The Son -- and Daughter -- Also Rises

The Son -- and Daughter -- Also Rises

By Andrei Cherny

(Published in Blueprint, September 1, 1998)

Mondale, Cuomo, Ford, Bayh, Kennedy. The names could be the answers to a quiz on "20th Century Political History." But, the politicians who bear these names are very much a part of "Current Events." For the inheritors of those names of Democratic Party titans have also inherited the responsibility of thinking anew about the challenges of a fast-changing world.

Ted Mondale, Andrew Cuomo, Harold Ford, Jr., Evan Bayh and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. Just as their fathers were before them, they are part of a new generation of leaders defining the Democratic Party for their own time. They still share the compassion and overall goals long associated with their party. But they are among the growing ranks of politicians choosing what can at times be very different means to achieve those ends.

It does an obvious disservice to reduce their work to any single aspect of their careers, but if one connects the dots of Mondale's desire to move beyond interest group politics, Cuomo's drive to make government both smaller and better, Ford's bid to build cross-racial coalitions, Bayh's work in replacing the old welfare state, and Townsend's commitment to embrace the entirety of Robert F. Kennedy's legacy, a larger picture emerges: that of a Democratic Party striving to honor its past by living in the present. Without endorsing any of their candidacies, it's fair to say that all five are pointing the way for a rising generation of New Democrats.

The Labors of Mondale: More Than the Sum of The Parts

"Mondale Betrays Labor," blared a 1995 front-page headline of the Minneapolis Labor Review. This apostate Mondale was not Walter, the former Vice President and 1984 presidential nominee, but his son, Ted. As a state senator, his efforts to reform Minnesota's worker compensation program had earned him the enmity of the Minnesota AFL-CIO. But he didn't seem to mind all that much. For he had had a political epiphany. His eyes were opened in 1990 during his first state senate campaign, in the Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park.

"I entered the race," he says, "with the somewhat parochial view that politics is about what political label you wear and what interest groups you have on your side." But knocking on the doors of his would-be constituents convinced him that old-style interest group politics was no longer the path to victory. Says Mondale, "I ended the race understanding that this kind of politics isn't relevant to regular voters. The people in St. Louis Park . . . care about their jobs, their families, and the future of their children."

At the time this is being written, Mondale, now 41, is locked in an uphill battle for the Democratic Party's nomination for governor. Whatever the outcome, Mondale has clearly shown he is willing to promote policies even if organized interest groups oppose them - policies such as an end to social promotion in schools, a reduction in the number of government employees, and a cut-and-invest budget strategy that redirects resources away from special interest spending and toward initiatives benefitting all Minnesotans. As he said in his announcement speech, he is pursuing a politics to "serve people first and not the institutions."

HUD Start: Doing More With Less

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Andrew Cuomo, the 40-year-old son of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, is working hard to turn HUD around by proving that it's possible for government to be both smaller and more effective. He has his work cut out for him - and a huge opportunity. For if any one cabinet department represents the problems of bloated bureaucracies, it is probably HUD - an agency long ridden with corruption, one which gave little oversight to crumbling buildings that often served more as crack houses than as adequate public housing. When it comes to remaking the bureaucracy at HUD, a paraphrase of a song about Cuomo's hometown is appropriate: If it can make it there, it'll make it anywhere.

Expanding on the work of his former boss and predecessor, Henry Cisneros, Andrew Cuomo's approach - focused rigorously on results - strikes out the layers of bloat that, especially in the Information Age, inhibit effective action. For example, over the past five years, the number of employees at HUD has been reduced by more than 40 percent; in the same period the Federal Housing Authority's closing costs for a family home have been cut by $1,200 and the processing time for an FHA loan application has been reduced from as much as five weeks to as little as two minutes.

According to David Osborne, co-author of Reinventing Government, HUD's management reform plan,"represents one of the most ambitious, fundamental, and exciting reinvention plans in the recent history of the federal government." And it seems to be working. This new vision of government does more with less - and gets better results. During the time of Cuomo's leadership at HUD, for example, the number of Americans who are homeowners has risen to an all-time high.

Child Harold's Pilgrimage: The Road to Cross-Racial Politics

"For Democrats to regain our majority, we can't be disinclined to traveling down new paths," says Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. Winding down his first term in Congress, during which he served as president of the freshman class, the 28-year-old Ford is traveling down some new paths himself. If he is able to find his way, he might help renew hope in America's ability to deal with its increasing racial and ethnic diversity.

In April 1996, one month shy of graduation from law school, Harold Ford Jr. announced his candidacy for the Congressional seat his father, Harold Ford, Sr., had held for 11 terms. From the beginning of that campaign, Junior - as his campaign literature called him - knew that if he was to provide real leadership, he would have to offer a different way of doing things. "You can't inherit it," he said. "You've got to go out and earn it." In his victorious 1996 campaign and since, he has gone out and tried to do just that by practicing a politics that breaks down barriers of race and rigid thinking.

