Left Brimming with New Ideas?

If a center-left columnist wrote a column about the new Big Ideas that people on the left were coming up with, what would you think? That’s what E.J. Dionne just did. So what is the basis of his claim?

First of all there’s an article in The American Prospect by Michael Tomasky titled Party in Search of a Notion.

Democrats and their allies must destroy the current political “paradigm” based on “radical individualism” and replace it with a politics of the “common good.” Only a larger argument rooted in a different conception of government and society, Tomasky argues, will allow the party to “do a lot more than squeak by in this fall's (or any) elections based on the usual unsatisfying admixture of compromises.”

OK. That means a lot or a little, depending on what actual policies back it up. And a quick scan of the article indicates that his proposal for Democrats to “argue on behalf of civic reconstruction and genuine public morality” doesn’t yet have any specific ideas attached to it.

What about the Center for American Progress? Dionne says that it is pushing 15 New Ideas on its website. He’s right. Here they are.

Offering Opportunity for All: Build an opportunity nation where every hard-working person — regardless of background — can realize his or her dreams through education, decent work and fair pay.

• Create a Fair and Simple Tax Code
• Extend Learning Time
• Improve Teacher Quality
• Increase College Opportunity and Completion
• Reduce Debt Burdens by Fighting Abusive Lending
• Strengthen Pensions: Universal 401(k)

Promoting a Just and Secure World: Use America’s awesome strength to bring the world together, not pull it apart.

• Use Integrated Power
• Strengthen the All-Volunteer Army
• Grow the World’s Energy Future
• Invest in Global Equity

Building Strong Communities: Reawaken America’s conscience — our sense of shared and personal responsibility &mdash to build healthy, vibrant communities.

• Provide Universal Health Coverage
• Use Health Care to Strengthen the U.S. Auto Industry
• Provide Comprehensive Worker Adjustment Assistance

Creating Open and Fair Government: Reform government so that it is of, by, and for the people: open, effective, and committed to the common good.

• Bring Government Decisionmaking into the Information Age
• Impose New Rules to Curb Abuses of Congressional Power

Most of these ideas are great. They are ideas that Republicans have proposed in Congress and that Democrats have blocked. And there are other ideas, for instance in education, where Republicans have the same goals but different ways of reaching them. There are other areas, like the family, where the 15 New Ideas are silent. And that’s a shame, because the common good begins with the family.

The big problem for Democrats when they start talking about a new devotion to the “common good” is that Democrats, by and large, are the people on the government’s teat sucking greedily from the common good. How many Democrats are going to agree to be plucked off the teat to support civic republicanism and the common good?

That’s why Democrats find themselves opposing all the Republican proposals to enhance the common good. Just about everything you could think of doing for the common good will take money away from Democrats.

And that is going to make it difficult for Democrats to deliver on E.J. Dionne’s hoped-for Big Ideas.