On November 28, 1990, the entire world could see Margaret Thatcher crying. The Iron Lady of British politics, who for over a decade had been whipping her domestic and foreign opponents into line, was now standing in tears in front of 10 Downing Street for the very last time. After more than 11 years as the British Prime Minister she was leaving politics forever. The impact she had on it can be seen to this day.

How did it happen that the first woman in British history to run a government also became the longest-serving Prime Minister in the twentieth century? Political genius – say her supporters. The unique confluence of lucky circumstances – reply her opponents. Both groups have strong arguments to support their claims.

Gravediggers on strike and a tragicomic war

When in 1979 she took over as the Prime Minister, Great Britain was the “sick man of Europe.” At the end of 1978, still under the Labour Party government, strikes broke out one after another starting what would later be known as the “winter of discontent.” Blackouts became a part of everyday life, garbage littered the streets and in Liverpool even gravediggers refused to do their job. Inflation and unemployment soared. The Conservative Party campaign slogan – “Labour is not working” – aptly reflected the public mood. Thatcher won decisively but was it her own strength that secured victory or just the weakness or her opponents?

When a year after her government was formed the economy only got worse, Mrs. Thatcher – despite a growing pressure from her own party – refused to change the course and carried on with even larger spending cuts and even faster privatization of public wealth. Her popularity plummeted and the conservatives would probably have lost the next election if it had not been for a stroke of luck brilliantly played out by the Prime Minister. On April 2, 1982, Argentine attacked the Falkland Islands – tiny British archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean. Hardly anybody expected a military response but Thatcher accused Argentinian military junta of violating British sovereignty and – again defying her colleagues and even president Ronald Reagan – sent 40,000 British soldiers to recapture the islands and free their 2000 inhabitants. The victory in this tragicomic war made many Britons once again proud of their country and boosted Prime Minister’s popularity. Again, the question arises – what was the major cause behind Thatcher’s decision? Idealism, great ability to catch social mood or pure luck?

The war on miners, bombs in Brighton and the starving Irish

Luck smiled on Thatcher during her first term in office at least one more time. It was at that time the British started to extract large oil resources discovered around the Scottish North Sea coast not long before. The revenues it brought not only helped to patch the budget but also made British economy less coal dependent and consequently weakened the position of miners. Thatcher noticed this shift in the balance of power. At the turn of 1984 and 1985 she challenged the powerful coal miners unions and finally broke their resistance.

In her fight with the miners Thatcher was helped by yet another lucky but at the same time tragic event. On October 12, 1984, at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, in which the Conservative Party held its annual conference, a bomb was detonated by the IRA. Thatcher not only survived the attack, but just a few hours later delivered her speech as planned. The assassination attempt was the result of Thatcher’s tough policy on the IRA three years earlier when the Irish separatists detained in prison went on hunger strike. The Prime Minister refused to meet their demands even when 10 strikers starved themselves to death. Her tenacity once again won her sympathy of many Britons tired of the ongoing struggles with Irish separatists.

Despite all that, in the next elections in 1987 Conservatives would have once again faced a difficult struggle if it had not been for a little bit of help from…the Labour Party. After the defeat in 1979 British left suffered a major split. A group of secessionists left Labour to establish the Social Democratic Party which soon later formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Consequently, instead of uniting against Thatcher, the British left-wing electorate became dramatically divided, thus burying its chances to change the government. Was the new center-left formation doomed to failure from the beginning or was it Thatcher that brought it down? Opponents and supporters of the Prime Minister cannot agree on that matter up to this day.

Fulfilled promises?

Not surprisingly there is also no consensus as to whether Thatcher managed to fulfill promises she made. Did Britain become “great” once again? Her supporters reply in the positive and point out the leverage Britain enjoyed at the global scene at that time. Opponents argue these influences were largely illusory and were largely the result of Ronald Reagan’s personal affinity for Thatcher. While Britons were lured to believe they were once again an equal partner for the U.S, they were not.