He has earned respect from all quarters for work to build coalitions that transcend the color line. And he is pursuing a strategy, he says, "not about protecting the status quo or conventional thinking." In his first term, he voted for the balanced budget, was a vocal proponent of fast track trading authority, and strongly criticized the teaching of Ebonics in public schools. And based on his belief that his generation is increasingly comfortable with private investments, he is exploring Social Security reforms to allow more private retirement savings.

Liberalism at Bayh: Replacing the Welfare State

Replacing the old welfare state with a new approach to government has been key to the success of Evan Bayh, son of former Indiana U.S. Senator Birch Bayh. At 42, the younger Bayh is a former two-term Indiana governor and candidate for U.S. Senate who has avoided the pitfalls that have plagued the left and right. Unlike many liberals, he has not blithely defended old programs for their own sake, and unlike many conservatives, he has not blindly cut all forms of government for the sake of cutting.

As governor, Bayh not only refused to raise taxes; he cut them by more than $2 billion while amassing the largest surplus in the state's history. But his popularity among Hoosiers came not just because he cut government, but because he put government back on the side of middle-class values and Main Street interests. He put more cops on the beat, expanded prison capacity, introduced a HOPE Scholarship-type initiative to help the children of the middle-class get a college education, and increased funding for public schools in every single year of his administration.

His reform of his state's welfare system provides a telling example of his approach. As governor, he led the nation and reduced caseloads to levels unseen since the early 1970s. He achieved this not by abandoning those caught in the old system, but by providing programs to help them help themselves. Through personal responsibility contracts, a dramatic increase in the number of available child-care slots, and a doubling in the collection of overdue child support payments, he promoted the value of work over dependency.

Bayh believes the past 30 years have taught America "that opportunity and responsibility are a two-way street" and he adds,"If you just give without expecting something in return, you create perverse incentives that will prevent opportunity instead of expanding it."

To Seek a Newer World: Back to the Future

Robert F. Kennedy understood that lesson long ago. It is true that many lessons can be learned from the world as it is and as it will be. But for Democrats, there are lessons to be learned, as well, in what once was and what we once wanted to be.

Thirty years after his death, Robert Kennedy is embraced by both sides of the political spectrum as few figures have been since Abraham Lincoln. Conservatives claim him as the precursor to the policies of Ronald Reagan. Liberals use him as a touchstone for their attacks on the New Democratic policies of the Clinton-Gore administration.

Both extremes miss the point. No one knows this better than RFK's daughter, Maryland's Lt. Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. "I think there is a great deal of debate because his was not a simplistic legacy," says the 47-year-old Townsend. "We have to take account of my father's entire legacy."

In her current office, and throughout her career, Townsend has sought to live up to the full implications of that legacy. She promotes her father's brand of muscular progressivism, emulating his "focus on what citizens can do and not just on spending money. He always asked, 'Is this working? Is this consistent with our values?'"

She has concentrated on initiatives that promote basic American values that too many Democrats ignored for too long. As Lieutenant Governor, she has developed the HotSpot Communities Initiative, which targets government resources on the three percent of Maryland communities that account for 50 percent of the state's crime. She has created the nation's first state-level Character Education Office to ensure that public schools instruct children in ethics. And under her leadership, Maryland became the first and only state with a mandatory student service program to promote civic involvement. The principles she says unite these initiatives suggest she is steering away from allowing any orthodox ideology to dominate her thinking. As she says: "Government can work. It cannot work alone. And human beings are capable of greatness."

In many ways, Robert Kennedy was a transitional figure. The growth that he showed over his all too brief life was not just the one described by his biographers - that of the leader who went from an arrogant young man working for Joseph McCarthy to a shaggy-haired prophet marching with Cesar Chavez, from sunning himself with the rich to comforting the poor. His growth was also that of the man who began to question the comfortable assumptions of his time. He went from a leader who criticized the Great Society for not spending enough to someone who looked around and realized that the easy answers were leading us in the wrong direction.

Townsend often refers to the following words of her father, words with resonance in today's polarized debates. "What we need is a better liberalism and a better conservatism," Robert Kennedy said in 1968. "We need a liberalism in its wish to do good, that yet knows the answer to all problems is not spending money. Money can't buy dignity, self-respect, or fellow-feeling between citizens. We need a conservatism, in its wish to preserve the enduring values of the American society, that yet recognizes the urgent need to bring opportunity to all citizens, that is willing to take action to meet the needs of the future. What the new politics is, in the last analysis, is a reaffirmation of the best within the great political traditions of our nation: compassion for those who suffer, determination to right the wrongs in our nation, and a willingness to think and act anew, free from old concepts and false illusions."

As the train carrying Robert Kennedy's body rumbled toward his burial in Washington in 1968, the tracks were lined with Americans paying their last respects. They came to express their sadness for a family that had already suffered so much. They came to ask what might have been. They came because in the midst of the most divisive decade since the Civil War, Robert Kennedy had seemed able to unite Americans across lines of age and color.

But perhaps they came for another reason, as well. Perhaps they came because Robert Kennedy answered their hunger for leaders who would challenge the status quo and offer solutions fit for the future. If so, it's a hunger Americans still have today. A hunger that five children of men who led the Democratic Party just might be able to satisfy.