American Pessimism 1968

Portraits of America as the confident, unworried "happy republic" have never been accurate. The dour Puritans who started it all had bleak views about man's limitations as a social creature. The founding fathers, from Jefferson through Adams, committed treason and waged war, and came away with a melancholy understanding that practical idealism involves the sacrifice of some ideals. Pre-Civil-War America was uneasily aware that the yeoman's republic was a vanishing ideal, and postwar America faced industrialization and urbanization with the painfully fresh knowledge that worthy social objectives may require massive suffering. With the late nineteenth century came a populism founded on the suspicion that the mass of Americans were exploited by "interests." Then came the progressives with their political historians proclaiming that the thraldom of the masses was the result of the sly founders who drafted an anti-democratic constitution. Pessimism (to paraphrase current pessimists speaking of violence) is as American as apple pie. The four works considered here present several forms of contemporary pessimism. James L. Sundquist, former adviser to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, voices the "activist" liberal's doubts about the ability of the American government to respond to the majority will.1 Professor Gottfried Dietze bases his conservative pessimism on the belief that the federal government has become dangerously responsive to a dangerously liberal populace.2 The Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders is an exercise in official, "functional" pessimism.3 Journalist Stewart Alsop's book is a model of well-packaged, marketable pessimism.4 Sundquist has written a very fine study of domestic legislation under three presidents from 1952 to 1966. The first part is a brisk, lucid chronicle of the development of policies in seven areas, from civil rights through outdoor environment. There is no book available that can match this one in compass or competence. But what makes it especially important are Sundquist's conclusions. As he sees it, the unfolding federal initiative in domestic affairs up to 1966 was a success story, but a slightly depressing one. The nation's liberal (or "activist") majority