Has Thatcher managed to fix the British economy? There is no agreement either. The influence trade unions had on British politics in the 1970s was significant and out of control. Thatcher, rather than to renegotiate the relations between the state and the unions preferred to destroy the latter. At the same time, by liberalizing the markets (including financial markets) she let another genie out of the bottle that soon beyond the control of the British political class. That is why the current financial crisis had such a disastrous impact on British economy. Five years after Lehman Brothers collapsed, British GDP continues to shrink and the austerity measures introduced by the current Conservative government (and to large extent modeled on Thatcherism) have not brought positive results.

Has therefore Margaret Thatcher restored the “greatness” of Great Britain? Even if that was the case, she is also responsible for its loss soon afterwards as Britain once again flounders.

Łukasz Pawłowski is a managing editor at ‘Kultura Liberalna’ and a PhD candidate at the Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw.

Accused of being an optimist once again last year, I was sure that Barack Obama would be re-elected and that this potentially had great importance. As the election contest unfolded, it seemed to me that Romney and the other Republican candidates made little sense and that a broad part of the American electorate understood this.  A major societal transformation was ongoing and Obama gave it political voice: on the role of government, American identity, immigration, social justice and a broad array of human rights issues. Thus, I think the re-election has broad and deep significance, and I conclude the year, therefore, thinking that we are seeing the end of the Reagan Revolution and the continuation of Obama’s.

But, of course, I realize that my reading is a specific one, and partisan at that. My friends on the left are not as sure as I am that Obama really presents an alternative. From their point of view, he just puts a pretty face on the domination of global capitalism and American hegemonic military power. I have to admit that I view such criticism with amusement. It takes two forms. The criticism is either so far a field, so marginal, that it is irrelevant, leftist sectarianism, which is cut off from the population at large, confined to small enclaves in lower Manhattan (where I work and have most of my intellectual discussions) and the upper west side, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Austin, Texas, Berkley, California, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Brooklyn and the like. Or there is the happy possibility that the critiques of Obama and the Democrats engage popular concerns and push responsible political leaders to be true to their professed ideals. I have seen signs of both of these tendencies, significantly in the Occupy movement. I hope the leftist critics of Obama pressure him to do the right thing. Marriage equality is an important case study.

I think the criticism of Obama from the right is much more threatening. If conservative critics of Obama don’t take seriously the significance of the election results, they are not only doomed to failure, they may take the country down with them, evident today as we are purportedly falling off the fiscal cliff.

Michael Corey in his response to my post on the Obama revolution exemplifies a significant problem.

“President Obama waged a very successful campaign; however, there is a darker side to it. One of the major reasons he was successful was his ability to destroy Romney’s reputation with innuendo and misinformation. President Obama also adroitly avoided dealing with major policy issues concerned with the longer term viability of a number of programs. President Obama is likely to get his way on tax rate increases and many other tax issues without giving up anything because he is more than willing to drive over the fiscal cliff, and then introduce his own legislation next year. It probably will work, but will have numerous unwanted negative consequences. When elephants dance, the grass gets trampled.”

I think Corey is mistaken about the elections, and though this is good willed, it is serious. To propose that Obama won by vilifying a good man, Governor Romney, is to ignore the significant principled differences between the two Presidential candidates and their parties. Obama emphasized economic recovery and a Keynsian approach to government spending. He proposed to address the problems of the cost of Medicare by working to control our medical care costs, more in line with costs and benefits in other countries that have significantly sounder public health. Obamacare is his solution, though his conservative opponents don’t take this seriously. If conservatives don’t face this, if they don’t take seriously that new alternatives to market fundamentalism are being presented, they can continue to work to make this country ungovernable, their apparent strategy for the past four years. I think they will suffer as a result, but so will everyone else in the States and, given our power, way beyond our borders.

But the situation is far from hopeless. There are numerous signs of hope. I am impressed by posts on Deliberately Considered by our contributors over the year as they reveal grounds for hope here and abroad.

Ironically, the Republicans might address their problems by moving ahead, while looking backwards.

