What Was Gained at the WTO Conference Could Easily Be Lost

If ever there was a time for progressives to feel--in the diplomatic phrase--”guardedly optimistic,” it is now, in the wake of the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization. President Clinton knows, as Al Gore must know, that it is one thing for tiny knots of anarchists to attract front-page pictures, but the real significance of the Seattle turn-out was in the cooperativeness of the disparate groups.

On the other hand: Street spirit does not translate directly into political power. It offers a psychological boost to the hard core, but that could dissipate easily. The demonstrators and their supporters need to translate street energies into the work of politics.

The interest groups that the demonstration represented may not yet understand how badly they need to focus on building public appeal. If they miscalculate from here on in, they might even arouse antagonists to counteraction more than they accomplish desired results.

The joy of stopping traffic remains a puny force unless it translates into the labor of everyday recruiting, projecting a politics that engages the hearts and minds of the majority who fear unbridled corporate power--the real target, albeit frequently misnamed “globalization” or blamed on the largely symbolic WTO. A progressive revival, if that is what is upon us, could easily fail in what ought to be its central task, namely, of helping accomplish a major political realignment like the ones that took place in 1932 (Democratic) and 1968 (Republican).

It is in taking the hard work of everyday party politics seriously that the left needs to take lessons from the right. Republicans--both the pro-business wing and the anti-abortion, culture-warrior “movement conservatives” who between them have dominated the politics of the last 20 years--have never forgotten that their passion would prove hollow unless they transported it to Washington.

By contrast, the fundamental distinction between moral mobilizations and effective politics has been lost on most left activists of the past generation. The main lesson they drew from the 1960s was that they needed to concentrate their activity in distinct interest groups working toward their particular ends.

The spirit of “identity politics” is largely limited to communities defined by single issues (blacks, feminists, gays). It works decently well against university administrations and in some big cities. It wins some respect (as well as scorn) from the population as a whole. But it cannot prevail on the largest economic and political questions, questions of material well-being that require political majorities.

Another central challenge for the budding progressives is America’s national smirk--the prevailing cynicism not only toward the government in power but even toward dissenters, political ideas, politics as a whole. For Americans at large, politics is a marginal pursuit, a sort of hobby, while complacency--sometimes knowing, more often ignorant--has been elevated to taken-for-granted status.

Students mainly don’t pay attention to either the mainstream or the margins. Only a minority read newspapers or pay more than passing attention to even the superficialities of television news. Insofar as their vision extends beyond career prospects, they find popular culture far more interesting than the future of the world. The campus groups organizing against sweatshops have been dedicated but sparse.

Thanks to Seattle, they are on the map now. But movement politics are notoriously evanescent, and it would be absurd to underestimate the obstacles to a progressive revival. Clinton, straddling progressive and conventional Democratic politics, carried the 1992 election with a mere 43% of the popular vote. The Gingrich congressional election of 1994 so thoroughly wrecked the Democrats that even the Clinton victory of 1996 and their few congressional gains of 1998 do not alter large Republican majorities in most state governments and, most important, in the U.S. Senate.

It is the Senate that can most easily demolish progressive hopes: A mere 34 senators suffice to block treaties like the nuclear test ban. Most important, the Republicans devoutly believe in turning out to vote, and in Texas Gov. George W. Bush they have a potential presidential candidate whose ingratiating slickness stands a good chance of sweeping him into the White House.

Seattle gives the scattered progressives their best prospects since the 1960s--if they can take advantage of their surprising WTO eruption and dedicate themselves to tough-minded politics on the long comeback trail.