Two textures.

Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Battle for the Nation's Future, by Michael Barone (Crown, 192 pp., $22)

PICK your adjective. He is the brilliant Michael Barone. The encyclopedic Michael Barone. The unparalleled Michael Barone. Every other year, Barone co-authors The Almanac of American Politics, a bible for political junkies and journalists on deadline who need to know something about Kentucky's Fifth congressional district and know it fast. Barone doesn't just write the Almanac; he seemingly memorizes it. Being around him is to be in a constant state of saying, "Gee, Michael, I didn't know that."

Barone writes a political column for U.S. News & World Report, in which he analyzes contemporary political and social trends, and has also written a substantial work of history, Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan. The new book Hard America, Soft America combines a little of both, as Barone takes a theme he has worked out in his columns--the opposition of two cultural and operational styles, which he at first called (borrowing from The Economist magazine) "crunchy" and "soggy"--and applies it to 20th-century American history.

At the outset, Barone remarks on a puzzle: Immature and irresponsible American 18-year-olds are often transformed into the most competent people on earth by the time they are 30, especially if they happen to be in the military. "How do I explain this phenomenon?" Barone writes. "Because from ages six to eighteen Americans live mostly in what I call Soft America--the parts of our country where there is little competition and accountability. But from ages eighteen to thirty Americans live mostly in Hard America--the parts of American life subject to competition and accountability."

He traces the competing fortunes of these two tendencies over the past hundred years. The first part of the 20th century witnessed much Softening. The rise of progressive education, emphasizing social and emotional development over academic rigor, put the teaching of our children in a fuzzy focus. The economic and social legislation of the New Deal provided new cushions from the hard knocks of the free market, while Big Business and Big Labor devalued innovation and accountability in favor of the values of the organization. "America at mid-century," Barone writes, "was a far Softer country than it had been in 1900. Security, a word seldom heard and a concept that seemed unrealistic in 1900, became a watchword."

Mid-century saw mixed trends. The GI Bill and mortgage programs were Hard in their orientation, giving benefits to recipients who did something in return and promoting educational attainment and ownership. The panic over Sputnik led to the Hardening of math and science standards in schools. But it was in the resulting extraordinary burst of educational excellence--SATscores peaked around 1963--that a Baby Boomer elite was forged that took America's Softening as one of its chief ambitions.

Welfare and crime policy began to turn definitively Soft in the 1960s, as the advent of affirmative action undermined merit and progressive education again began to dominate in the schools. Barone finds the cause of the Softening of the 1960s in the shock and guilt over the realization that blacks had been denied their civil rights. "Compensating for such injustice meant Softening many parts of American life," he writes. "This Softening was the response not just of a liberal elite but of the great bulk of the American people, who were determined to make up for the unfair and evil things that they had allowed to happen for too long."

After about 30 years, we snapped back again. The tale of American progress since the 1990s is largely the tale of its Hardening. Economically, big firms were dethroned by entrepreneurs who were able to tap into a pool of capital made larger and more easily available by tax cuts and the arrival of 401(k)s. Financial innovators like Michael Milken punished inefficiency and stoked competition. Socially, the 1990s witnessed an extraordinary revival as a thirst for order and accountability beat back crime in the cities, reformed welfare, and (unevenly) imposed standards and accountability on the schools.

"The impulse for this Hardening came not from centralized elites," according to Barone, "but from decentralized ordinary people, and it was resisted, to varying extents, by the professionals in each of these fields. That impulse found expression, sooner or later, in political candidates and public officials. It gained force because ordinary people could see in their daily lives the contrasts between the conditions produced by Soft criminal justice, welfare, and education and the conditions produced by Hard systems."

Barone sees the ongoing battle between Hardness and Softness as so important because "Soft America lives off the productivity, creativity, and competence of Hard America, and we have the luxury of keeping parts of our society Soft only if we keep enough of it Hard." The competition is largely between Softening elites and Hardening popular sentiment. The irony, Barone notes, is that the liberal elite is forged in Hardness--"applying to selective colleges and universities and professional schools, wangling the best jobs in the public and private sectors, attracting the right mentors, producing high-quality work under deadline pressure." It's just that this elite doesn't think that the rest of America is up to the testing of Hardness, and so it is that liberal caring comes with a strong dose of condescension.

Which is misplaced. The age when Americans needed new protections from the free market--Barone identifies it with the world of Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie--is long gone. Most Americans thrive in the flexible world of 21st-century work. According to Barone, levels of workplace dissatisfaction expressed in polls have reached all-time lows. It is exactly in Hard striving and achievement that many people find fulfillment: "For we gain happiness not only from pleasure but also from the performance of duty, and from the honor it provides. Hard America is a happy America."

This is a short, thumbnail book, so Barone can't examine every in-and-out of his argument. He doesn't oppose all Softening, and welcomes the cushions that came earlier in the century. But Softness still may not get all of its due. The rise of psychotherapy and advances in the mental-health profession are Softening, and have lead to much annoying psycho-babble and excuse-making in our culture. But who can doubt that they have served to increase the sum of human happiness? The loosening of sexual mores and the structure of family life, on the other hand, have not so increased human happiness, but where is the constituency for going back to a Harder past?

But these are quibbles. The backdrop to most contemporary political and policy struggles is whether the essential American character, forged in self-reliance, will be preserved or further eroded as we affect a kind of convergence with European social democracy. Barone provides a nifty sketch of the forces behind the struggle and of the stakes. May Hard win.