And then there is the hope founded in the work of extraordinary individuals, who can and do make a difference, such as Vaclav Havel. See tributes here, here and here.

There is the engaged art of resistance, as it criticizes the intolerable, as in the case of Pussy Riot in Russia, makes visible distant suffering through artistic exploration in far flung places such as Afghanistan, and illuminates alternatives in Detroit, a central stage of the collapse of industrial capitalism.

And new media present possibilities of new forms of public deliberation and action, see this and this for example.

The possibility of action should work against cynicism, which is often confused for criticism, but actually is a form of resignation.

But I am not an myopic optimist. Suffering is knitted into the social condition, something I hope to investigate more systematically with my colleague Iddo Tavory in the coming year, starting with two posts in the coming week. Indeed as proof that I am well aware that naïve optimism about the future is mistaken, I view the last post of 2012 as one of the most important. The death of innocent victims through the force of arms has enduring effects. Richard Alba underscores this through personal reflection and professional insight. We all then suffer whether the violence is the result of accident, domestic or state violence, through the widespread arming of American citizens or the use of drones apparently far from home. Let’s hope next year is a better one.

I am now in Wroclaw, Poland, having just arrived from Paris – at home abroad, to borrow from one of my favorite New York Times columnist of the past, Anthony Lewis. I find following American politics and culture from afar particularly illuminating. I enjoy being in the middle of things at home, sometimes in the middle of politics, and then moving out for a while and looking back. Special insights result. With regular teaching and lecturing in Europe, I have been doing this for over thirty years. Being away has offered special critical insights, even as it has sometimes obscured important political and cultural details.

This was most dramatically the case when I lived in Communist Poland in 1973-4, when I was doing my research on independent politics in culture there, while the Watergate scandal raged in the U.S. I got my news from old issues of The New Yorker (given to me by a junior officer at the American Embassy in Warsaw) and from the Voice of America. Access to western news was severely restricted. The New Yorker supply was a prize, which I passed on to my Polish friends. Voice of America came in with some irregularity thanks to jamming by the Polish authorities. Yet, even when it got through, it was not reliable. Part of the Watergate revelations was that VOA was heavily censored back then. Long articles by Elizabeth Drew provided my basic information and perspective. I read accurate updates, a bit delayed. Because of distance and time I didn’t really appreciate how severe the constitutional crisis of that time was.

But on the other hand, by living in a truly undemocratic society, I came to appreciate the way democratic norms and values persisted in American life even in a crisis. There was Nixon, but there was also the Watergate hearings and the eventual forced resignation of the President. The way “high crimes and misdemeanors,” democratic ideals, propaganda, skepticism and cynicism interacted and defined the American experience helped this then young New Leftist to learn about political complexity and its importance.

This lesson was the starting point for my much later study of American political culture, The Cynical Society. I carry its perspective as I view the American political scene now, as revealed in recent posts on Chief Justice Roberts, Mitt Romney and his party and in  a review post concerning the politics of emotions, political developments in Middle East and in Peru and the crazy politics of the U.S. that for a moment took Donald Trump seriously. These and much more of my observations of the American political scene are informed by the sensibility of thinking about home while abroad.

I am planning to publish a series of at home abroad posts, written while I am on the road and looking back at American political and cultural developments. A report about the relationship between Rupert Murdock and his Media Empire and Mitt Romney his campaign stimulated me to do this. The report was formulated around the theme of election prospects. How Murdoch’s reticence about Romney may affect the chances of the Republican ticket. The main idea: anyone but Romney has replaced anyone but Obama, but without much enthusiasm.

But reading the report in Europe reveals something else: the fundamental fissure of the right with short but also highly significant long-term impact, demonstrating a crisis on the right that will mirror the crisis on the left of the recent past. Politics based on an ethics of ultimate ends will destroy the politics based upon the ethics of responsibility in the language of Max Weber. In everyday language, the politics based on tea party sensibility will isolate and undermine conservative politics and the effectiveness of conservative social movements, even though they have been highly effective in frustrating the progress of the first term of the Obama administration.

