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Political PeopleChallenges to civic life near the century's end
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Inaugurating the "Millennium Evenings" series at the White House on February 11, 1998, Adams University Professor emeritus Bernard Bailyn made note of Americans' "strange combination of a belief, a faith, in government, and a fear of power. Both, in the earliest years, were woven together--entwined--in the fabric of our public life, and they have remained there ever since, a source of strength, protection, and political controversy."
Now, near century's end, the faith and fear have given way to apathy. New communications media have revolutionized campaigns, distancing citizens from their representatives. Voting has become almost an aberrant behavior. Civic conversation seems crabbed and curt.
With the nation poised between the fading echoes of an impeachment trial and the rising din of the next presidential election, two articles in this issue examine American public life. At Harvard Magazine's invitation, a panel of faculty members and alumni (the third in a series of such conversations) discussed the prospects for democratic governance. The result, "Democracy's Prospects," probes the causes of Americans' disenchantment with government: a series of shocks (Watergate, Vietnam), uninspiring leadership, the public sector's "performance deficit," and the deliberate "demarketing" of government for political purposes. Among possible solutions put forth are hybrid forms of public and private action, political agendas ranging from repairing potholes to preparing for sweeping demographic change, and speculation about the Internet's role in reconnecting citizens and their leaders.
The changing role of news reporting figures prominently in that discussion. It occupies center stage in "The Mixed Media Culture," by veteran journalists Bill Kovach, curator of the Nieman Foundation, and Tom Rosenstiel. They document the press's slide into "a new journalism of assertion, which is less interested in substantiating whether something is true and more interested in getting it into the public discussion"--a shift prompted more by the financial structure of the modern media than by any concern for the public good.
Of course, politics is not only a serious business. Who better to document its humorous side than raconteur-in-chief John Kenneth Galbraith, Warburg professor of economics emeritus? An excerpt from his new book recalls the near comeuppance of the young Teddy Kennedy, the earthy Lyndon Johnson, and a previously unreported encounter between Angie Dickinson and Jawaharlal Nehru.
Fortified with a laugh, and with the perspective that Bailyn and Galbraith share in their very different ways, it becomes possible to believe that American democracy will muddle through after all.
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On the home front, Harvard Magazine continues its coverage of Radcliffe's new role within the University. For reports going beyond the news "extra" included in the May-June issue, see This Was the Year" and "Radcliffe's Rebirth."
~ John S. Rosenberg