I was recently reading Michael Lind's
Up From Conservatism, a flawed-but-insightful book on 20th-century politics and the rise of the right.
Lind claims that, essentially, the Democratic Party once had three major components.
- The left-liberals, including progressives, socialists, and the 60's New Left.
- The neoliberals, recently including Bill Clinton, who wanted to bring about a better nation through a kinder, gentler version of Republican economic philosophy.
- The "national liberals", a category Lind creates to hold politicians such as Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Truman, and possibly Eisenhower.
The national liberals often adopted progressive economic measures (such as Social Security), and persued strong-but-not-reckless policies on national defense (winning World War II, but containing Communism). Lind characterizes these politicians as being willing to spend money (and to intervene in markets) to strengthen the nation.
Now, Lind's third category is obviously created to push his own strengthen-the-nation views, and some of his choices of politicians are a bit odd. But there's a grain of truth here.
I've spent the last six months trying to puzzle out Dean's Vermont record. He began by ruthlessly balancing the budget, which was out of control, and supported some neoliberal trade positions (with some pro-union, pro-environment caveats). He overhauled the welfare system. But once the budget was balanced, Dean spent money primarily on healthcare, early childhood intervention, and land conservation. Dean pushed hard for business development in Vermont, perhaps too aggressively at times.
Reading Lind's book, and remembering Dean's enthusiasm for Truman, I tried applying Lind's "national liberal" label to Dean's record. It didn't exactly fit, but it illuminated some connections I hadn't seen before. Perhaps Dean isn't really a neoliberal who slowly discovered his progressive side over 11 years in office--he might instead be a fiscally-tight Lindian "national liberal" who finally reformed existing programs and got some money to spend on high priority improvements to Vermont.
If this is an accurate analysis of Dean, you should expect him to continue his budget-balancing obsession, to be cautious about going to war, and--like Truman--to buy guns and butter when the budget permits.
Dean was a great governor--and well-respected human being--but I'm still trying to puzzle him out politically.