Both Sides Now

AMERICAN POLITICIANS rarely advance by dint of ideological purity. One campaign and they learn how to compromise; one term, and they learn to praise compromise as the essential virtue of those who would govern themselves. Paul Tsongas, who ten years ago served on the Lowell city council and now sits in the U.S. Senate, is no exception. He has, with all sincerity, traded in his liberal baggage, handsome though it was, for it simply wasn't strong enough. Now he's got an ideological American Tourister ensemble; it may not hold too much, and its aesthetic is function, not beauty, but the damn stuff almost never breaks. "The message of this book," he writes on the second page of The Road From Here, "is the blending of realism and compassion in a manner that does not disrupt society."

By realism, he means in most cases the maxims of America's Dwight Eisenhower: The Soviet Union is an aggressor power whose arms buildup we must match dollar for dollar or face extinction; people will only work if a monetary incentive exists; the realm of international relations must be dominated by conflict. By compassion, he means the axioms of the New Deal and the Vietnam generation: we must give some minimum amount of aid to those who do not compete effectively in our economy; we should avoid full-scale invasions of other nations, especially if we do so in support of corrupt dictators. And by realism blended with compassion, he means just what he implies--in all things moderation. "What we need is less rhetoric and more common sense. Fewer pendulum swings and more steady courses. Less antipathy between the public and private sectors and more cooperation," he writes, and since Tsongas is a Massachusetts Democrat you know who his comments are aimed at. He is out to convince Liberal America that it should abandon confrontation for conciliation, that it should give more ground than it has already ceded.

At times, the argument is powerful. Tsongas discusses eight "realities" of the '80s, and in one case, where he argues less for compromise than for both sides to see a new direction, he is irrefutable. The issue is energy, a Tsongas specialty for at least the last eight years, and when his statistics are flung down on the table there is little to quarrel with. America--and even more the world--is running short of traditional fuels, he says. The long-term development of inexhaustible resources is assured, but in the interim a mix of conservation and dirty energy--coal and nuclear electricity generation--are imperative, he insists. Neither right nor left has met the problem square on; it will take, he says, a realist unswayed by the dogma of free enterprise or the hypnosis of absolutist environmentalism. And perhaps, in this case, he is right; at any rate, he is credible, and his pronuclear argument is sounder than most.

And on one other issue--America's role in the ThirdWorld, where he argues a fairly straight liberal line--he speaks with clarity and a certain passion. Though the former Peace Corps volunteer couches his argument in the language of national security ("Regard foreign aid as a crucial investment," and "Stop giving up nations to the Soviets," he instructs) and not morality, his conclusions are those of a decent, committed American. It is the only time he really throws down the gauntlet at the feet of American conservatives, which may explain why it stands out like a Guardian Angel on a half-empty subway car.

As for the rest of the book, while on one level it makes absolute rational sense, it is bizarrely naive. If Tsongas believes it, and I think he probably does, it is sad. If he is insincere, then watch for a few speaking tours in the New Hampshire region sometime during 1986. What he appeals to is common sense. Surely, he implores, you can all see what your stubborness is doing. Work together and we may not have a utopia, but at least we'll have something. "The world can survive," he intones, "only if we do. It's about time we confronted the future with confidence by adopting solutions that represent neither the past nor blind dogma." Which would be fine if Tsongas had some new solutions; all he can suggest is the blending of the two yearnings. Mix yellow and blue and you get green. It may not be as pleasant to you as yellow or blue, but you can live with green.

THE TROUBLE IS, though, that when you mix black with most anything you still get black. In his sorriest chapter, Tsongas tries to defend the notion that free enterprise in most cases will function humanely, and that tapping its power is the key to recovery from malaise. His example is Lowell, which has been revitalized by the influx of electronic firms. The "public and private sectors of Lowell are now engaged in ardent embrace," he says. And so it may be, but the tax breaks that encouraged investment in Lowell meant the plant didn't go up in some other town. And, by the same token, any concessions to profit that can be made to keep industry in America means someone overseas will go without. Like many embraces more ardent than wise, this passion for industry will likely end up with someone getting screwed; if concessions must be made, they should be made cynically. It's all right to bat one's eyelashes at that rich computer company, but a roll in the hay is no trivial decision.

