Here’s a stark contrast:

1. Paul Krugman, “Played for a Sucker,” New York Times, Nov. 16: “On Social Security, as on many other issues, what Washington means by bipartisanship is mainly that everyone should come together to give conservatives what they want. We all wish that American politics weren’t so bitter and partisan. But if you try to find common ground where none exists–which is the case for many issues today–you end up being played for a fool. And that’s what has just happened to Mr. Obama.”

2. Harry C. Boyte: “Our Passive Society Needs Some New Nehemiahs,” Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune, Nov. 16: “In today’s America, as we have come to look to others — experts, great leaders, celebrities — to save us from our problems, we have similarly become afflicted by civic illness. Our bitter divisions along lines of partisanship, income, race, religion and geography are fed by devaluation of the talents and intelligence of people without credentials, degrees and celebrity status. Our citizenship declines while we are entertained as spectators, pacified as clients and pandered to as customers.

“We need new Nehemiahs who call forth America’s democratic genius of a self-reliant, productive, future-oriented citizenry, leaders who tackle tough issues in a collaborative way and reject the rescuer role. Such leaders would tap the talents of citizens to address public problems on which government is necessary but not sufficient, from climate change to school reform. They would challenge us to create healthy communities, not simply provide access to health care. They would recall that democracy is a way of life, not simply a trip to the ballot box.

“The great leaders in our history — from Abraham Lincoln to Jane Addams, Franklin Roosevelt to Martin Luther King Jr. — have always called upon citizens to address common challenges, and in the process helped the nation remember its democratic soul.”

I’m with my friend Harry, and here are four reasons. First, Krugman treats the Republican Party and conservatism as monolithic, imagining that every member of those large conglomerations plays from the same disreputable script. (Cf. all these comments on Think Progress.) In fact, Republicans and conservatives are quite diverse, and some are very discontented with Karl Rove’s style of politics.

Second, Krugman’s argument is ad hominem. Instead of saying, “Senator Obama, you are wrong about Social Security; it’s not really in crisis,” Krugman says, “Senator Obama, you are a sucker for trying to meet conservatives half way.” Maybe compromise isn’t even Obama’s intent. He may actually believe that Social Security is in crisis. (Many people do.) When we stop giving arguments and reasons and start calling people “suckers,” it’s very hard to move forward.

Third, it’s going to be impossible to solve any of our real problems unless someone builds a broad constituency. The ruling coalition must be wide enough to embrace some conservatives and some Republicans. Fifty-one percent is enough to knock things down (if you are ruthless), but it is not enough to build things up.

Finally, Krugman’s political strategy presumes that liberal leaders can win elections and then implement smart policies that will make the country better. I think this is a long-term strategic error. No policies can solve problems without public support and public participation. In order for liberalism to fly, Americans are going to have to feel genuine connections to public institutions. They will not feel truly connected to government until (a) it seems to reflect some consensus and some civility and (b) it addresses their cultural discontents, which are deep and valid. The majority of Americans have genuine worries about a coarse culture, and unless liberal leaders can address their concerns in an inclusive, bridge-building way, liberalism is doomed.

It appears that the next presidential campaign will offer several strong but contrasting flavors of populism:

Sam Brownback asserts that Americans’ traditional, popular, moral values are threatened by the “violence, obscenity, and indecency in today’s media,” by “activist judges,” by “foreign suppliers” of oil, and by the federal government. I happen to disagree with almost all his positions, but the Senator does share the majority’s view of several issues, such as prayer in schools.

John Edwards makes the case that we all belong to one economic community, one commonwealth, and inherit our national prosperity not because of what we do as individuals but because of others’ sacrifices, past and present. “We are only strong because our people work hard.” “We are made strong by our longshoremen and autoworkers, our computer programmers and janitors, and disrespect to any of them is disrespect to the values that allowed for America’s greatness in the first place.” Since we belong to one commonwealth, gross disparities in opportunities are unfair.

I used to believe that this position–while morally valid–was a political dead end. Although we had left many Americans in poverty, more than half of all voters were affluent enough that they didn’t need government except for purposes that are always well funded, such as roads and suburban schools. “Redistribution” meant “welfare,” and the welfare system that had developed since the 1930s was justifiably unpopular. Finally, Americans’ were strongly committed to markets and mistrustful of governments.

But several factors make Edwards’ version of populism more promising today. Federal welfare has been deeply cut; the remaining safety-net programs serve large majorities of Americans. The issue has shifted from income inequalities (which Americans tend to tolerate) to huge inequalities in risk. Most people must finance their own retirements while some get huge golden parachutes, exemplifying a new kind of unfairness. Meanwhile, the latest generation of super-rich people has behaved very badly: Paris Hilton is a potent symbol. Not least, John Edwards is a skillful persuader, a litigator who knows how to read a jury and marshal effective evidence and arguments.

Barack Obama so far represents a different strain of populism. He says that we American citizens should play a central role in defining and solving our common problems. We are in a “serious mood, we’re in a sober mood,” and we are ready to work together. “We are going to re-engage in our democracy in a way that we haven’t done for some time, …. we are going to take hold of our collective lives together and reassert our values and our ideals on our politics. … All of us have a stake in this government, all of us have responsibilities, all of us have to step up to the plate.”

For Senator Brownback, the way to assert our values is to pass laws that he favors and that have majority support. For John Edwards, “the great moral imperatives of our time” are to fight poverty and get out of Iraq. For Senator Obama, asserting our values means deliberating together as a diverse population and developing ideas that may be new and unexpected.

