I’m always pleased when Bill Galston, now at the Brookings Institution and one of the smartest Democrats anywhere, agrees with my analysis. In my December 11 Examiner column I called Barack Obama’s class warfare appeal, as enunciated in his purportedly issue-framing speech a few days earlier in Osawatomie, Kansas, was a “risky strategy. Democrats haven’t won a presidential election on class warfare since 1948, when Obama’s mother and Newt Gingrich were 5 years old.” Now I see that Galston has a piece in the New Republic making much the same argument, using some Gallup Poll numbers released since my December 10 column was written (and mentioned in my December 18 column, which is not yet posted on the web).
The Obama Democrats came to power with the assumption that economic distress would make Americans more supportive of or amenable to big government policies. That, after all, was the lesson taught by the New Deal historians. I argued in my 1990 book Our Country: The Shaping of America (a used hardcover copy is available on amazon.com at just 11 cents), that that assumption was a misreading of the history of the 1930s; liberal reviewers rejected my argument with scorn. But Galston comes now to the same conclusion: “In short, a 2008 election widely regarded as heralding a shift toward the more government-friendly public sentiment of the New Deal and Great Society eras seems to have yielded just the reverse.” Galston is arguing that Obama should base his campaign on “emphasizing growth and opportunity,” which is what Bill Clinton (whom Galston served as deputy White House domestic adviser) did. I’d say that’s good advice, and I’d say that it’s being ignored where at the White House and the Obama campaign’s Chicago headquarters.
