Farewell to the vital center: A history of American liberalism, 1968--1980.

摘要

The demise of American liberalism is the major domestic political phenomenon of the post-Vietnam era. From 1932 through the mid-1960s, liberals dominated American political life, controlling the White House, federal courts, Congress, and the national policy agenda. In the decades preceding the Vietnam War, liberals were responsible for the creation of a welfare state and increasing economic opportunity. Internationally, liberals fashioned a framework for collective security through multilateral organizations which maintained relative peace after two world wars. Despite these enormous achievements, liberalism slowly, yet steadily, suffered a death by a thousand cuts throughout the post-Vietnam era. Today, unlike the 1960s when powerful liberals such as Carl Albert (Oklahoma), Sam Rayburn (Texas), Frank Church (Idaho), and Mike Mansfield (Montana) hailed from what we today call "red states," liberalism has become the reserve of coastal elites, urbanites, intellectuals, minorities, and the young.; Through chronicling the political careers and ideas of representative figures ranging from grassroots activists to President Jimmy Carter, I describe how liberals abandoned Vital Center liberalism for the "New Politics" and consigned themselves to the political margins in the process.