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ti ons with Japan. Connall y is an imposs ible all y for the uni on s: he and
hi s supporters are committed to breaking their power, as are man y
Republi cans.
The pubhc, not the ignorant and slo thful colossus it is thought to
be, has begun to questi on our institution s. Vi etnam and Wa tergate,
and possibl y even the ideas of those intell ectuals who do not suffer
from ideological lockj aw, h ave h ad their effects. A pervasive and
increasing di strust of the major instituti on s of our society-the corpor–
a tions, government, the media, the p rofessions (not sparing
educa ti on )- can be read in the polling da ta of the past decades. The
data a lso sugges t tha t there is no ri ghtward shift. Indeed, those who
favor an Ameri can version of the welfare sta te and public regul a tion of
the pri vate sector have grown in numbers over the past two decades–
and are actuall y a majority o f the electo ra te.
It
is, however, an electorate
whi ch does not vote: our record of electoral participa tion is far lower
th an that of the o ther industri a l democracies. (Sixty percent voted in
the Kenn edy- Nixon electi on of 1960, fifty-one percent voted in the
Carter-Ford contest of 1976, and thirty-nine percent voted in the last
Congress ional electi on s. T he Itali an turnout in June, by contrast, was
nin ety percent. ) Ho bbes, come ali ve aga in, might think our present
po lity an exemplifi ca tion of his
Bellum omnium contra omnes:
President against Congress, experts again st the public, men against
women, cities again st the suburbs, skill ed wo rkers aga inst the un–
sk illed, uni on labo r aga inst the res t, the declining northeast again st the
ri sing southwes t, black aga in st white, cultural innova tors against
traditi onalists, civil servants against taxpayers, export industry against
domes ti c producers, large corpora tions aga inst small business. Our
common life is fragmented, and th e sep ara te elements of the nation are
unabl e to coalesce in pursuit of a vani shed idea of the public good. A
good man y of our social criti cs (and the press) are reduced to a nagging
moralism. A large number o f intell ectuals have apparentl y not heard
tha t as members o f a " n ew cl ass" they a re supposed to propaga te
oppos ition al vi ews. They limit themselves, instead, to serving those
with money and power. El ectoral abstention , in thi s situa tion , is also a
politi cal act. Is there an alterna tive in sight?
If
an a lt ern a ti ve vi sion of American society is to be developed as
the common denomin a to r o f a new po liti cs, a purely quantita ti ve
calculus will not do .
If
there is to be a new po litics in th e next decade, it
will have to draw upon cultural resources whi ch do no t seem abun–
dantl y ava il able. Perhaps, to be sure, we have a surfeit of confli cting
va lues, no one stru cture o f whi ch can defin e o ur na tion . T he New Deal
