With a chance to enact a new liberal agenda, can Democrats emulate FDR's success and greatness?

[DeepModem Mom]

WP op-ed: A New Social Contract
By Michael Kazin and Julian E. Zelizer
Sunday, June 22, 2008; Page B07

For the first time since 1964, Democrats have a good chance not just to win the White House and a majority in Congress but to enact a sweeping new liberal agenda....

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...Democrats are grappling with insecurities faced by entire families, that institution conservatives always claim to represent. The past three decades have produced growing economic inequality and a shrinking middle class. Younger Americans no longer expect to enjoy as good a life as their parents did. Wage-earners fear for the future of their jobs and incomes. No family is secure.

This is the reality of a global, nonunion economy that the new agenda attempts to address. But before the reunited Democratic Party can start to make a forceful case to the nation, it will have to address its great weakness. Democrats have not yet been able to equal what was perhaps Franklin Roosevelt's greatest political success: to offer a bold foreign policy to match his domestic ambitions. FDR had an internationalist vision: that the United States should use military force only against clearly defined threats and with the aid of international, democratic institutions. This vision, with some exceptions, defined America's stance in the world until Vietnam.

That debacle destroyed LBJ's presidency, and the question of how America should act in the world has haunted his party ever since. Democrats have no coherent view about foreign policy that differs from that of conservatives. They agree on finding a way out of Iraq and halting nuclear proliferation. But Democrats are vague about how to combat terrorists (and how to evaluate the threat itself), don't have a clear strategy for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and are fearful of questioning the size and substance of the military budget. This weakness gives John McCain his best chance to delay or defeat a new liberal awakening.

Yet if Democrats find a way to address Americans' insecurities about their economic futures as well as the future security of their nation, they may be able to emulate the only liberal president who ever managed that difficult feat. And for that achievement, FDR became one of the greatest and most beloved leaders in our history.

(Michael Kazin is a professor of history at Georgetown University. Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/20/AR2008062002273.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

[Donnachaidh]

1. IMO *none* of the Dems in power now have the cajones to pull it off

And that includes the Dem presidential candidate at the moment.

It's going to take another Great Depression to get those in power to enact what FDR started. And the stranglehold business has on our government (and more importantly the MEDIA) will keep people from knowing that others in this country are suffering.

[lxlxlxl]

2. Not with a national press corps like ours...

There is a willing and intentional amount of deception and ignorance being peddled by our journalists and editors in this country. If the country uses TV as a mirror of its self on which to judge its potential, or relies on top-down communication for "information" then no, nothing substantial will happen.

[natrat]

3. what a crock....as the 4th amendment is abandoned by democrats and the nominee

[yurbud]

4. Bill Clinton had one part of non-proliferation right: buy loose nukes from Russia

The part the Dems haven't grasped yet is that countries get nukes as a deterrent, and we are often one of the countries others are trying to deter from invading.

If we weren't a threat to them, they wouldn't feel the need.