Enduring Liberalism: American Political Thought Since the 1960s (review)

Book Reviews 289 These criticisms of The American Presidency Under Siege are not meant to diminish its many virtues. Rose's book will compel students to think seriously about political parties and their place in American politics. He is right to suggest that revitalizing the party conventions and restoring some party patronage may strengthen meaningful ties between the executive branch and the electorate. And strengthening partisanship may, indeed, cultivate serious contests of opinion, and thus draw citizens more effectively into the electoral process than the plebiscitary campaigns that dominate contemporary presidential politics. But strengthening parties will not guarantee strong presidential leadership. Indeed, it is hard to imagine many of the most forceful acts of leadership of the past half-century without the weakening of parties that Rose laments: Truman's Marshall Plan; Eisenhower's dedication to a national highway system ; Johnson's assault on forced segregation; Reagan's tax reform; and Clinton's commitment to a balanced-budget agreement. It is also true, however, that political parties capable of holding presidents accountable may have protected the country from the disgrace of Watergate and many of its unfortunate aftershocks, which Rose understandably disdains. Similarly, the debacle of Iran-contra, which undercut the Reagan administration's efforts to complete still another "extensive and arduous enterprise" in American politics, may have been forestalled by a vigilant Republican organization. In the final analysis, the modern presidency benefits and suffers from what Woodrow Wilson described as its "extraordinary isolation." Contemporary presidents bask in the honors of the more powerful and prominent office that emerged from their emancipation from the constrictive grip of localized parties, but find themselves navigating a treacherous and lonely path, subject to a volatile political process that makes enduring achievement unlikely. The "besieged" presidency, it seems, can accomplish many things, but it cannot secure the lasting legacy that distinguishes our greatest presidents. Sidney M. Milkis University of Virginia Enduring Liberalism: American Political Thought Since the 1960s. By Robert Booth Fowler. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999; pp. xxviii + 332. $35.00. Conventional wisdom has it that liberalism has taken a serious beating over the past generation. The first blows were delivered with the results of the 1968 election, the second with the Reagan revolution, and the third with the Republican capture of Congress in 1994. The result has been to move the center of American politics toward the right and to pull the left toward the center. After George Bush effectively stigmatized the "L-word" during the 1988 campaign, many erstwhile liberals even abandoned the label and took to calling themselves progressives instead. Against this assessment, there is the contrary view, as the journalist E. J. Dionne Jr. puts it, that "they only look dead." The major achievements of activist government 290 Rhetoric & Public Affairs during the 1960s have not been repudiated, there is less cynicism about government now than after Vietnam and Watergate, and Americans identify as their chief priorities issues such as health care and education that might well involve an increased presence for government. Noting these trends, in a recent op-ed column in the New York Times, Princeton historian Sean Wilentz proclaims, "We are witnessing a revival of liberal tradition that had been given up for dead but has assumed a new and disciplined form." From its title and subtitle, one might expect that Robert Booth Fowler's recent book, Enduring Liberalism, would echo the themes of this challenge. But it is about something else altogether. Fowler, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, evokes not the contemporary sense of liberalism as activist government but the nineteenth-century sense of liberalism as individual freedom, and the opposition to liberalism is not conservatism but communitarianism. Fowler, in short, updates the antinomy between liberalism and civic republicanism that marked the founding of the United States and was at the root of much of our political controversy before the Civil War. Fowler's thesis is that a "disconnect" has emerged since the 1960s between the political thought of public intellectuals and that of the citizenry at large. In the writings of such public intellectuals as Michael Walzer, Robert Bellah, and Jean Bethke Elshtain, among others, one finds arguments...