In Defense of Government: The Fall and Rise of Public Trust.

This is a book I hope most people in Washington won't read. Jacob Weisberg has written a brisk and convincing account of the shifting fortunes of "government" from Madison to Gingrich, and its argument is eminently reasonable: that a smart, activist government is essential, and that the typical conservative pose ("let's cut everything") and the liberal retort ("don't cut anything" miss the mark. It is a predictable case, and that's not a criticism. Reminding people of first principles is important, as is asking them to give up comfortable caricatures. Weisberg does both, but his title--In Defense of Government--probably dooms the book to become a fresh strawman for the usual suspects to use in reviews, on talk shows, and at think-tank conferences. The Heritage crowd will scoff, the Democratic Leadership Council will cheer: somebody in the ever-shifting Clintonian middle (maybe Bill Clinton himself, on his way to Marine One) will brandish a copy and declare it "thoughtful." And then they'll all quickly move on to something else, secure and unmoved in their own opinions. That's why the best audience for Weisberg's book will be people who don't obsess over politics.

Nothing in the book will come as much of a surprise to close readers of the Monthly, where Weisberg once worked as an intern and where similar points have often been made. As Weisberg puts it, "Conservatives exaggerate the Great Society's failure in order to discredit liberalism's successes; liberals overstate conservative cynicism to gloss over faults of their own." This will strike most people as exactly right, and it is. What can actually be done to create an effective government is always the troubling part.

There's no getting around the fact that most voters don't trust government. This seemed more pronounced, more bloody, just a year ago, after the Republican landslide of 1994. Now, inevitably, a fickle public and press seem to be tacking centerward, correcting for the gleeful, storming-the-gates sense of 1995. But everything is a matter of context, and the Clinton who could run on universal health insurance just four years ago is now offering himself as a stolid protector of the status quo--minus a few programs.

Weisberg, New York magazine's national political columnist, is very good at charting the historical and sociological causes of the current discontent. He points out, rightly, that suspicion of centralized power began not at Fort Sumter but at Philadelphia, and even before; it is our oldest political tradition. Only the crises of the Depression and, perhaps more important, World War 11, accustomed the country to trusting Washington with large problems. This confidence lasted through the fifties, as Truman and Eisenhower built the post-war middle class with the GI Bill, the Cold War defense economy, interstate highways and all the rest. The high-water mark came after JFK's glamorous turn in the White House, when he called on the country to "Let public service be a proud and lively career." In 1964, 76 percent of Americans said they trusted Washington to do what is right "most of the time" or "always." Today 18 percent do. What happened?

Conservatives say Lyndon Johnson happened. Weisberg notes that when Gingrich ran his first (unsuccessful) House race in Georgia in 1974, one of his slogans was "Keep the New Deal but dismantle the Great Society." Dick Armey later elaborated on the point. The Great Society, he says, was "an explosion of well-intentioned but misguided government action that made poverty worse, broke up families, devastated inner cities, and led to a hemorrhage of red ink." Note the theme here: Government tried to help the poor (many of whom were/are black), failed, and terrible, terrible things resulted, including the deficit. The logic is epic, vague, and basically wrong-headed. But effective, for it's the kind of language and imagery that fueled the Republicans' rise to congressional power for the first time in 40 years.

Liberals, of course, disagree. They tend to argue that what undermined public faith in government was not the merits of what Washington did or didn't do but the Republicans' calculated use of race to become the majority party. When Johnson signed the landmark Civil and Voting Rights Acts in 1964 and 1965, according to this view, he turned the Democrats into the party of blacks. This was the origin of Nixon's "Southern Strategy"--an approach Lee Atwater would later hone. By this liberal logic (which is as imprecise and self-serving in its way as the conservative assessment of the Great Society), all government was depicted as a giveaway to unworthy minorities and was therefore suspect. For years now, liberals have pitied themselves for being the victims of what they consider a racist plot.

As always, it seems, both extremes are wrong. Conservatives distort the truth when they argue that all the government's money goes to the undeserving poor; the most popular, and expensive, programs are directed at the middle and upper classes. (And have been for a half-century.) And for liberals to hang the problems with government on the Republicans' use of the race card misses much of the point. The more significant obstacles include irresponsible spending by public officials and selfish public employees' unions that force ever-higher salaries and protect the incompetent.

So what to do? Weisberg proposes a "neoprogressivism," a return to principles about good, limited government made popular by the Progressives in the first decades of the century. There is nothing to quarrel with in his suggestions. Regulate smartly, but know government can't eliminate all risks; kill off unneeded programs; and, intriguingly, "underpromise" on reform and new initiatives in order to rebuild public confidence.

The problem with all of this is that it feels as though we've been here before. Clinton ran on just this sort of talk, and he has basically--with the large exception of health care--followed through. Sure, he could have tried to be tougher on bureaucrats. But every program has its defenders, and there are few so utterly dismal that a good case can't be made for preserving at least some of their functions. The value of this book, then, is to encourage a general habit of mind that eschews extremism, glibness, and cynicism. We want a government that's shrewd, and big-hearted, and elevates our lives by elevating the country.

The easy example for those of us who want to make that point is always the civil rights movement. In a stark and moving moment, the might of Washington did away with clear evil, killing off legalized segregation. Weisberg smartly waited until the close of his book to tell the touching story of the integration of the University of Alabama. Done earlier, he would have opened himself up to charges of liberal sentimentality. Here, it comes off with perfect pitch. There is George Wallace in the schoolhouse door (wearing a network microphone). There is Nicholas Katzenbach, Bobby Kennedy's noble lieutenant, delivering the presidential order. But most important, there is Vivian Malone, the first black student, whose admission would have to be forced by the Alabama National Guard and 3,000 federal troops, going to the cafeteria. There were threats of riot, but Katzenbach escorted Malone over for lunch. She got her tray, and sat down alone. Within 30 seconds, half a dozen white girls had gotten up and gone over to join her--not to mock, but to befriend. "That's the most powerful part of the story," Weisberg concludes, "because it is about a change that good government inspired but could not force." We lack the clarity of those days, but we should never lack the spirit, and the tool of government, to take on the seemingly intractable.