Chapter 1 NEW Realities, The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the -Abraham Lincoln n several occasions in our nation's history, special commissions have been appointed by the President to do two things the agencies of the government cannot: First, to step back from the normal tasks of policy making and program planning to take a long-range look at emerging trends and problems and at our ability to respond to them. Second, to reexamine our national priorities. It has been 20 years since the last goals commission was convened by President Eisenhower near the end of his second term. During a time that was strikingly different from today, that commission produced a report entitled Goals for Americans.' To reread that report is to be reminded of how much has changed over the past two decades. Since a large part of our task is to assess the nature and extent of those changes and their implications, it is useful to compare that report, and the circumstances under which it was prepared, with our own. In the late 1950s, widespread concern about the American purpose and our nation's goals was prompted in large part by the launching of the Soviet Sputnik. Writing in September 1959, Walter Lippmann commented that the success of Soviet society can be explained by the fact that it is a "purposeful society" and that "the critical weakness of our society is that for the time being our people do not have the great purposes which they are united in wanting to achieve. . . . We talk about ourselves as if we were a completed society, one which has achieved its purposes and has no further great business to transact." Throughout the fall of 1959, the press devoted considerable attention to the discussion of "national purpose." This was followed early in 1960 by the publication of a series of articles on "The National Purpose" that appeared in both Life magazine and The New York Times. As the Presidential elections approached, the topic was being discussed at the meetings of dozens of national organizations. It was in this context that President Eisenhower named, in February 1960, his Commission on National Goals. In several respects, their mandate was similar to our own. It was to "identify the great issues of the generation and to describe our objectives in these various areas," to "develop a broad outline of coordinated national policies and programs for the next decade," and to "sound a call to greatness to a resolute people." It is interesting to note that this commission which. was formed in response to repeated calls for a re-examination of the national purpose produced a reaffirmation of the nation's longstanding Cold War mission. The commission's report called on Americans to "preserve and enlarge our own liberties, to meet a deadly menace, and to extend the area of freedom throughout the world." In several respects, that report reflects the assurance with which Americans have characteristically faced the future. It exudes a sense of optimism and manifest destiny and-most clearly -the belief that rapid economic growth could be sustained. Throughout the report, the commissioners made an assumption that was quite reasonable at the end of a decade of rapid growth: that more of the same would get us where we wanted to go. By the late 1950s, millions of Americans enjoyed a level of affluence never before achieved by large numbers in any society. The feeling seemed to be that better things were ahead for the country because increasing affluence would lead to a greater sense of well-being. The commissioners who wrote Goals for Americans were optimistic not only about sustained economic prosperity and its effects, but also about what the government might accomplish. Asked to determine what goals should be pursued and how they might be met, they concentrated on what the federal government should do, thus anticipating and providing a rationale for rapid growth in the public sector over the next decade. The events of the next few years following publication of Goals for Americans seemed to bear out its optimism. Despite the trauma of President Kennedy's assassination, the early 1960s were a time of extraordinary selfconfidence about the direction of social progress. America seemed to have the resources-both theoretic and economic-to chart its course and solve its problems. Policy makers applied their Keynesian tools to "fine tune" the economy. Optimism about the American role in the world community led to the declaration of a "Decade of Development" during which U.S. financial and technical assistance might significantly help to alleviate the misery of millions of people in other nations. 2 Harnessing that optimism and self-confidence, President Johnson in the spring of 1964 proposed that America "move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society but upward to the Great Society." The Congress responded to President Johnson's lead with a bold expression of national purpose. Within a year, there were significant legislative attempts to prevent discrimination, to improve educational opportunity, to eradicate poverty, to ensure health care for the elderly, to create jobs for the unemployed, and to clean up the environment. Writing in 1965, Theodore H. White commented on the optimism of that era, when Congress enjoyed its highest level of public approval registered in modern times and the nation seemed to be moving confidently toward its goals: Americans live today on the threshold of the greatest hope in the whole story of the human race, in what may be the opening chapter of the post-industrial era. No capital in the world is more exciting than Washington in our time, more full of fancies and dreams and perplexities. For the first time in civilization, man's mastery over things is sufficient to provide food for all, comfort for all, housing for all, even leisure for all. The question thus arises: What, then, is the purpose of man? How shall he conduct himself at a moment when he is being freed from want, yet freed to ask the tormenting questions of who he is and what he seeks and what his soul needs?? Although this passage accurately anticipated the growing concern for quality-of-life issues, the euphoria and self-confidence that White described seem today very distant indeed. How quickly the events of the next few years would undermine that self-confidence; how quickly the assumptions upon which the Goals for Americans report was based would be eroded. In the two decades since the publication of that report there have been profound changes in American society, including a heightened awareness of the costs of sustained economic growth, and a recognition-in the wake of the Great Society programs-of the limits of governmental initiatives and of the paradoxical results of some of them. In the 1960s, there was a growing sense that, despite the good news suggested by economic indicators, quality of life was not improving as a consequence. By the late 1960s, the debate over changing values was epitomized (and often caricatured) by the counterculture with its insistence on feeling over knowing, its attacks on science, industry, education, and materialism. Members of the counterculture voiced something more than simple dissatisfaction 3 |