Likelihood of Success

Haven’t mentioned the brilliance of Mr. Kaus lately. Take a gander at this — it’s a long excerpt but you can handle it. I only regret the excessive use of boldface in the original, but he… he is Mickey. Now you read:

I’ve been trying to figure out why liberal bloggers are always attack the motives of neoliberals, and I think I’ve made some progress. It’s not that the bloggers are lazy punks who attack motives as a substitute for argument and need to constantly reassure each other of their own comparative righteousness because they feel guilty about their lockstep acquiesence in an agenda they themselves may have nagging qualms about. Not that at all! Rather, a) they are thinking of Joe Klein on a bad day, and b) there is a generation gap at work–not that they don’t remember the ’70s, when many of the problems of liberal orthodoxy became glaringly obvious, but that they don’t remember the decade before that.

Specifically, the young’uns seem to assume that in harping on the flaws of liberal orthodoxy aging boomer journalists are betraying their original liberal impulses. So there must be a reason for this disloyalty (careerism, desire to bolster credentials on the Washington party circuit, cash payments from Karl Rove, etc.) But many of us aging boomers aren’t betraying our original liberal principles. We are being faithful to our original New Left principles. What was the first critique of liberal orthodoxy to which I was exposed? The Port Huron Statement. Who was the original archenemy of ’60s radicals? Lyndon Johnson. Where can you find a thoroughly self-loathing indictment of the entire edifice of Great Society liberalism? In the Democratic Platform of 1972 (as Thomas Geoghegan pointed out in a famous New Republic essay, “Miami and the Seeds of Port Huron”). What constellation of doctrines are radical legal scholars–the “Crits”–trying to reveal as a fraud? “Liberal legalism.”

In short, orthodox liberals were the enemy of many who grew up in the ’60s. Still are! We aren’t selling out in attacking traditional Democrats and their interest group supporters. We loyally pursue the ideals of our youth! Though I’m happy to take Karl Rove’s money.

Bottom line: Neoliberals are old enough, or culturally deep enough, to be neo. Lefty punks mostly think they invented the whole thing and, pathetically, romanticize a never-never land of idealized, free-floating hippy (it stops there; never goes to Stalinism — no one does, after all) leftism. And, as Kaus says, anyone — anyone! — who isn’t with the plan, all the way and all the time, is in Rove’s pocket.

It’s not a basis for government or even political success — just ask Ned Lamont. Heck, it’s not even a basis for adulthood.