For Murdoch and company, including the editor of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, Paul Gigot. Romney is not sufficiently and clearly resolute in his political positions. He moves from right to far right as the immediate political winds blow. He confuses business management with political principle and leadership. For the general public this presents the question of who Romney really is. Is he the right wing ideologue who denounces Obamacare, would be tougher on China, more supportive of the extreme right in Israel, defends traditional marriage, works against “the gay agenda,” would build high fences to keep illegals out and urge self deportation for those who are here, or is he the pragmatic conservative who developed “Romneycare,” seeks expansion of American exports, be understanding of the complexities of immigration policy, follow compassionate conservative policies, foreign and domestic. “Who is the real Romney?” is the question for the electorate, especially for the independent undecided (a group that bewilders me). But for resolute conservatives the question has already been answered even as Romney desperately seeks their approval and support. He is not one of them.

FDR pushed the center left. He succeeded in this because of the crisis of the Great Depression and because the answers he proposed for the crisis made sense to the public and seemed to improve their lives. Ronald Reagan moved the center right. His  rugged individualism performance and expression of anti-government rhetoric made sense to the American public (to my dismay) and appeared to improve the lives of the middle class. These successes had to do with the leadership qualities of FDR and Reagan, but as well, were a consequence of the simple fact that their opposition made no sense. They didn’t provide cogent alternatives.

Romney and conservative Republicans more generally were for Obamacare until they were against it. They were against the corrupting effects of big money in politics, for conservation and environmental standards, for science, for understanding of modern economics, all, until they were against them. They challenge common sense.

A shift in political culture is evident on the horizon.  Obama’s task has been to move the center left, as I have argued here and in my book, Reinventing Political Culture. During his first term he has met concerted resistance. But as Murdoch expresses his dismay with Romney, the resistance is weakening. The prospects for Obama’s re-election are good, as are the prospects of a successful second term. Deep trends are more apparent when one looks back at home when one is abroad. This is how it looks to me as I begin teaching my course in Wroclaw on “The New “New Social Movements.” More to soon follow.

Republican ideological excess and disintegration were in clear view in Iowa. New Hampshire suggested that this would likely lead to a weakened Romney candidacy. Now, the South Carolina results raise doubts about Romney’s inevitability. This was widely discussed yesterday among media pundits of various political stripes. But I think that more importantly the results highlight the sad state of the political culture of the right. They also enrich my judgment of how the general election will look.

The competing candidates represented disintegrating components of the right. Santorum is the value conservative, appealing to the working class, what remains of the Reagan Democrats. Ron Paul is the libertarian anti-statist, as the purist appealing especially to the young. Romney is the capitalist, the Republican of big business, once identified as moderate or even liberal (Romney’s father), now identified unsteadily as conservative. And Newt Gingrich is the Republican of resentment, more expressive of anger than of a clear reasoned position.

Gingrich, the demagogue, prevailed. He not so obliquely is the candidate of racist attack, as he rails against Obama as “the food stamp president.” He is the anti-elitist, denouncing the liberal media, and the Washington and New York establishments, proclaiming himself to be “the Reagan populist conservative.” Yet, Reagan created his coalition through the force of his positive personality, while Gingrich, in South Carolina, put together his primary victory with his personal negativity.

In response to my last post on the Republican primary season, Michael Corey challenged me, and Deliberately Considered readers, to take seriously Romney’s speech after he won the New Hampshire primary, to understand what Romney was presenting as the alternative to Obama’s policies. I think he misunderstood me. I recognize that Romney is presenting alternatives, as are Paul and Santorum. I welcome posts and responses explaining and supporting these positions. Wall Street, libertarian and value conservatives do have positive, but largely incompatible views. I judged, though, that the only thing that holds the Republicans together now is the emotional rejection of Obama. This was confirmed in South Carolina in the Gingrich victory.

