The great liberal debate.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: Politics Lost: How American Democracy Was Trivialized by People Who Think You're Stupid - The Good Fight: Why Liberals--and Only Liberals--Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again - Whose Freedom?: The Battle over America's Most Important Idea - Book review

The Good Fight: Why Liberals--and Only Liberals--Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again by Peter Beinart Harper Collins. 208 pages. $25.95.

Whose Freedom? The Battle over America's Most Important Idea by George Lakoff Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 266 pages. $23.00.

Politics Lost: How American Democracy Was Trivialized by People Who Think You're Stupid By Joe Klein Doubleday. 246 pages. $23.95.

As the midterm elections draw near, the debate over how to win back the government and recapture the hearts and minds of voters is heating up. A glut of political books takes up the questions: How did conservatives manage to conquer American political culture and occupy all three branches of government? How can the Democrats fight back? What new opportunities and old pitfalls must activists, citizens, and politicians consider if they are ever going to forge a progressive political future?

The most ambitious of the current crop of commentaries on these themes is The Good Fight, by Peter Beinart, the former editor of The New Republic. Although I disagree with Beinart's deep admiration for Democratic centrism and anti-Communism, I found myself intrigued by what he had to say.

Unlike some of his New Republic colleagues, Beinart manages to critique the activist left without being dismissive or snide. His thoughtful, considerate style makes his analysis both nuanced and palatable. While flawed, his book raises important points about the fragmented nature of politics on the left and makes some good suggestions for broad, unifying themes.

The book is a historical analysis of where he says liberalism went wrong--from Henry Wallace and the Communist Party members who supported him to Michael Moore and those on the left who blamed American imperialism for 9/11.

Just as Wallace and American communists did not take Stalin's repression or the Soviet threat seriously in the lead-up to the Cold War, Beinart argues, many on the anti-imperialist left do not appreciate the threat posed by radical, jihadist Islamic terrorists today. His example of the latter: "A December 2001 cartoon in The Nation imagined America on the couch, describing its powerful desire to kill the people responsible for 9/11. 'You cannot face your real problem,' explained the fictional therapist. 'Your real problem is simply the way that millions and millions of people around the world feel about you' because 'you kill people who are poor and desperate.' In other words, America's...