Searching for America's Heart: RFK and the Renewal of Hope

by Peter Edelman

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5 ratings, 4.20 average rating, 2 reviews (more data...)

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published

January 22nd 2001 by Houghton Mifflin

binding

Hardcover, 288 pages

isbn

0395895448 (isbn13: 9780395895443)

description

In the tradition of men like Dennis Thatcher, Peter Edelman may be best known to the public because of his better-known wife: Marian Wright Edelman, p...more

[close] In the tradition of men like Dennis Thatcher, Peter Edelman may be best known to the public because of his better-known wife: Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children's Defense Fund. Yet Edelman himself made headlines in 1996, when he quit his job as an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services to protest President Clinton's signing of a welfare bill. This election-year law, written mainly by Republicans, marked a "fundamental break with the longstanding commitment of the Democratic Party to protect poor children." To make matters worse, in Edelman's view, Clinton quoted the words of Robert F. Kennedy at the signing ceremony. Edelman had worked for RFK, and he was outraged: "President Clinton's misuse of Robert Kennedy's words highlighted a stark difference between the two young leaders. One pressed for social justice whenever he could. The other, originally projecting a commitment to renewing national idealism, ended up governing mainly according to the lowest common denominator." (Edelman did not actually oppose Clinton's reelection: "I have never believed that worse is better. Clinton was always fortunate in the quality of the enemies he attracted.")

Searching for America's Heart is not primarily about the Clinton presidency, but it is about the evolution of American liberalism from RFK's heyday in the 1960s to the prosperity of the 1990s, and Clinton necessarily plays a large role in this story. Edelman intends to ignite what he calls "the new progressivism," which he believes is in keeping with RFK's legacy. He still wants to fight and win the War on Poverty. His views are suited for the left-wing of the Democratic Party: some will consider them a return to the failed past; others will think they offer hope for the future. Whatever the case, Edelman is probably correct when he writes that much is up for grabs right now: "This is a time of particular opportunity. The prosperity of recent years, the ensuing surpluses, the increase in local activism, and the effect of the new welfare law in deflating anger at the poor come together to offer opportunity." The question is, in which direction? Edelman has strong opinions on this matter, and he shares them with force and eloquence in these pages. --John J. Miller [close]

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Catherine rated it:

09/26/08

bookshelves: 2008

Read in September, 2008

recommends it for: everyone

This book is phenomenal. Written by a man who was a Justice Department, Senate, and Campaign Aide to Robert Kennedy, it traces Americans' commitment (or lack of it) to tackling poverty in the United States. It's an indictment. And it's packed with ideas for solutions, and case studies of people who got it right.

Edelman isn't some pundit standing on the outside looking in; neither is he a politician, dependent on the votes of a certain class of voter to get re-elected in the next two, four...more This book is phenomenal. Written by a man who was a Justice Department, Senate, and Campaign Aide to Robert Kennedy, it traces Americans' commitment (or lack of it) to tackling poverty in the United States. It's an indictment. And it's packed with ideas for solutions, and case studies of people who got it right.

Edelman isn't some pundit standing on the outside looking in; neither is he a politician, dependent on the votes of a certain class of voter to get re-elected in the next two, four, or six years. Instead he's a public servant, administrator, and (recently) academic who's been working on these issues for thirty-five years. His wife, Marion Wright Edelman, is President of the Children's Defense Fund. He knows of what he speaks.

And by gosh, he has a lot to say. Somewhere between 1968 and now, the definition of poverty became one of personal failure and societal blame. Americans as a whole lost the stomach for rooting out the causes of poverty, and it was too easy to blame the poor for the things that the rest of the country saw spinning out of control - the economy; violence in the cities; rising crime rates; rising, out-of-wedlock birth rates. One of Edelman's theses is a very personal challenge to everyone reading the book - what were you thinking? (And as I think of this present election, I'm struck by the fact that poverty hasn't been mentioned by either candidate. To some extent, I can understand why - it isn't the poorest citizens buying newspapers, watching CNN, tuning into the debates, or most likely to go to the polls (although I have faith that Obama's campaign, at least, is focused on the rural poor and disenfranchised African Americans in particular). But more than that, I'm the perfect example of the financially stressed middle class; I have a good job, and a solid car, and health insurance, and a nice house, but I live paycheck to paycheck, without savings or retirement funds, or extra money to cover my share of hospital bills. It's too easy, for people like me, focused on making ends meet and hoping not to get ill, to forget that there are roughly fourteen million people living below the poverty line, that most of the adults in that number work, that most of the children in that number are malnourished and destined for schools that are failing, that many of the elderly are living without cool in the summer or heat in the winter months.)

And perhaps what I like best about this book is that Edelman lays out just how much this is everyone's problem, and how the solution will take everyone's effort if it's to come about: government, businesses large and small, churches, schools, community centers, parents, godparents, extended networks of friends and kin, neighbors, sports teams, teachers, health care workers, hospitals, clinics. Where the far left is too eager to lay the responsibility for everything on government, and the far right is too eager to make everything about the ramifications of personal choice, Edelman sees solutions in an amalgam of absolutely everyone's energies. His case studies of what's worked, and where, and which programs are having mixed success, and why, and where people are still below the poverty line, and how many can never hope to get above it, he casts his net widely. And I have never been more convinced that I should put a particular book in the hands of everyone I know. Read this. It's worth it....less

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