Democrats and "the Common Good"?

Michael Tomasky, writing in The American Prospect, argues that the Democrats' critiques of Bush policies, and their proposals of their own, need to be organized around the idea of "the common good."  One can surely debate Tomasky's broad claim that Republican-led government has been all about trashing the common good -- although in several places the critique seems undeniable (lobbying corruption and rubber-stamping of business lobbies, creation of a Medicare prescription program that boosts the deficit by deferring to drug company pricing, leaving the compassionate conservatism programs underfunded while emphasizing high-income tax cuts, etc.).  But setting aside that debate, the "common good" is certainly a theme that all of us interested in CST could welcome more of in our politics, no? 

Noam Scheiber in The New Republic likes the idea but points out the two major obstacles to it.  First, under pressure from global competition, "business junked the common good when it became unaffordable and replaced it with rabid libertarianism"; and "[n]ow that business has spent the last 40 years undermining the idea of shared economic interests, it has become much, much harder to sell economic policies to voters in common-good terms."  To make that sell, one would have to be consistent, "making the common good the animating idea behind pretty much everything the Democratic Party does: economics, social policy, foreign policy."

Which raises the second problem, "the biggest sticking point in this whole discussion" (Scheiber) -- that the left has succeeded on cultural issues by appealing to, and further entrenching, libertarian attitudes:

The reason abortion activists favor the language of privacy rights (e.g., "keep the government out of your bedroom,") isn't that they're stuck in a 1960s mindset. It's that this language is really, really useful for preserving access to abortion. . . .

[But] the Democratic Party can't very well project a communitarian image if teams of liberal activists are running around the country insisting on keeping the government out of your bedroom. The dissonance is too loud.

Or take end-of-life issues, like the debate over removing Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. The polling on the matter heavily favored the libertarian position--i.e., keeping the government out of the decision. But, again, if the party's trying to cultivate a more communitarian image, then it probably needs to argue that the government does have a role to play here. . . .

The bottom line is that, when it comes to hot-button cultural issues, it's probably always politically advantageous for Democrats to toe a libertarian line (keep the government out of your personal life). In the case of abortion, it may be the only way to keep the procedure widely available in some parts of the country. The problem is that doing so undercuts the broader common-good patina Tomasky wants to encourage.

And this ultimately takes us back to a problem I think you all have discussed previously, before I joined up.  If Republicans win by saying you get to keep your money, and Democrats win by saying you get to keep your sex, how can a party or political movement win by saying both of these freedoms are limited by the common good?

Tom