Editor’s Page

The slow pace of argument in quarterly magazines, the lag between the latest political news and our commentary on it, is sometimes a disadvantage, but not always. This spring it protects us against the sin of early disillusionment. President Barack Obama had barely gone to work when liberals and leftists around the country began expressing their disappointment with his policy proposals and appointees. He is indeed a centrist Democrat, but after eight years of rule from the far right, the center looks like—in fact, it is—an opening to the left. And we are still buoyant about this opening. Given our lead time, it may be that our writers don’t know the bad news. But I think that buoyancy is the politically correct position. It is a time for radical arguments about democracy and equality, and it doesn’t matter that radicalism isn’t (yet) the ruling ideology; it doesn’t matter that we will lose some political battles (but not the way we lost them in the years after 2000). We have a chance to make noise and to be heard. The articles in this issue about unionization, reforming NAFTA, universal health care, and the future of the auto industry are a beginning; there is more to come in the Summer issue.

We haven’t forgotten how to worry, as David Greenberg and Margaret O’Brien Steinfels demonstrate in their discussions of political campaigning and coalition politics. But they also understand that negative campaigns and contention within “big tents” are nor...