In his 1972 preconvention speeches, Senator McGovern committed himself both to the traditional ideology and to the new one. He never resolved the contradiction, and after the Democratic Convention consequently lost almost everything. On the one hand, he spoke out for old-time individualism, for the little guy against the big organizations of both government and business. This commitment sprang from his South Dakota background-deeply rooted in rural America-and aroused the enthusiasm of many who also found George Wallace appealing. Ideologically, this stance was profoundly conservative. On the other hand, McGovern also dedicated himself to a new society, one with rigid new communitarian norms for income distribution, inheritance, health care, and the like. In this regard, he was ideologically radical. There was a plain contradiction between his definitions of individual fulfillment, and of the roles of property, competition, and the state. This contradiction did not trouble McGovern before the Democratic Convention, partly because his youthful followers were as insensitive to it as he was. After the convention, however, he encountered the main lines of institutional America and his contradictory positions lost him votes right and left. The big labor organizations, for example, found his rural populism alarming. And many who fancied the old-time ideology regarded his communitarianism as downright dangerous. McGovern's fate provides a valuable lesson for the designers of the new political movement. The contradiction between old and new must be recognized, clarified, and dealt with. Let us imagine what McGovern might have said: "There is no American more aware than I of the glories of our heritage-the freedom and liberty of the individual. We have bled and died to protect his rights and his dignity, and so may it always be. But at the same time we cannot ignore the fact that America today is changing, and changing rapidly. We are a community of large, complex organizations. These are essential to the large, complex tasks we face at home and in the world; they are not going to wither away. Community need requires us to create new definitions of the old values of survival, justice, and self-respect, and so ensure that in the real world of America's institutions those values are perpetuated, not stifled." And so on. McGovern still might not have won but he would certainly have done more good, because he would have clarified instead of having confused the essential issues. 306 THE NEW AMERICAN IDEOLOGY The ability to clarify is a signally important characteristic for the leadership of the new political movement. The radical changes with which it is concerned will, of course, appear threatening to countless structures of the status quo, and gaining allies from among those structures is critically important to the movement's success. Those allies will be the more ready to go along with the movement if they are convinced that the structures of which they are a part are crumbling, that they and their institutions are indeed in the midst of a crisis. Crisis is peculiarly educational in this regard, but only if it is clearly understood. Also, if we are to avoid bloodshed and waste, the sooner the crisis is properly identified, and explained, the sooner it will have the desired effect on the status quo. The trick is to use minimum crisis in order to effect maximum change-the mark of a good political leader, as it is of an effective manager. The leadership of the new movement must fully understand the political functioning of crisis. Further, the clarification of crisis is important in rendering it a unifying rather than a divisive force. For example, violence in black communities in the late 1960's had two effects, one useful and one not so useful. On the positive side, it prodded the white Establishment into a variety of actions which, taken together, spelled change: the Civil Rights Act, Equal Employment Opportunity legislation, and the like. On the negative side, it infuriated and divided large sections of the white community, who solidified their resistance to the blacks' acquisition of more power and to their integration into the white community through such means as school busing. Leadership, black and white, failed to make the crisis clear. Whether or not any new political movement coalesces depends upon the strengths of the aspirations of the whole communityupon the visceral hopes of millions of Americans. We are gravely threatened by despair and the apathy that goes with it. Like the old man in Kafka's The Trial, many have sunk into unhealthy resignation in the face of the massive bureaucratic structures of our political and economic order. They sit patiently waiting for the gates to open and justice to be done. Such passivity is disguised hopelessness. Others are looking for a return to the past, to the comfort and familiarity of the traditional ideology. They, too, are essentially hopeless. The hope upon which the new political movement will be based is best described by Erich Fromm: 307 The State as Planner To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not to become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetimes. . . . Those whose hope is weak settle down for comfort or for violence; those whose hope is strong see and cherish all signs of new life and are ready at every moment to help the birth of that which is ready to be born.* Erich Fromm, The Revolution of Hope (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), p. 9. KENT STATE KENT, OHIO 44242 The Honorable John Glenn Dirksen Office Building OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT (216) 672-2210 March 17, 1976 Dear John: I am delighted to respond to your good letter of March 8 summarizing your provocative symposium on "Our Third Century Directions". In our annual meeting of the international Design Science Institute with Bucky Fuller at the University of Pennsylvania, the other day, he spoke in appreciation of his appearing before your panel 4, and his special appreciation for your initiative and good judgment. As a quasi-futurist myself, I am delighted with the initiative you have taken; the people you assembled and the summary of your results. My remarks can be brief, beyond the statement of the appreciation and the essential endorsement of the substance of the summary. On question 1 I believe too little attention has been given to the philosophical, idealogical and value perspectives in the principal process of goal setting, not merely of government, but also even industry and the private sector. I think it can be shown that these aspects of our long term goals have a more decisive effect particularly on a democratic or open society than anything else. Increasingly, our planning tends to be reduced or restrained by the measurable and manipulative aspects of our mathematical models, which incline us, therefore, toward the primacy on economic planning. Paradoxically, I have always felt since my first visit to the Soviet Union that we represented a curious inversion of the doctrine. We tend to be long on economic planning and short on attention to these other factors, which seems an inversion to our own rhetoric and affirmations of a democractic society; while the Soviet Union in a strange and paradoxical way, and particularly as incident to several of their plans, give much more attention to the philosophical, idealogical and value side Honorable John Glenn Page 2 even in an economy which has a much higher priority on the economic factor in the determination of history. I agree that it is more difficult for government to take a hand in these matters, since they tend to be thought as falling outside the public domain, but I believe until we can at last begin to define ways and procedures for getting consensus in a pluralistic society, for more elemental and binding human and value perspectives, the chance of developing strategies for their implementation will be scattered and run aground almost as badly as they are now. The second point I would want to make, which seems to be generally missing from, not only government's role, but also our present practices, is inadequate attention to planetary and/or international dimensions of planning impinging on our national strategy. When I served as ambassador to the U.N. Economic and Social Council, I found it appalling, if not downright mischievous to discover there was virtually no agency of government, even paradoxically the State Department, prepared to participate creatively in the construction of wider goals in the economic and social field, than purely national. Instead, there were competing interests in Treasury, HEW, State, Defense, Agriculture, Interior, Commerce, et al. narrowly guarding limited national objectives, which were being frustrated, complicated or transformed by international factors, which were rarely taken into account. I believe the recent demise of our influence at the U.N. is a product less of the perversity of the Third World, but more an ineptness of our own outlook and strategy for dealing with them in a common front designed to attack global problems. In this respect, any review of our constitutional powers and the basic considerations which went into that document would illustrate that clearly our federal government not only ought to be attending to the goals which transcend the state, but also in a larger sense should be the principal buffering instrument for orchestrating these national objectives with the international community. I believe that on this front, with rare exceptions, regarding outer space with which you are familiar, and the law of the seas together with some other features of the environment, we have been in a state of almost total neglect. On question 2 I concur in the critical failure of our government to be future-oriented. In the presidential campaign of 1968, I strongly recommended an adjunct to the White House with a small but telling staff designed to interpret and interface with the best research institutes, universities and R & D features of industry for the future planning, and advising the president accordingly with regard to long range implications. required. I still believe it was a sound idea and eminently |