John F. Harris: Twin giants of postwar liberalism
[John F. Harris is editor-in-chief of Politico. ]
The economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who died in 2006 at the age of 97, lived so long that he spent the last several decades of his life as an anachronism. He was a respected figure among those dwindling few who recalled his once-vast influence, but one whose ideas were regarded as relics of a different age.
He did not live quite long enough to witness something remarkable in American politics: the turning of the cycle.
With astonishing speed, the assumptions about government and free markets that reigned over national life for 30 years have collapsed. New assumptions — ones that would have been entirely familiar to Galbraith — are suddenly in fashion. If history’s rhythm repeats, they may stay in fashion for many years to come.
Galbraith served in FDR’s New Deal as a young man and JFK’s New Frontier in middle age. He spent his old age in acerbic but mostly ineffectual dissent from the Age of Reagan, Gingrich and Bush. He would have turned 100 last Wednesday.
That was the same day his lifelong friend, the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who died last year, would have turned 91. The two men, though separated by nine years and nearly a foot in height (Galbraith was 6-foot-8), were the fraternal twins of postwar liberalism — national figures at a time when public intellectuals were celebrities and cultural tastemakers in a way they are not today.
As it happened, the birthday of Galbraith and Schlesinger also fell on the day of the final McCain-Obama debate — an occasion that vividly highlighted the ideological and intellectual turn the country is making as it exits the Bush presidency.
There was Barack Obama, ahead in the polls, advocating a return to large-government programs to protect homeowners harmed in the financial crisis, to expand access to health insurance, to build new public infrastructure.
More striking was John McCain. While invoking conservative rhetoric about small government and low taxes, he was more interventionist than Obama was in proposing a massive government effort to purchase distressed mortgages and renegotiate the terms on behalf of those who overextended themselves and who mistakenly believed that, when it comes to housing prices, the free market worked only in one direction. The Republican sounded like a prairie populist of the late 19th century in denouncing “greed” and “corruption” on Wall Street. ....
Read entire article at Politico.com
The economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who died in 2006 at the age of 97, lived so long that he spent the last several decades of his life as an anachronism. He was a respected figure among those dwindling few who recalled his once-vast influence, but one whose ideas were regarded as relics of a different age.
He did not live quite long enough to witness something remarkable in American politics: the turning of the cycle.
With astonishing speed, the assumptions about government and free markets that reigned over national life for 30 years have collapsed. New assumptions — ones that would have been entirely familiar to Galbraith — are suddenly in fashion. If history’s rhythm repeats, they may stay in fashion for many years to come.
Galbraith served in FDR’s New Deal as a young man and JFK’s New Frontier in middle age. He spent his old age in acerbic but mostly ineffectual dissent from the Age of Reagan, Gingrich and Bush. He would have turned 100 last Wednesday.
That was the same day his lifelong friend, the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who died last year, would have turned 91. The two men, though separated by nine years and nearly a foot in height (Galbraith was 6-foot-8), were the fraternal twins of postwar liberalism — national figures at a time when public intellectuals were celebrities and cultural tastemakers in a way they are not today.
As it happened, the birthday of Galbraith and Schlesinger also fell on the day of the final McCain-Obama debate — an occasion that vividly highlighted the ideological and intellectual turn the country is making as it exits the Bush presidency.
There was Barack Obama, ahead in the polls, advocating a return to large-government programs to protect homeowners harmed in the financial crisis, to expand access to health insurance, to build new public infrastructure.
More striking was John McCain. While invoking conservative rhetoric about small government and low taxes, he was more interventionist than Obama was in proposing a massive government effort to purchase distressed mortgages and renegotiate the terms on behalf of those who overextended themselves and who mistakenly believed that, when it comes to housing prices, the free market worked only in one direction. The Republican sounded like a prairie populist of the late 19th century in denouncing “greed” and “corruption” on Wall Street. ....