When Wesley Clark was runnign for President, my colleague and sometime co-blogger Andy Sabl read his book and offered what I thought was the best bumper-sticker version of Clark’s platform: “a liberalism of national greatness.” This was of course a play on the “conservatism of national greatness” Bill Kristol tried to invent for John McCain.
The idea was to package (some) liberal ideas as stemming from, and contributing to, a patriotic commitment to keeping the United States powerful, wealthy, and admired. If we don’t do what needs to be done on health care and education, we’ll fall behind China.
Clark turned out not to be the successful bearer of that idea, but we heard it loud and clear tonight: an unabashedly flag-waving liberalism. I still think it’s a political winner.
