Two Kinds of Liberalism

One of the less happy aspects of the Kennedy era was the way it blended politics and fashion, giving rise to a concern with style and mood that had been lacking in earlier American liberalism. As Hollywood and the Jet Set—and many who admired both were too sophisticated to admit it—began to embrace political reform, politics became more than a struggle for measurable results and began to assume a quasi-mystical veneer. Self-definition and self-testing, self-purgation and role-creating are now as much a part of the Left as any political program. Liberals and radicals, having become amateur psychologists of power, are highly adept at explaining the hang-ups behind political failures. (A moratorium should be declared on the use of the term “hang-up.” Too often an originally valid concept is debased into a mere refusal to take other people’s values seriously.)

The psychology of politics has validity and, up to a point, usefulness. But a preoccupation with po...