I doubt Gingrich will be the Republican nominee, but he will have a huge effect on the 2012 general election, nonetheless. If he is the candidate, we will observe the power and limits of the grandiose, of the ideological, of the demagogic. If he is not the candidate, Romney, Rick Santorum, or perhaps someone not yet in the race, perhaps even as Gary Alan Fine hopes chosen in a brokered convention, will have to pay tribute to the demagogue and the forces he represents. And I am convinced the results are likely to be defeat for the Republicans. The election will be between fear and the common sense, and I am convinced that common sense will prevail. Call me an optimist.

It’s déjà vu all over again, a nursery rhyme with a political twist.

“The Republican Party sat on the wall. The Republican Party had a great fall. All the Party horses and all the Party men couldn’t put the Party back together again.”

Last night in the Iowa caucuses, the Reagan revolution died before our eyes, and no one seems to be noticing. The fundamental components of the Republican Party, forged together by Ronald Reagan in1980, are no longer part of a whole, ripped apart by the Tea Party and its unintended consequences. The only thing that may keep the party going is hatred of Barack Obama.

“Reaganism” was never a coherent position. It involved tensions that were unified by the power of Reagan’s sunny televisual personality.

In 1991, in The Cynical Society, I observed:

“The ‘conservative mood’ was not a … natural creation. It was constructed … by Reagan himself…his package brought together a new combination of symbols and policies…Fetal rights, a balanced-budget amendment, advanced nuclear armaments, tax and social-welfare cuts, and anti-communism do not necessarily combine. Reagan combined them.

As the satirical columnist, Russell Baker glibly put it, some supported Reagan so that he could be Reagan (the ideologues – this was the well-known refrain of the New Right), others supported him so that he could be the Gipper (the nice guy) he portrayed in an old Hollywood football film. But both sorts of supporters, who were fundamentally in conflict, created the new conservative mood. They constituted the Reagan mandate. Reagan did not represent a diverse constituency. He created it as the political majority.”

Neo-conservatives concerned then about the Communist threat, now are concerned with Islamofascism. Christian moralists, libertarians and corporate conservatives conflict on many issues. Reagan minimized this through his media presentation of self in political life.

The coalition persisted through the one term presidency of Reagan’s vice president, George H. W. Bush and his son’s Presidency, George W., who also used a down home personality to win a contested election and then fear as the basis of his re-election. But now the grand Reagan coalition of the Grand Old Party is falling apart. The Tea Party has radicalized Republican rhetoric, and atomized its political positions, making the coalition impossible.

The tepid front-runner status of Romney, combined with the persistent strength of “not Romney,” is a clear indication of the present state of affairs. Yesterday, Romney couldn’t break through his glass ceiling, only 25% of the vote. The religious right coalesced around Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul revealed his libertarian power. Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry lost because of their substantial political weaknesses, while Newt Gingrich, the object of relentless attacks, promised to attack in turn in New Hampshire. There is serious contestation, with foundational disagreements. The thing that holds these disparate politicians together is a common rejection of Barack Obama, which has dark undertones, strikingly different from the lightness of Reagan’s personality.

The talking heads have noted the likely practical result: there will be a longer primary season that might have been. It may take some time for Romney to seal the deal, though he still will seal it. The election will be between Romney and Obama, with the vaunted enthusiasm for the right greatly diminished. Romney lacks both the clear convictions and the personality that Reagan had to keep the coalition together. Paul may run as a third party candidate. True believers, Christian conservatives along with libertarians, will probably continue to doubt Romney’s conservative bona fides. And there are just not that many neo-conservatives and corporate conservatives. The Republicans are falling apart.

Barbara Ehrenreich posted a witty note on her Facebook page yesterday that went viral:

“In a race between a white supremacist, an advocate of child labor, a couple of raving homophobes and an empty suit, there can be no “winner,” so please don’t bother trying to wake me with the news.”

I think Ehrenreich needs to wake up. The Republican Party is one of the two parties in this institutionalized system, with a distinguished past. Its twists and turns, its rise and fall, will determine what is possible in the United States, as well as what is impossible. This has been quite clear since the election of President Obama. Imagine where we would be if he had a loyal opposition. And it will continue to be true if Obama wins yet again, which I think is likely.

