Word: essayed
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...tart little spat, begun by party treasurer Robert J. Straus, focussed on Galbraith's acerbic but scarcely radical essay Who Needs the Democrats?, published last June. The essay summarized past Democratic blunders in tightly written prose and scores some good points against economic orthodoxies and bureaucratic style. But the indictment is incomplete. Galbraith fails to uncover the misshapen ideology which unifies all these blunders or suggest the basis of a new public philosophy. Liberal ideology must also come to grips with the paralyzing vision of an anti-Democratic, sullen, and silent majority. Only then can the Democrats construct an imaginative...
HAVING devoted another pamphlet to the subject, Galbraith soft-pedals military spending in this essay. It should be clear, though, that the Democrats can more effectively put this issue across on economic grounds rather than moral ones. To stake a case against militarism on moral arguments might ultimately work but it would entail unnecessary years in the political wilderness. Given the current patience of voters with liberal ethics, the party might wisely reserve appeals to conscience for matters like racial poverty and apartheid. Military spending defeats itself almost from fiscal definition of the problem. It creates enormous budget deficits...
...groups, the Democratic Party normally reflects the social tensions of the country. But in 1968 these tensions revealed a unique loss of confidence in the legitimacy of the coalition. The malaise, this politics of despond, goes beyond the macroeconomic and foreign policy headaches of recent years. By confining his essay to high-blown matters of state, Galbraith misses the depth and immediacy of the new alienation from government...
...could have shifted the burden a little by creating more low and middle income housing for blacks and whites outside the existing corporate boundaries in the wealthier suburbs. (The suburbs vote Republican.) Instead, the Democrats permitted race to poison the party and leave a sordid mess which the Galbraith essay serenely ignores. But if the Democrats are to lead a moral revival in public policy, they had better pay their dues to their black constituents. In the War on Poverty, the Democrats simply tried to subsidize the black population rather than break up an apartheid economy. Housing and schooling still...
...Galbraith essay pokes into the pathology of Democratic hyperbole, bureaucratic caution, and the single-minded concentration on production which have afflicted American life. It is as much a social document as a party document-and besides, it sounds absurd to call the Democrats a party. The essay also shows off Galbraith's elegantly clean prose to great advantage. The hegemony of George Orwell over the modern political pamphlet may cause readers to regret Galbraith's detached sarcasm and lack of personal outrage. But they can admire the personal outrage he provokes in Robert Straus and his Democratic friends...