REINVENTING DEMOCRATS.

• Author: Pomper, Stephen
• Position: Review

REINVENTING DEMOCRATS The Politics of Liberalism from Reagan to Clinton

By Kenneth Baer University Press of Kansas, $29.95

Reforming liberalism without abandoning it

KENNETH BAER'S Reinventing Democrats IS A history of the Democratic Leadership Council written with the detached objectivity of a hometown sports columnist covering the local team in a pennant race. The DLC (they're the home team) was formed in the mid-1980s by a group of reform-minded Democrats hoping to resurrect the Party after two crushing defeats by the Reagan juggernaut. Since then, the Party has been transformed from the Party of McGovern--associated with peaceniks and radicals, free-flowing entitlements, and unwieldy bureaucracy--to the Party of Clinton--the man who presided over welfare reform and declared that "the era of big government is over." Baer wants to credit the DLC (and its "New Democrat" followers) for recognizing that the Democrats' McGovern-era politics "repelled the working class and middle class voters who were once at the heart of the [Democratic] coalition" and for having the vision, tenacity, and political smarts to change the Party's course.

Despite Baer's evident sympathies, Reinventing Democrats is a detailed, accessible, and useful account of how an important political institution made friends and influenced people. But the book is a lot less appealing when it goes after the opposition--not the GOP, but the old liberal wing of the Party. Baer tends to hit the liberals in spots where the DLC ought to be a bit sensitive itself. And in suggesting that the Party cast off its liberal heritage, Baer fails to acknowledge the presence in that tradition of certain core values worth retaining.

Game Plan

If you imagine the DLC as a team, then the captain would have to be Al From. A veteran of the Carter administration, From took over the House Democratic Caucus after the 1980 elections with visions of rejuvenating his ailing party. He had some natural allies. As Baer points out, there were at least three strains of Democratic pols who felt the party needed redirection--Southern Democrats like Sen. Sam Nunn and Sen. Lawton Chiles, neoconservatives like Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and neoliberals like Rep. Tim Wirth and Sen. Gary Hart. Although they came to their views from different angles, they wound up agreeing on many of the same positions: They believed that the Democratic Party should be tougher on crime and foreign policy, less spendthrift with entitlements, and less indulgent of entrenched special interests like civil servants and unions. They also thought that moving the party in this direction would "restore its electoral viability" with the middle class that had deserted it for Ronald Reagan.

How did a group of elite politicians and operatives transform a political party?

First, they gave themselves a little bit of distance. After several unsuccessful attempts to influence the party establishment from within, the reformers formed the DLC as an extra-party...