to use their engineering skills. I now teach it Brandeis and I will say that the issue that has galvanized the campus is abortion and the students had said the student body sent hundreds of people to the March on Washington last April. They organized along with other college students all over Boston a walk out on May first walk out of class has much to City Hall and I think that that has really mobilized. We mobilized young people today. well, this this actually relates to another issue that I had hoped would come up the courts and I think for too long we have turned to the courts for the resolution of a lot of these problems and I'm not sorry to see issues like abortion get pushed back into the political arena in part because that has the positive effect of mobilizing public opinion forcing those on both sides to confront the tasks of persuasion and we have had for too long a quiet on not just on the campuses, but in many other Arenas of American life and I think that some some renewal of politics would not not be a bad thing (00:55:45) and we have time for one last question from Hillary timoshkin Mr. Cutner referred to Lee Atwater his role in the 88 campaign. This may be an unfair question at the end of the program. But is it possible that you are discouraged about the quality of public debate at the national level? Is it possible that Dukakis was right when he said that Americans are not interested in ideologies. Are you reasonably confident that a significant number of Voters are interested in ideas liberal-conservative hamiltonian whatsoever. (00:56:24) Well, I think Dukakis was profoundly wrong when we talk about the American people demanding to know what their leaders believe in at the level of ideology. It doesn't mean that they expect their political leaders to give them a political Theory course Reagan who was probably the least intellectual of presidents was the most highly ideological of presidents. He believed in a few big simple things and he was very persuasive at communicating them not at the level of high Theory, but at the level of gut feel I would still call that an etiology. He was a very ideological man did oh Franklin Roosevelt. I think ditto most successful presence. They have beliefs. They have a vision of what they think the country ought to be and they are able to communicate it and it's not just a matter of A good technician. I think one of the profoundly mistaken things that a lot of liberals have done during the 80s feeling that they need to hide from this wave of conservatism that is washing over the country is to pose as technicians. We may not have a grand design but we're better mechanics than the other party or the other group that doesn't play people expect leaders to to provide visions. And if Liberals are to receive the confidence of the public again, I think liberals have to pump with both visions and leaders capable of articulating them in ways that move (00:58:03) people anyone else like to comment on that Paul or never. Well would we would we are trying to do is to connect these broader themes with a lot of particular issues of choice in public policy to show the links. Between a general understanding of what kind of a society would like to have and how that affects education and health care and so forth because the great questions we now face are not going to be the issues of capitalism versus communism and and the great ideological Wars that dominated so much of the 20th century. They are going to be these still very political issues about the design of our institutions the design of the corporation the design of schools and and here there are major Alternatives available to us. If only we will think about They are very much. Would you like to add one last comment comment? I think that I have great faith that our magazine will provide food for thought for people who want to read more than someone's lips. (00:59:24) You've been listening to a live broadcast of Minnesota meeting the topic American liberalism live broadcast of Minnesota meeting and made possible by Oppenheimer wolf and Donnelly providing commercial corporate litigation and international legal services to businesses in 40 countries around the world the time now coming up on one o'clock a quick reminder that major funding for Minnesota public radio programming is provided by 3M maker of Scotchgard brand protectors. (00:59:50) That's midday. This is Bob Potter. (00:59:53) Your turn to K. No W Minneapolis-Saint Paul. Sunny skies 72 degrees in the Twin Cities now with stronger winds expected later on (01:00:01) today. (01:00:05) Twenty years ago Minnesota Public Radio was celebrating the 2,000 members who supported mpr's to stations. Now MPR happily celebrates these 65,000 members who have made this broadcast service possible. 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