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A new quarterly, called National Affairs ( http://nationalaffairs.com/ ), has been launched this month and, some, may think it is worth perusing. I have only read one essay entitled Obama and the Policy Approach by William Schambra. It is a long essay but worth the time. From Schambra’s conclusion:
The policy approach begins from the assumption that those old disagreements are fundamentally an error, or a function of a temporary lack of information. It begins, in other words, from the contention that democracy is an illegitimate, or at least a highly inadequate, way to govern a society. This is a deeply anti-political way of thinking, grounded in a gross exaggeration of the capacity of human knowledge and reason. American politics as we have known it appreciates the fact that fallible men and women cannot command the whole — and so must somehow manage the interactions and the tensions among parts. Social science — however sophisticated it might now be — has come nowhere near disproving that premise. Unless it does, social science will always best serve politics by helping to address the particular problems that bedevil society as they arise, rather than treating society itself as one large problem to be solved.
This is not because society is not in fact an intricate web as the early Progressives asserted, but precisely because it is — a web far too intricate to be reliably manipulated. We are not capable of weaving our society anew from fresh whole modern cloth — and so we should instead make the most of the great social garment we have inherited, in its rich if always unkempt splendor, mending what is torn and improving what we can.
Our constitutional system is constructed on this understanding of the limits of reason and of the goals of politics. Every effort to impose the policy approach upon it has so far ended in failure and disappointment, and done much lasting harm. President Obama is now attempting the most ambitious such effort in at least 40 years. He brings considerable talent and charm to the attempt — but the obstacles to its success remain as firm and deeply rooted as ever.
This is not because society is not in fact an intricate web as the early Progressives asserted, but precisely because it is — a web far too intricate to be reliably manipulated. We are not capable of weaving our society anew from fresh whole modern cloth — and so we should instead make the most of the great social garment we have inherited, in its rich if always unkempt splendor, mending what is torn and improving what we can.
Our constitutional system is constructed on this understanding of the limits of reason and of the goals of politics. Every effort to impose the policy approach upon it has so far ended in failure and disappointment, and done much lasting harm. President Obama is now attempting the most ambitious such effort in at least 40 years. He brings considerable talent and charm to the attempt — but the obstacles to its success remain as firm and deeply rooted as ever.