In philosopher’s terms, this is civic republicanism, and it’s truly different from mainstream recent liberal politics. To make it work, Obama will have to overcome two challenges. First, he will have to develop an answer for grassroots Democratic activists who are furious at Republicans and consider the Bush administration to be our nation’s central problem. Obama believes that both parties are responsible for marginalizing citizens, and what we need are broader public coalitions. The Senator will have to find a way to talk to Democratic primary voters who are not in the mood right now for non-partisanship and cooperation. Second, Obama will have to find a way to respect the voice of American citizens while also saying something concrete about issues such as health care and taxes. He needs to respect the public’s voice but also perform the main duty of a candidate, which is to put ideas on the table.

There is a remarkable gap between Senator Obama’s actual speech in New Hampshire last weekend (click for video) and the endless coverage and commentary that I have read about it. Reporters and bloggers uniformly take the line that Obama presented himself as someone “new”–as a “change”–and New Hampshire Democratic voters liked him for that reason. Supposedly, they saw him as “new” because of his recent arrival in Washington, his relatively young age, his career in grassroots organizing, and even his race and immigrant background, which make him different from all the other contenders–and worlds apart from the incumbent president.

Novelty would be a superficial reason to “swoon” for Obama; that feeling would soon wear off. But reporters really didn’t pay attention to his speech, which is why they don’t grasp the source of his popularity.

Now, listen, I have to confess that there has been a little bit of fuss about me lately. And I have been a little suspicious of it, because I actually come from a background of community organizing and grassroots organizing and mobilization and empowerment, and so–a lot of reporters of late have been asking me, ‘Well, why are you coming to New Hampshire? What does this mean? You’ve got big crowds. Does this definitely mean you’re jumping in? And this and that and the other.’

What I told them during a press event earlier here today, and what I want to say to you–Obviously it’s flattering to get so much attention, although I must say it’s baffling, particularly to my wife. I actually think that the reason I’m getting so much attention right now has less to do with me and more to do with you. I think to some degree I’ve become a shorthand or a symbol or a stand-in, for now, of a spirit that the last election in New Hampshire represented. And it’s a spirit that says we are looking for something new. [applause] …

It’s a spirit that says we are going to re-engage in our democracy in a way that we haven’t done for some time, that we are going to take hold of our collective lives together and reassert our values and our ideals on our politics. And that doesn’t depend on one person. That doesn’t depend on me or the Governor or a congressman or a speaker. It depends on you.

There’s a wonderful saying by Justice Louis Brandeis once, that the most important office in a democracy is the office of citizen. And that, I think, more than anything is what the election here in New Hampshire represented on Nov. 7. And that is the tradition of New Hampshire, not just in presidential primaries but each and every day: the idea that all of us have a stake in this government, all of us have responsibilities, all of us have to step up to the plate, and as a consequence of everybody … doing just that, we had an outstanding election here in New Hampshire. So I’m here to get some tips from you. [Applause] I’m here to soak up some of that energy. [Growing applause.] I’m here to bask in the glow of the great work that you have done. And I want you guys to remember that. You’re the story, not me. Now that’s hard to understand, because that’s not the politics we have seen just lately.

The Senator then talks about his work trying to “rebuild and renew America”–especially low-income America–through grassroots organizing. He connects his own work to American history, which he sees as a series of popular uprisings led by “pastors, organizers, agitators, and troublemakers” who have had the audacity to hope.

In each and every juncture of our history, there has someone who has been willing to say that we can do better. … We can create a country where everybody’s got a shot, where every child can dream. … And I think what’s been happening over these last several months is people have realized that that kind of spirit has been lost over the last decade. [Applause.] It’s not that ordinary people have forgotten how to dream big dreams; they just think that their leadership has forgotten. [Applause] … And so what happened in this election, not just here in New Hampshire but all across the country, is that voters decided to start paying attention. They looked up and they said, ‘We’re in a serious mood, we’re in a sober mood, and we want to know, how can we rekindle that spirit?’

Pundits have ignored everything in the speech after “we are looking for something new.” (You literally can’t find the rest of the speech with a Google search.) Reporters assume that Obama’s words about citizenship were just throat-clearing, or crowd-pleasing rhetoric, or false modesty. Thus they can’t grasp why people love him.

The public is hungry for more opportunities to participate in solving our grievous problems. It is not only the depth of our challenges that upsets us, but also the sense that we have been shut out of civic life and cannot be part of the solution. A candidate who can genuinely empower citizens will ignite powerful enthusiasm–not among all Americans, but among the politically active who dominate primary elections.

Obama has most of the ingredients he needs to run a persuasive “empowerment” campaign–much more so than Al Gore, John Kerry, or Hillary Clinton. As a community organizer, he has the right resume. (His “home town” of Chicago has been the epicenter of grassroots civic work since the time of Jane Addams.) He speaks eloquently and insightfully about civic participation. What he will need is a list of serious policy proposals for civic renewal. By connecting his rhetoric of empowerment to concrete reforms, he may be able to persuade reporters and other elites to take that rhetoric seriously. They will realize that he really means what he says. And then the fire that he has kindled may begin to burn.

… and that’s my obligation, to make sure that I’m willing to partner with the American people on the common-sense, pragamatic, not ideological agenda that they’re hungry for to meet the challenges that we face [Applause.]