Robert Reich is worried.
Americans are working seven weeks more per year, on average, than they did in 1990. The income gap is still widening. Job security is an oxymoron.
As secretary of labor under former president Bill Clinton, Reich is required to worry about such things. But he thinks he may have a solution: More people getting involved in politics-even if they happen to be Republicans.
Reich will elaborate on this premise and relate it to his new book, The Future of Success, in a lecture called, "Who Needs the Democrats?" at 4 p.m. Friday in the Sanford Institute of Public Policy's Fleishman Commons.
Reich argues that the "dizzying pressure" of the new economy has resulted in an overemphasis on money and an underemphasis on family and community. "The book is about many of the things that Republicans these days talk about-family values, community values, charity, personal integrity. Republicans assume that all these things are being undermined by a moral and cultural decline in America," Reich said. "My book makes what I hope is a strong case that the pressures of work in the new economy are far more central."
Reich, a Democrat to the core, sees in this dilemma a new niche for his party. "The Republicans don't have an answer... and the Democratic party has lost its voice and its way," he said. "What we need is a vision and a set of policies to help working people live full lives."
That vision, he says, is not apparent in the current incarnation of the Democratic party. And Reich, an insider, thinks he knows why.
Clinton's presidency catapulted Reich into the public spotlight. As labor secretary, Reich cobbled together some victories, most notably a minimum wage hike, a crackdown on sweatshops and a new emphasis on workplace training programs.
But he also found himself in the unfortunate role of thorn in Clinton's side. As the president moved closer and closer to the center, Reich found himself pulling a reluctant Clinton harder and harder back to the left. The New Yorker revealed this week that Clinton considered Reich one of his least favorite aides-despite the pair's long-standing friendship-because of this political tug-of-war. "If he said it, I'm not surprised. I was a pain in the a--," Reich told The Chronicle. "I made his life completely miserable. But I'd do it again."
In 1994, Reich left the Cabinet frustrated, but he has not disappeared from politics entirely. Last year, he caused a stir by endorsing former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley over then-vice president Al Gore in the Democratic presidential primaries. In The New Republic article he penned in favor of Bradley, he criticized New Democrats' tendencies toward "teensy incremental improvements" and "slick double-talk"-an overt reference to Clinton-Gore centrism.
Not surprisingly, Reich has few kind words for bipartisan centrism, whether in Clinton's White House or in the George W. Bush administration. "Centrism is the opposite of leadership. If you're centrist, you're simply watching the polls, looking for the least common denominator," he said. "Leadership is about moving the public to where they aren't."
Asked if the party has any such leaders now, Reich deadpanned, "Other than me?" But he quickly added that "someone will emerge."
Until then, he will keep pulling the party back to the left.
Reich is Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy at Brandeis University and co-founder and national editor of The American Prospect, a liberal journal of politics and ideas.
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