The Liberal Moment

On Obama’s election

“LIBERALISM,” Lionel Trilling wrote, “is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation.” Sadly, much has changed since Trilling wrote this in his 1950 The Liberal Imagination. The past half century has not only seen a decline in liberalism–as both a political and intellectual force–but also the rise of a potent and influential conservative movement that helped launch and sustain the presidencies of Nixon, Reagan, and Bush. We are not living in a liberal age, and the truth of this is only more apparent when one thinks of a moment (Trilling’s) when one was.

But, at last, a seemingly progressive Democrat has won. Americans—young and old, black and white, coastal and middle—turned out in historic numbers to elect our nation’s first African-American president. Barack Obama’s was a campaign of unmitigated hopefulness; and his tremendous success last night was overwhelming not only for its achievements but also its wealth of meaning. It was said in the days leading up to the election that Obama’s victory hinged heavily upon the turnout of young America—and this was certainly our moment. But as was evident from the elated support that took to Brooklyn’s streets late last night it was a moment that belonged to many: African-Americans, immigrants, Chicagoans, progressives, Hawaiians, civil rights activists, community organizers.

Obama may have run on a moderate platform, his proposed policies on energy, taxes, trade, and health care may not stray far from the center-left, but the dynamism of his campaign has endowed our disenchanted nation with the restorative powers of imagination. It is not that we lost our ability of foresight (certainly at Dissent there is no shortage of foreseeing disaster), but that after eight, long years of Bush’s mismanagement, our ability to conceive of a more decent and egalitarian world had atrophied. Obama’s election, with all of its obvious momentum, provides us with a renewed sense of vision: We can now once again think politically, socially, progressively—even radically.

Obama’s presidency will likely not be radical, and we shouldn’t expect immediate or dramatic change. We are a nation caught in the grips of two military quagmires, a faltering financial market, and an impending energy crisis, and as president he will be restricted by the troubles he has inherited. But Obama has animated a liberal impulse in the United States, and four years of his presidency—coupled with two years of a Democratic-majority Congress—means that liberals, leftists, and social democrats alike can once again begin to imagine the lineaments of a progressive politics.

David Marcus is online editor of Dissent. He last wrote on the novelist J.M. Coetzee.