Third Way Dispatch

Wall Street is off to its worst January in history. The nation’s biggest mortgage lender is rumored to be nearing bankruptcy. Unemployment is on the rise. Every day seems to bring more bad news about the economy, and Americans’ view of the economy is at its worst since 1992.

Bad economic times are red meat to many progressives, who will be jumping on the chance to talk down the economy still further and trumpet a message of neopopulist pessimism.

Progressives should resist that temptation. We shouldn’t be trying to convince Americans that we’re on the brink of a new Depression, or that the middle-class is teetering on the precipice of poverty. Rather, we should be working to persuade Americans that we understand what it takes to get the economy moving forward in a way that benefits average families.

Our new memo offers our take on the elements of a middle-class economic package that will both provide the economy the short-term boost it needs and put the middle class on solid, long-term footing. We propose:

• Short-term middle class tax cuts to boost consumer spending and restart the housing market;

• Targeted help to families who’ve hit a rough patch through no fault of their own;

• Investment for new investment by businesses, including small businesses, to keep the economy growing;

• Permanent middle-class tax cuts and new policies to create middle-class wealth and help families navigate the new rules of economy; and

• Long-term infrastructure investments in schools, highways and broadband technology.

Our package is not about rescuing the middle class, progressives should be wary of portraying the middle class as victims. Rather, our message should be about re-orienting government policy toward ensuring future middle-class prosperity.

(NOTE: This piece was authored by Third Way’s Senior Policy Fellow for National Security, Jonathan Morgenstein)

Yesterday’s assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the once and future Prime Minister of Pakistan, has thrown this nuclear-armed Muslim country of 165 million people (one of whom is Osama bin Laden) to the edge of –or perhaps over – the brink of chaos. Her loss is a tragedy, not only for the people of Pakistan, but for those everywhere who believe in women’s rights, democracy and the rule of law. And her murder carries important lessons, not only for Pakistan and her neighbors, but for the United States as well.

Today Al Gore went to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, making him the second son of Carthage, Tennessee to bring home that honor (the first was Cordell Hull). What is in the water in Carthage and Hope, Arkansas?

It was a proud day not only for Carthage but for all of us former Gore staffers. While far short of the presidency, the prize he deserved, the Nobel signals Gore’s immense role in offering a global wake-up call on climate change.

With an existential crisis looming for humanity, Third Way is trying to do our part, too. And last week, that effort put me prominently before a sign that said, in a fashionable, repeated graphic: “The Heritage Foundation.”

Now, let’s be clear: the views of the folks at Heritage are antithetical to Third Way’s on virtually everything. And I have no doubt that the feeling is deeply mutual. But in politics, ideological combatants make strong allies, and that’s why Third Way has teamed with The Heritage Foundation to help promote what many are calling “the nuclear renaissance.”

We believe, as we have written before, that progressives must embrace nuclear power, the only major baseload power source that doesn’t emit carbon. Until renewable sources mature, and we should be pushing hard to get there, the US must have more nuclear power if we are to avoid ramping up our reliance on coal and other carbon-producing sources.

We have also said, in a recent Boston Globe oped, that we must find a better way of dealing with nuclear waste, the issue on the table for last week’s panel at Heritage. As the experts there pointed out, it is time for the United States to join Japan, France, and much of the rest of the industrialized world in dealing with our nuclear waste in the same sensible fashion we are dealing with other waste – by recycling it.

Heritage has a webcast of the event here. I hope you’ll check it out.

In 2006, DNC Chairman Howard Dean ordered the Party to spend a bunch of money in Philadelphia. He poured money in so local organizers could put together an effective operation. For this, he was pilloried by folks inside his own party.

The catch is that this wasn’t the City of Brotherly Love – it was Philadelphia, Mississippi.

Back then, Dean was criticized by many in and out of the Democratic Party, for his “50-State Strategy.” He was widely mocked for his focus on party building in deep red states. Why, they asked, was Dean throwing away money by paying people to “wander around Utah and Mississippi and pick their nose?”

Dean believed, as we did, that it was folly for a major party to write off large swaths of the United States, and that the only way to build a national party was to make it truly national.

Bruce Springsteen, who served as the troubadour of post-9/11 America with “The Rising,” has returned with “Magic,” his scathing and eloquent indictment of the Bush years. In “The Long Walk Home,” Springsteen sings:

“You know that flag flying over the courthouse means certain things are set in stone: who we are, what we’ll do, and what we won’t.”

Somebody should play it for Mike Mukasey.

Yesterday, Third Way and a group of national Evangelical leaders held a press conference and announced something audacious and potentially historic – we called for a halt to the culture wars.

We did so with the release of Third Way’s new paper Come Let Us Reason Together: A Fresh Look at Shared Cultural Values Between Evangelicals and Progressives. EJ Dionne devoted his Washington Post column to our paper on Tuesday, A Culture War Treaty, and I discussed it with Christian conservative radio host Paul Edwards on the Paul Edwards Program this week.