Flirting with big business carries its share of dangers; much worse, though, is the flirtation with Armageddon that underlines Tsongas's chapter on Russia. On the one hand he paints a picture of the Soviet Union, driven equally by ideological fervor and internal stress, as world conqueror. "Most believe that the Soviets would, as Khruschev claimed, 'bury us' if they were provided with a clear opportunity to do so. They are basically correct." America, by contrast, "is not expansionist today, and we seek no dominance, only stability." (When Tsongas first ran for public office we were embroiled in the Vietnam War. Since that time we have overthrown a government in Chile, and shored up governments in numerous other corners of the globe.) So, in Tsongas's mind, the answer is not only to court Third World nations--a fine idea--but also to spend as much of our gross national product on armaments as the Russians. We should, he says, "be very plain that we are prepared to meet any Soviet arms buildup; that we will respond to their aggressive instinct." Tsongas is in this case a moderate because he only supports nuclear parity, not superiority.

His discussion of foreign policy--with its depressingly familiar realpolitik overtones--illustrates a point about Tsongas and his way of thinking. Say that there is more than one reality, or more than onepossible reality. The search for other realities--the search, for instance, for peaceful ways of dealing with international problems, or even the concrete search for disarmament--is hampered by an agreement on the part of all concerned that certain parameters exist. There can be two realities, or a dozen, though sometimes only one is readily apparent. That's why Jerry Brown is such an attractive and at once disturbing politician--though scatterbrained, he thinks about issues in new terms and with new solutions. It may not make a lot of practical sense when discussing economic problems to say "let's explore outer space." But it is, at least, an idea, and perhaps more palatable than either giving people CETA jobs or awarding them the chance to make minimum and less at McDonalds. Yes, what John Anderson said made sense, more sense than the solutions of either of the two major candidates. But the answers Anderson provided were only the easy, suburban and utterly conventional ones. Tax gasoline, yes, but not a word on solar power satellites or human energy.

Compromising has other problems as well, especially as a political platform. For one, it seems a boring banner under which to rally, and Tsongas does little to shake that feeling. Argument and reason are not enough to sway most of us; we want something to believe in, and the very principles of moderation that have put us in our current fix seem hardly enough. The slow steady path of a barge is less attractive that the swooping of a sailboat; it is worth noting that both vessels eventually reach their destinations, and that barges when they sink go down much more irrevocably.

But more concretely, there is this. To say that liberals should be moderate and conservatives should be moderate and all will be moderate is plausible. But it seems unlikely that very many people, enough people, will ever adopt the mindset Tsongas recommends. And if they don't, then his disciples will be overwhelmed. It's sort of like being a pacifist in the middle of a shooting war; you may have a lot to say that's worth hearing, but no one is likely to notice.

AND ANYWAY, IF one's goal is to compromise compassion with realism, then it would seem wiser to start from the point of defending absolute compassion. There will certainly always be someone around who is eager to defend absolute realism; it seems to be an inbred American intellectual trait. And so the compromise will be reached further toward realism if you start at some reasonable middle ground. Tsongas doesn't seem to like the messiness of negotiation; much better, he says, if both sides just decide beforehand that they'll agree on everything. But what if both sides don't decide that; what if big business just teases and teases, getting as much as it can before agreeing to that passionate embrace?

What Tsongas argues for is sanity. If only people would listen to reason. If only people wouldn't be so pushed and pulled by interest of passion. If only, if only, if only. It's not just that it's unrealistic, it's also that it turns whiny after a bit. Tsongas's justification is that disaster looms--the metaphor he uses throughout the book is a canoeist approaching a waterfall, who must recognize the danger in time and act sensibly by plunging into the chilly water. Our junior senator is the man standing on the shore yelling, "Turn back." It's the fear of fast water; the fear that should the center not hold mere anarchy would be loosed upon the world, and that mere anarchy would be a bitch. It is an appeal to survival instincts, and though that may be sane it is not noble. The question is this: do we want to take the easy way out and preserve the world we know for a few more generations, or do we want to take the plunge, knowing there may be rocks at the bottom of the waterfall but that there may be escape as well. The Jerry Browns of the world are dangerous, but they are also full of promise; every gamble stands a chance. In this book at least, Tsongas seems entirely safe, and altogether unlikely to ever really change much. As the Clash would say, Death or Glory.

As compromises go, Tsongas's is not so bad. He is a liberal in the good sense of the word, the sense that comes from having lived in Ethiopia and in Lowell. Much of what he says is astute, and most of what he says is correct in a public policy sort of way. But in an age like ours, is compromise enough? Must politics forever be the art of the possible?