My conclusion: the Republicans are at the brink of disarray. They could conceivably prevail in the November elections, but if they do, there would be a contradictory mandate, Reaganism beyond Reagan, with fear and hatred holding it together. More likely, after the Iowa caucuses, will be the re-election of President Obama, with a disorganized opposition permitting him to operate more freely. That, along with a social movement pushing him forward, making “change we can believe in” likely. But then again,  maybe I am being a bit too optimistic.

In our dour moment in which citizens of all stripes are taking to the streets, the plazas, and the parks, we see accusing placards, but no persuasive manifestos. As sociologist William Gamson has pointed out, the first step is to demonstrate an “injustice frame” as a precursor to action. Point taken, but it is a start.

Despite their manifold and manifest differences, the polyester Tea Party and the scruffy Occupy Wall Street protests have at least this in common: palpable anger and resentment. We feel at the mercy of distant puppet masters, and elites in pinstripes and in gowns have much to answer for.

Neither the Partiers nor the Occupiers are wrong to recognize the sway of elites, even if they are not sufficiently aware of those powers that stand behind their own movements: David Koch, the Alliance for Global Justice, and FreedomWorks. Anti-elites are the playthings of the powerful.

Yet, despite their backers, both the Partiers and the Occupiers are solidly 99%’ers. Both radicals of the left and upstarts of the right think that there is not so much difference between the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration. The oil establishment and the financial services establishment could share breakfast of caviar and champagne, discussing whether their interests are better served by this president or the last one. Peasants with pitchforks are on no guest lists, whether they dress in denim or dacron. Despite partisan bickering, it is easy to feel that on the basic issues of security and capital the gap between competing establishments is small. I am struck by how little fundamental restructuring, hope and change has brought. The same powers will control health care, energy development, and financial services.

The fatal illusion of the Tea Party Movement is that America could have a smaller government, without programs cut, and more freedom, by allowing those with control to have less oversight. The Tea Partiers treasure the idea of a stripped down government, but what they call for is a government that provides largess without controlling that largess. A sincere Tea Party would be talking about slashing safety nets and insuring that small businesses can compete against corporations that, in effect, operate as governments. The Tea Party supports in fact a conservative movement whose desires are sure to permit few of its dreamy members to enter that one-percent. (At least the collegiate corner of Occupy Wall Street movement has a few budding oligarchs in their midst). The grievances are real, but blurred, and the solution of freezing government spending at past levels is dishonest in its unwillingness to make tough choices about programs.

The Occupy Wall Street collective also has its illusions. Are they socialists, naïfs, the distraught, or simply leeches? Whichever it is, they too smell rotten fish. In order to establish a movement – a congregation of collegiate radicals, union members, and impoverished minorities – these occupiers of tiny bits of public space drew a cartoonish enemy: the super wealthy fat cat, erasing the class fractions of Barbra Streisand, David Koch, Glenn Beck, Oprah, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet. And they are right in that each, despite varied political positions, demands social stability, governed by those wise oligarchs that they prefer.

But something essential is missing. It is what George H. W. Bush ineptly, if memorably, called the “vision thing.” I have observed a South Carolina Tea Party rally and a Washington OWS encampment, and in both cases, I was struck by an absence of a call to greatness. Consequential leaders – Kennedy, Reagan, King, Bush in the days after 9/11, and campaigner Obama – have persuaded us that we are a city on a hill, imbued with destiny. Effective movements begin in grievance, but end in achievement. Ultimately, neither group has a vision of America transformed, bathed in golden light. Who speaks for a revived America in which we reconsider our institutions? It is easy to ask for more and cheaper student loans, a safety net for home buyers, banks that can never fail, and Medicare for everyone, all on the cheap. But will this produce a robust nation? Anger is a tonic whose bitter tang is but a jolt. To last, an infusion of communal faith is what matters. The Partiers and the Occupiers taste a jangly, acrid past; what they need is to brew a chamomile future.

