The truth about twenty-somethings - 20-year-olds - Cover Story

Washington Monthly, Jan-Feb, 1995 by Jon Meacham

What unites the two is best thought of as the "Think Globally, Act Locally" view, the inevitable product of the skepticism toward government. Its latest, best articulation comes from Lamar Alexander, the former Tennessee governor who is driving across the country in a prepresidential campaign. "Nearly everyone I have stayed with," says Alexander, "believes the answers are to be found at home--in the shops, living rooms, diners, community centers, churches, synagogues, and classrooms of America, and certainly not in Washington, D.C."

Whatever the surface common sense of Alexander's case, as a Southerner he should know better. Had the answers been left up entirely to towns and states in the fifties and sixties, Jim Crow might never have been taken on; the great civil rights victories resulted from the national community imposing its will on recalcitrant smaller institutions, like the states of Mississippi and Alabama.

So young liberals might be surprised to learn that when they argue that power should lie with grassroots groups (as they did in the debate leading to the creation of Clinton's Ameri-Corps), they are associating themselves with one of the oldest strains of American conservative thought. The assumption of this approach is that the national capital is only good at writing checks. But some of the most successful things Washington has done in this century has been to organize and mobilize young people--in the Civilian Conservation Corps, in the military, in the Peace Corps. Moreover, one reason the public is so skeptical of government is the undeniable failure of many of Johnson's War on Poverty programs--nearly all of which were run by local groups receiving checks, not orders, from the federal government. In an example unearthed by Nicholas Lemann, the Newark, New Jersey, arm of the War on Poverty spent part of its grant funding a play by Leroi Jones depicting Jack Benny's butler, Rochester, murdering a white man.

Still, most people, especially the young, don't know this long history. Aaron Knight, a twentysomething student in the graduate Women's Studies program at George Washington University, is a leader of Washington's Noodle Club, an informal network of young left-leaning activists. Yet even he bristles at the idea of a new CCC. "I see government as a necessary evil, but it doesn't work very well and can't work very well," he says. "I would like to see a lot of local power because that's the best way to make decisions." But not always.

Twentysomethings seem largely unaware that a good historical case can be made that the times America has been at its best--in combating the Depression, winning World War II, and building the great postwar middle class--have been times when the central government has been trusted and carefully tended to. (Note the connection: Common sense suggests that any institution, whether it's the FAA or IBM, requires constant attention to make it work.) And by "government," I don't mean something utopian or weird or even unfamiliar. This is the point that liberals and moderates and conservatives have to understand: Government is how a democracy organizes itself and decides how to deal with large problems, whether it's the education of the young, the safety of our food, or the defense of the nation. Arguing that government can work is not some nutty, lefty reflex to defend broad public enterprises, though to watch the talk shows and listen to successful politicians these days, it certainly seems so.