"We Need a Win"
Politicians with perspective
Editor’s note: More people than ever before seem to be seeking the U.S. presidency. Rather than profile alumni who are running for office, we asked Garrett Graff ’03 to talk with two Harvard graduates who have decided to step back from front-line politics—at least for the moment—about the challenges facing the nation and what the 2008 elections may bring.
Baltimore native Kenneth Mehlman, J.D. ’91, sees the complicated politics facing the United States every time he visits his beloved Chesapeake Bay. Once polluted and dying, the bay now teems with boats and aquatic life. “It’s alive,” explains the Karl Rove protégé and former head of the Republican National Committee. “The left doesn’t want to admit it because they want to say the sky is falling, and the right doesn’t want to admit it because they don’t want to admit that regulation got it there. This is an example of how our public policy—the back and forth—sometimes is like sausage-making. It’s ugly, but oftentimes it works.”
And herein lies an essential conundrum of the early twenty-first century. The Democratic and Republican parties, Mehlman argues, have solved some of the most pressing issues of the last generation, but haven’t yet outlined their future paths. The GOP saw its central mission as defeating the Soviet Union, reducing tax rates and crime, and reforming welfare. Democrats focused on preserving the tenets of the New Deal, protecting the poor, and expanding civil rights. The uncertainty both parties face in forming new goals helps fuel what Mehlman sees as alarming levels of partisanship in Washington. “This ought to be a period of incredible optimism for America,” he adds. “Both parties in their modern form have accomplished what they set out to accomplish. Now they’re fighting, yet there are a lot of new things they have to accomplish.”
1 | 2 | 3 | continued >
