David Brooks, writing behind the Times Select firewall, has declared the era of neoliberalism officially over. And guess what? We killed it.
On July 25, 1981, Michael Kinsley published an essay in The New Republic called “The Shame of the Democrats.” The Democratic Party, the young Kinsley wrote, is viewed “with growing indifference.” It is run “by lawyer-operators with no commitment to any particular political values.” It is filled “with politicians who will do or say anything for a word or a dollar of support.” It represents “a dwindling collection of special interest groups whose interests are less and less those of either the general populus or the tired and poor.” In short, Kinsley wrote, “the Democratic Party has collapsed not just politically but morally.”
And so began the era of neoliberalism, a movement which, at least temporarily, remade the Democratic Party, redefined American journalism and didn’t really die until now.
Following Marty Peretz as editor of TNR, Kinsley served in that position from (1979-1981 and 1985-1989). He then went on CNN’s Crossfire to represent the left to Pat Buchanan’s right. After Hendrik Hertzberg made a brief comeback as editor of TNR, they brought in Andrew Sullivan (1991-1996) to represent ‘neoliberalism. When he moved on, they replaced him with neoconservative Michael Kelly, who famously died in Iraq when his vehicle, under fire, swerved into a canal. Charles Lane served as Kelly’s replacement 1997-1999) until the arrival of Peter Beinart. David Brooks explains this remarkable example of non-liberals running an ostensibly liberal magazine, and its effect on the media over time.
In the early days, the neoliberals coalesced around two small magazines, The New Republic and The Washington Monthly. They represented, first of all, a change in intellectual tone…
On policy matters, the neoliberals were liberal but not too liberal. They rejected interest-group politics and were suspicious of brain-dead unions. They tended to be hawkish on foreign policy, positive about capitalism, reformist when it came to the welfare state, and urbane but not militant on feminism and other social issues.
The neoliberal movement begat politicians like Paul Tsongas, Al Gore (the 1980s and ’90s version) and Bill Clinton. It also set the tone for mainstream American journalism. Today, you can’t swing an ax in a major American newsroom without hitting six people who used to work at The New Republic or The Washington Monthly. Influenced by their sensibility, many major news organizations became neoliberal institutions, whether they knew it or not.
Exactly. Exacta-fucking-mundo.
The question that needs asking is: how in the hell did people like Michael Kinsley, Andrew Sullivan, Marty Peretz, Michael Kelly, and Peter Beinart come to define the left, and how the hell can we get them to go away and never presume to speak for us again?
If you surf the Web these days, for example, you find that a horde of thousands have declared war on the Time magazine columnist Joe Klein.
Well…that’s one way. But, until we uncover the rock and see who has been funding the neoliberals from the beginning, we won’t really have a sense for how all this happened. But here is the really important thing…
Those neoliberals had an enormous influence on both foreign and domestic policy throughout the Clinton administration, and over Gore and Kerry’s campaigns. If they are truly facing extinction, to be replaced by a citizen’s army of genuine leftists, then we can expect, and even demand, a corresponding influence over foreign and domestic policy in the near future. And that is frightening not only to Republicans, and not only to neoliberals, but to the people that funded the neoliberals in the first place. We’re trying to get our country back. And if David Brooks is to be believed, we’re on the right track. They are hearing our footsteps.
Over all, what’s happening is this: The left, which has the momentum, is growing more uniform and coming to look more like its old, pre-neoliberal self. The right is growing more fractious…
Neoliberalism had a good, interesting run — while it lasted.
Brooks’ eulogy is premature. Neoliberalism is far from dead. When we see Hillary Clinton fail to capture the Democratic nomination, we’ll know that Brooks is right. Until then…keep fighting.
