Whose Story Will Win?

For decades, die-hard liberal Democrats have invoked Harry Truman's maxim that when voters have a choice between a real Republican or a Democrat posing as a Republican, they will choose a real Republican every time. But this year, with President Bill Clinton careening to the center in his quest for re-election, Truman's folk wisdom could hardly be more wrong. Clinton is leading in the polls in large part because he has been so effective in co-opting key Republican issues like crime, fiscal responsibility, and family values. For legions of disillusioned Democrats, Clinton's bid to burnish his credentials as a fake Republican underscores the vanishing differences between the two major parties. The vote in November, many say, is about nothing at all.

Does the outcome of the election really make no difference? To believe so is to neglect a central reality - and irony - of the present moment: Even as two centrists vie for the White House, American politics writ large is becoming more ideologically competitive than at any time in recent memory. And, contrary to the cynics, what happens on election day will dramatically affect this competition.

The conservative resurgence that ended Democratic control of the Congress in 1994 is far from exhausted, even if many of its legislative ambitions have been thwarted. Thanks to a new emphasis on devolution and the push for a balanced budget, the assault on activist government has reached an unprecedented level of intensity. The conservative vision of a pared-down government that transfers power to the states and reduces federal regulations is more politically viable today than during the Reagan years. At the same time, the conservative focus on morality and personal responsibility has now penetrated to the very core of American political discourse. Whatever their legislative record of recent years, conservatives have made continuous forward progress in refining a grand story of American life that stresses the need to downsize government and return to traditional values.

Meanwhile, a renewal of progressive politics may already be under way. As inequality and economic insecurity grow in American life, so too does the manifest need for new measures to correct the imperfections of the marketplace. More immediately, as conservatives take aim at government programs and regulations that most Americans support, it has become easier for progressives to talk again about the virtues of government in a way that resonates with the public. And intellectually, progressives are better positioned now than at any other time in recent years to take advantage of the growing backlash against Social Darwinism in American life. After years of being hobbled by their own stale rhetoric and ideas, progressives have begun to fashion a new grand story of American life. The old liberal story from the 1960s stressed the need for an activist government that fought poverty and secured the rights of various long-oppressed minorities. It promised that growing prosperity and rising economic equality would go hand-in-hand. That story stopped selling to the public when wages stagnated, when welfare programs were seen as failing, and when the rights revolution snowballed into divisive identity politics.

In the new progressive grand story, activist government is being put forth as a basic necessity of twenty-first-century life. Government is needed to help traverse a turbulent period of economic transition and to protect Americans from the ravages of the global economy. Government is required to help stem inequality that seems to rise inexorably upward, no matter how much prosperity the market creates. In the new vision, the poor and minorities are still those who need activist government the most, but the best state interventions into the marketplace are those structured in universalist ways that do not engender resentment. Another distinguishing trait of the grand story now emerging on the left is the new emphasis on decentralized solutions to social and economic ills. By incorporating three decades of experimentation in the area of community development, the new progressive story is more in step with an American public that has historically been wary of centralized power.

It took conservatives over two decades to refine their grand story of American life and to develop a cadre of political leaders who were willing to tell it in unison. Neoprogressives are just at the beginning of their own long journey. The speed at which they travel will depend not only on how fast they flesh out the new story and nurture new leaders, but also on the success of revitalizing organized labor.

Progressive fortunes will be affected as well by the outcome of this presidential election.

A Dole victory would throw progressives on the defensive. Energy that might otherwise have gone into strategizing for the future would have to be spent on endless triage measures. Dole's presence in the White House would give a major boost to conservatives in Congress who have been repeatedly stymied by Clinton's veto. And while Dole probably doesn't believe in the supply-side vision he has embraced on the campaign trail, he would have little choice but to implement some portion of it and thus set back the clock. Indeed, as a man without his own ideological road map, Dole could find himself overshadowed and outmaneuvered on a number of issues by the passionate conservative ideologues who occupy top leadership positions in Congress.

To be sure, a Clinton victory would be no great triumph for progressives. However, for all of his sellouts of the Left during his first term, Clinton has helped to develop the new progressive grand story and could be expected to continue doing so in his second term. He has stressed the indispensable role of government in equipping Americans to survive in the new global economy, advocating efforts in job training and education. He has recognized the need for social programs to be universalist in nature and he understood how welfare, left unreformed, poisoned public support for activist social policy across the board. Rather than slowing the progressive resurgence, Clinton's signing of an odious welfare reform bill may aid it by denying conservatives a cudgel with which to assault the entire public sphere. Likewise, Clinton's effort to reinvent government has helped lay the groundwork for future public acceptance of new federal initiatives. Finally, Clinton has ended the conservative monopoly over the language of values and set the stage for progressives to blend this issue into their new grand story.

None of this is to say that Clinton is any kind of savior. He is best seen as a transitional president who has little choice but to govern from the center, holding the Right at bay while progressives get their own house in order. If Truman were around today, that highly pragmatic politician would be the first to recognize the many benefits of having a fake Republican in the White House rather than a real Republican.