The New Republic laments the fall of the old elites and the rise of democractic politics

Franklin Foer writes about C. Boyden Gray in the latest issue of the New Republic. He laments the decline of the old country club republican for a republican politics driven by participatory politics, itself driven by the reforms the weakened the role of the party in favor of more voter participation (you know, democracy) and the politicians who capitalized on voter dissatisfaction with what the elites were producing. I'll write this off to a nostaligia for a kinder, gentler Republican party on the part of democrats in general and the writers of TNR in particular. After all, last week's cover story discussed the current Bush hatred of Jonathan Chait. As a center right Republican I share some identifican with Nelson Rockafeller, and I too can pine for the days of Dems like John Kennedy and Harry S Truman. But, I know that those days were the days of elite party control on the one hand, and a strong consensus nationally produced by the Great Depression and the Second World War. When a generation came of age that had experienced neither of those, the consensus began to collapse. Its collapse was aided by a more participatory politics that gave voice to factions of the parties (and other places) that were not in control of the parties and so had little influence until the reforms that weakened the parties in the 50's and 60's. So, this nostalgia, while pleasing to the center left and the center right, is based on form of elitism we probabaly don't want back, and could never get back if we did want it, and by a consensus produced by 12 years of crisis and war. I don't think we want to pay for a new consensus, either.