The Republicans won. The Democrats lost.  Obama faces a significant challenge to his leadership.  The Tea Party has come to town.  Politics in the Capital are about to become very interesting.   The political scene has changed.  Now we must deliberately consider: what the play will look like, who the actors will be, what will be their roles, how will they play them, and are we in for a comedy or tragedy.  Some initial food for thought using Alexis de Tocqueville as our guide.

Tocqueville in the 1830s described two types of political parties, great political parties and small political parties.  He explained:

“What I call great political parties are those that are attached more to principles than to their consequences; to generalities and not to particular cases; to ideas and not to men.  These parties generally have nobler features, more generous passions, more real convictions, a franker and bolder aspect than others. Particular interests, which always plays the greatest role in political passions, hides more skillfully here under the veil of public interest…

Small parties, on the contrary, are generally without political faith.  As they do not feel themselves elevated and sustained by great objects, their character is stamped with a selfishness that shows openly in each of their acts. They always become heated in a cool way; their language is violent but their course is timid and uncertain.  The means that they employ are miserable, as is the very goal they propose for themselves. Hence it is that when a time of calm follows a violent revolution, great men seem to disappear all at once and souls withdraw into themselves.

Americans have had great parties; today they no longer exist: it has gained much in happiness, but not in morality.” (link)

Tocqueville thought that the fundamental principles of American political life were established in the great debates between the Democratic – Republicans and the Federalists, between Jefferson, Hamilton, et.al, and that once the order was set, politics would be of a more mundane sort about dividing the spoils and pursuing narrow interests, battles between Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum about who would deliver the goods. This is what he thought he saw in Jacksonian America.  He illuminated a contrast in the type of parties in democratic politics, but he missed the principled issues that divided the nation, which ultimately led to a civil war.  Contrary to his expectations the contrast between great and small parties is an ongoing aspect of democratic politics, not a thing of the past.  And it was again in play yesterday.  One of the remarkable aspects of the results last night is how politics, great and small, were both present, in sensible and confused ways, with intriguing practical consequences.

As I indicated yesterday, I think that we are living through a great debate about commonsense, concerning the role of the government in the pursuit of the common good.  It is ironically cast as a debate between two highly successful Republican Presidents, Reagan versus Lincoln, between “government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem” and “government should do for the people what they cannot do better for themselves.”  In Tocqueville’s terms this was an election about this great contrast, and the Republican Party, as the party of Reagan, achieved a great political victory over the Democrats, as the Party of Lincoln.

But clearly many of the people voting were not thinking about such abstract “great” concerns.  They want jobs and an economic recovery, were frustrated by the depth of the economic crisis and weren’t convinced that the programs of the President and the Democrats were effectively addressing their problems.  Deficit reduction sounds good to them, large government bailouts of Wall Street don’t.  But will that lead them to support libertarian positions on Social Security and Medicare, or for that matter repeal of the very desirable benefits of “Obamacare?” Probably not.  And it is beyond me how tax cuts for the very wealthiest and slashing of government programs that benefit the vast majority of the population is either a way of getting out of an economic recession or the road to political popularity.

As the Republicans, led by its Tea Party faction, attack government, as a matter of principle, the small concerns of the American people, those who want practical action to address their very real practical problems, will become disaffected.  But as the small concerns are addressed, those committed to high Tea Party principles will condemn compromise.  It strikes me that there are profound tensions within the Republican Party on these matters, between its identity as a grand and a small political party.  I don’t think the Democrats are so conflicted.  Their ideas about the pragmatic use of the state to address pressing problems permit them to both address small concerns and enact their fundamental principles.  Their challenge is to show that this approach works.  They were unsuccessful at this stage of the deep crisis. It is likely to be more successful as the crisis abates.

In the coming months and years the interplay between grand and small politics will define American politics.  The struggle for each party will be about commonsense, but also about practical everyday concerns.  More about this in my next post.