Mark Green - Bright, Infinite Future: A Generational Memoir on the Progressive Rise

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To Ava & Otis

The arc of my public lifeas a progressive advocate, politician, lawyer, and authorroughly tracks the political arc of the country from the 1960s to 2016. So I write this generational memoir not because Im the but rather a boomer whos traveled this personal and political journey, working with some of the greatest liberals and against some the most talented conservatives of this era. Ill occasionally provide profiles of these forces of nature who have moved the needle of history.

The core premise of Bright, Infinite Future is that theres a rising progressive majority and era in this country due to a combination of demographic and social trends and a Republican lurch from the mainstream to the extreme.

Political memoirs, however, often disappoint because public figures have an inner press secretary, to use Jonathan Haidts metaphor in The Righteous Mind, warning them away from risky, vote-losing, donor-offending Bulworthian candor. But to keep my wife and sanity, Im now done with electoral politics and free to be candid about politicians of all persuasionsand myself.

Especially myself. Ive made law and made mistakes and Ive lost to enough major figuresMichael Bloomberg, Chuck Schumer, Andrew Cuomo, and Bill de Blasiothat I began to think that someone couldnt rise in New York politics unless they got by me first. But I learned valuable if expensive lessons about what its like and what it takes to succeed in the public arena, lessons I want to share in Bright, Infinite Future.

Books about contentious issues in this very polarized time can easily slip into two genres: either false symmetry passing for thoughtfulness well, both sides do it or the partisan hysteria seen in big-selling books with titles that are synonyms for traitor followed by an exclamation mark. Im aiming instead for a blend of memoir and manifestocall it evidence-based advocacy.

People born before 1945 or after 1961 may plausibly wonder about my linkage of the Sixties to today. Arrgh, yet more boomer hubris? Well, every affinity group seeks some uniqueness to give their lives special meaning as part of a larger whole. In my view, the Sixties constitutes the Consequential Generation. Its pretty remarkable how the creativity and values of that decadeliberally stretching from the sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, and John F. Kennedys defeat of Richard Nixon in 1960 to Nixons resignation in August 1974have gestated so many positive ideas that are becoming public policy. These are now echoing in the 2016 national election and will for years to come. True, short of H. G. Wells, theres no going back to Che T-shirts, but Earth Day connects to the 2015 Paris Climate Summit just as Dr. King connects to #BlackLivesMatter.

In my view, if liberal values were a stock, now is the time to buy. Read on to find out why.

Mark Green

Progress is our most important product.

Ronald Reagan, for GE, 1950s

History is like waves lapping at a cliff. For decades nothing happens and then the cliff collapses.

French historian Henry See

Id like to meet with Mr. Nader, says the spry voice on the phone in June 1972. In the throes of researching Who Runs Congress?, Im awed to be talking with Jeannette Rankin, 92 years old and the first woman ever elected to the United States Congress back in 1916. She explains, I want to meet another believer in democracy, someone who also made the right enemies.

She arrives the following month at the offices of Ralphs Center for Study of Responsive Law at 19th and Q Streets NW, a fading Victorian semi-castle that would soon make way for a gleaming Metro subway stop. Its a warren of cluttered desks and earnest students challenging President Nixon and the 91st Congress on a broad array of consumer, worker, and health issues.

With a cane to steady her, Rankin marches to a first-floor conference room. Ralph lifts his lanky six-foot-four frame and greets her with an enthusiastic Finally! She smiles broadly, waves off coffee, and, with zero small talk, launches into a mini monologue on how to fix Congressmore women in Congress, far less military spending, voting reform. Though lacking the broad-rimmed hat that made her the Bella of the House nearly six decades before, Rankin wears a cheap wig thats dancing on her head every time she throws it back to make a point emphatically, which is often.

We chat about her unique history as a young pacifist who got elected from Montana in time to be among 49 voting against our entry into World War IHell, Wilson ran on the slogan he kept us out of war. She was then voted out on a wave of patriotism in 1918 but, after subsequent decades of work as a suffragette and pacifist, got reelected in 1940... in time to be the only member voting against our entry into World War II! She did notcould not due to her notorietyseek reelection in 1942.

Today she probes Ralph about his ability to recruit so many young activists to do research and organizing. At ten my father said to me, Ralph, today did you learn how to believe or did you learn how to think? Im really interested in whether students ask the right questions, whether they can think. Each seems impressed with the others unusual route to this place and time. When I ask how she was able to persevere for so many years up against near-unanimous public sentiment and such transcendent figures as Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, she stares at me for two beats, then explains: Son, you cant lose if you never give upyou cant lose if you never give up.

Jeannette Rankin died ten months later. In the Congressional Hall of Statues, where each state gets only two residents to venerate, Montana chose this pioneer whom history has judged to be a far greater advocate than politician.

Im an advocate and politician who loves biographies and dancing; would rather make policy than money; debated Buckley and Buchanan a couple hundred times; advised Hart, both Clintons, and Kerry in their presidential bids; tried to save Air America Radio; spent a third of my life writing books; and suffered the despair of losing to a multi-billionaire in the closest New York City mayoral election in a century.

With that brief, eclectic backstory, Ill be combining the biographical, historical, and political to explain Americas Left-Right tug-of-war over the past five decades.

This current history rests on three cornerstones:

Outside/In. Political change requires independent advocates to fearlessly provide ideas, organizers, and moral clarity to professional politicians who in turn can convert proposals into lawthink King and Kennedy/Johnson on race. That is, it really takes two to tangle first, then tango. Usually, change begins with disruptive outsidersunreasonable men, to use George Bernard Shaws apt phrase.