Matt Zeitlin

Discussing the Obama/Reagan flap, Ezra Klein disses Obama for assuming that in the late 70s and 80s, it was Reagan that embodied a desire for dynamism and entrepreneurship, thus ignoring  those in the Democratic party — the neoliberals led by Charles Peters — who too wanted more risk and dynamism in the economy.

Klein is certainly right to say that the neoliberals from the late 70s were on the side of more risk and entrepreneurship, but the neoliberals were also outcasts within their own party.  In 1984, when Gary Hart ran for the nomination, the Democratic establishment crushed him, mostly deploying black voters to bury him in the primaries and thus ensure another eight years in the ideological and electoral wilderness.  It took until 1992 and the election of Clinton to drag the Democratic party into thinking that growth is key to achieve all progressive goals, that unions weren’t always right and that work was always better than dependence.  Clinton’s 1990 New Orleans Declaration, which he gave as chairman of the DLC, was considered  “a good way for a young Democratic governor to permanently marginalize himself in a party dominated by Big Labor, civil rights leaders and Northeastern liberals.”

Now, in a perfect world, Obama would identify with Hart, Tsongas and Peters and the neoliberal tradition, instead of Reagan.  But Reagan won, which the neoliberals couldn’t really claim to do for more than ten year.   America likes winners and can identify with Reagan and how he embodied greater risk and dynamism.  They can’t identify with the slow diffusion of neoliberal ideas into a recalcitrant, stodgy Democratic party that took place in the 1980s and early 90s.  Obama isn’t Charlie Peters or Michael Kinsley – he’s a political leader who wants to implement large scale change beginning January 2009, not start a glacial movement whose goals are only realized after a decade of defeat.