Welcome to my blog which is going to be somewhat unusual, as it is written by an active and aspiring if, so far, not all that successful politician who is also a teacher and writer about politics.
In the early days of the Republic, many of our leading politicians were also writers. Or, maybe I should say that, of those who were not generals, all of our leading politicians—Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Adams, Madison—were writers. And they were writers who thought deeply and broadly about politics and advanced a wide range of views, many of which were controversial in their own time and would be even more controversial today.
With a very few exceptions, our politicians are no longer writers. (Articles and blogs may be published under their name, but our politicians rarely write them and, whether they are ghost written or not, they are almost never a source of new or different or inspiring ideas.
There are many reasons for this. One is that political activity and political thought have diverged is that the demands of the political life make it difficult for politicians to have the time and energy to think, let alone write. Another is that the demands of the political life, in a little different sense, make it unappealing to writers. We writers like to explain what we think and why. We like to try out new ideas. But, in a day and age when saying what you really think is, as Michael Kinsley has written, the best definition of a political gaffe, it is very difficult to reconcile the political writer’s urge to reveal his ideas and to challenge conventional views with the politician’s need to conceal what he really thinks and to trim his views to fit the ideas of the day. Even the Founders felt the pull of this dilemma. That is why they wrote artfully and quite often wrote under the assumed names of famous Greeks and Romans. Still, most of the time, this cover did not go very deep and quickly enough the authors the works of Poor Richard, Cato, Publius, and others, became widely known.
How did the Founders get away with it? One answer is that like all who seriously write about politics, they wrote with care. You sometimes have to read between the lines to understand what a politically astute writer means to say to some people but not everyone. Another answer is that the Founders lived in revolutionary times. Revolutionary times allow for—better yet, demand—an openness to new ways of thought.
We don’t live in such times today, not in the city of Philadelphia, nor in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and certainly not in the United States as a whole. But for those of us who want to see a revived liberal / progressive movement arise and eventually gain the power to transform our political life, we may have to start acting as if we do. For the only way in which we are going to build such a movement is by rethinking our ideals, our platform and our strategy.
That is not say that we need to jettison our fundamental ideals; democracy, equality and the priority of the common good over individual good. But it is to say that, much of the time, we don’t really know what it means to be a liberal or progressive today. Once we go beyond our basic ideals, many of us are at a loss. Some of the traditional public policies we defended—the minimum wage and progressive taxation, for example—still look good to us. But, once we get beyond the basics, all sorts of questions arise. Consider, for example, the tax issue. Liberals differ today about what kind, and how much progressive taxation is compatible with creating a growing economy. When it comes to other issues—education, public transit, regional development, health care, restoring the commercial and residential life of our urban centers—liberals and progressive are no longer so confident of the answers we gave ten, twenty, and fifty years ago. We may set off in the same direction as our parents and grandparents did, but we know that we have to find our own path to the destination we share with them.
A revolutionary perspective on things is especially necessary for those of us working to change politics in the city we love, Philadelphia. I am one of the leaders of a new political organization, Neighborhood Networks, that aims to build a new progressive / liberal political movement, one that can transform our political culture while also creating a city that is more vibrant and just than the one we live in today. Those of us leading Neighborhood Networks have committed ourselves to the view that only a grassroots movement can shock our politicians and citizens into waking up to the failure of Philadelphia to govern itself well or reach its potential in so many areas. But we are painfully aware that we have many more questions than answers, about our vision of the city in the future, about what governmental reforms are necessary, about what public policies we should advocate, and about how we should organize ourselves.
So what I am going to try to do in this blog is present some of these questions, suggest some tentative answers and provide a space for others to challenge my answers and present better ones. I am going to write as if there is an audience for serious political writing of the kind for which our Founders wrote. I have write that way, for if there is no such audience—or if those of us who are trying to think our way to a new progressive / liberal movement can’t help create one—then I am afraid we are lost. Liberal / progressive politics won’t regain its foothold among the people until it gains some clarity of vision and purpose.
I will, like other bloggers, comment on the day to day goings on in or region and state and use that as an opportunity to present some new perspectives on our political life. But I will also be telling you about my own political activity in, among other organizations, Neighborhood Networks, the Pennsylvania Transit Coalition, and the Minimum Wage Coalition. (Note the disclaimer at the top of the page, however. I am not speaking officially for these organizations here.) From time to time, I will be writing longer and perhaps not so timely pieces that raise some deeper questions about where we are and should be going. And, I will be writing three other kinds of posts, as well.
First, I am not just going to write about the causes I am involved in but I will also be writing about it is like to be a political activist. And I be posting some excerpts from a memoir I am writing about my campaign for state representative in the 198th district in 2004. I learned an enormous amount about politics in Philadelphia during that campaign and hope others can learn from my experiences (and mistakes). Some of these posts will take you into the dark recesses of Philadelphia politics. Others will just try to give you a feel for what it feels like to be a political candidate.
I have no illusions about my own work being especially interesting. But I do I think that it is important for more people to understand what political activism feels like. Too few of us are politically active these days. Indeed, many people are scared or put off by politics. They either don’t know how to begin to be politically active or fear that they will become corrupted by politics. Even fewer people have any desire to run for office. I hope to write about what political activism and candidacy is like, why I am drawn to it, and why it can be so enjoyable. My hope, of course, is to inspire others to join the fray.
Second, I will be passing along some jokes and, from time to time, will write something that is intended just a little ironically. Politics is too important to take seriously all the time.
And third, I will be posting among the static pages, some articles that I have published from time to time in local papers. I may even include a few of my academic papers, where they have something to do with contemporary politics. (If you really want to read more my academic papers you can find links to them here.
So this blog is an experiment in many ways. We will see if there is an audience open to rethinking liberalism in a way that sometimes challenges our usual ideas. And soon enough we will also see whether someone who writes for such an audience—even if he sometime does so carefully—has any future in politics.