George Packer’s family history across three generations is the history of an idea: the idea of liberalism and its promise and disappointment in the American story. George Packer’s grandfather was a populist senator from Birmingham, Alabama at the turn of the century, a “Thomas Jefferson Democrat” who championed limited government. His father was a liberal law professor, a secular jew, who got caught up in the McCarthy era backlash and then in the student upheavals of the 1960’s.

George Packer himself is a young novelist and journalist who grew up during the liberal defeat, when Ronald Reagan made the ‘L’ word public enemy number one. George Packer’s search for his own political voice has taken him through the family archives, through a hundred years of American history, then through his own tours of the Peace Corps, soup kitchens and the Promise Keepers march on Washington. The Blood of the Liberals, this hour on the Connection.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)

Guests:

George Packer, author of “Blood of the Liberals”

We interrupt the confessionals with Oprah and the joke-a-thons with Leno and Letterman to bring you 90 minutes of real issues debate tonight between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Though, at this point you wonder: Can straight talk with Jim Lehrer about the solid stuff of presidential management ever be as important as the body-language of Bush’s dark-shirt dressing up to look like Regis Philbin, or Al Gore’s tortured decision not to kiss the queen of our afternoons, Ms. Winfrey?

Bussing turns out to be a main matter in Campaign 2000–not forced school bussing, but whom to kiss and how intimately, for how long? This is the subliminable or surreal campaign which, in peace and prosperity, may have eclipsed the real politics of old. How do you score the emphasis on Laura Bush’s painful pregnancy, Tipper Gore’s grandchild, George W.’s drinking years, Al Gore’s being born again?
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)

Guests:

Camille Paglia, Author of “Sexual Personae”

Christopher Hitchens, columnist for The Nation

Andrew Sullivan, Contributing Editor at The New Republic

Mark Jurkovits, correspondent for the Boston Globe

Voters in Arizona last March took part in a first experiment in cyber democracy. Registered democrats could vote online in the Bradley-Gore primary, and did–in bigger numbers than had taken ballots in 1996. There are problems with dot.com democracy, though. We don’t think of American political life as an operating system, to be upgraded for speed and convenience, or demographic fairness, to be booby-trapped against the risks of electronic fraud and mob rule.

And still, the technophiles are tempting us with a promise to relaunch a direct American democracy online and already there are thousands of web sites out there bidding to reconnect American citizens with their government. Beyond the candidates web pages, you can follow their money online, research their issues, lobby Congress, raise money, push your own issues, organize your own campaign. A guide to Cybercitizenship, this hour on the Connection.
(Hosted by Chistopher Lydon)

Guests:

Christopher Kush, Author of “Cybercitizen”

Can you believe what you read about Russia? Despite the sinking subs, burning TV towers, and subway bombings of recent months, most Western news coverage still pictures Russia wending is slow stoical way toward a market democracy something like ours. All wrong, says the NYU historian Stephen Cohen, who sees a human catastrophe in Russia going almost unnoticed in the Western press.

In the decade since the bad old Soviet Union died, Cohen says, our professional Russia-watchers have committed malpractice. Instead of revealing epidemic poverty, pain, emigration, big dips in life expectancy, dire deficits and a riot of corruption, our media have passed along the Yeltsin myths of shock therapy that works, entrepreneurship and a burgeoning civil society. Cohen names names and indicts the best in journalism: the New York Times on down, for a party-line betrayal of reality.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)

Guests:

Stephen Cohen

author “Failed Crusade: American and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia.” David Filipov

Boston Globe Russia correspondent