Robert Putnam

Robert Putnam's editorial in The Boston Globe The rebirth of American civic life is remarkable.

In it, the superhero-tastic author of "Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community" and "Better Together: Restoring the American Community" fires a shot across the Clinton bow - - for what it's worth.

The first 4/5ths of his article is a very concise summation of what is blogged here; about the rise of the politically engaged and civic minded millennial generation.

My only beef with his retelling of the last 7 years of Bush is that he assigns September 11th as the prime motivating factor for the awakening of the new Greatest Generation (as he calls Millennials) - whereas for me, and many of us from the dot org boom, the swift destruction wrought by George Bush is what spurred me to action as Alex UA and I discussed previously.

But really, the closer of his article is amazing. Look at what Putnam says after building up the New Greatest Generation:

Update: I realize I should have given this a little more introduction. This podcast is about a book - Applebee's America - co-authored by a republican strategist, a democratic strategist, and a journalist for the AP. The book tackles the idea of "values consumers" and how corporations like Applebee's have exploited community values to lure in customers and create profit. It then extrapolates how the political parties can use these practices to reach voters. What it's really talking about isn't necessarily values in the Republican "Family Values" sense, but rather the idea that you need to talk to people where and how they live - in the communities and lifestyles in which they move and operate. This podcast looks at the book from the Republican perspective. (Take this description with a grain of salt. It's in the mail, but I've yet to read the book).

Hat tip to Kevin, who managed to send this to me even though he's vacationing in Turkey. Why he's reading GOP.com in Turkey is beyond me . . .

Applebee's America (10 minutes)

This podcast is complementary to Fred's podcast of a Robert Putnam speech (below), as well as a conversation the two of us are having about "Living Liberally," or organizing the progressive movement by lifestyle and community involvement rather than policy issues.

The podcast is sort of a mash-up of Putnam and Malcolm Gladwell. Its interesting to hear the conservative take on these new (or rather very old) social trends and organizing tactics. Especially since, in some quarters - voter datafile integration of "lifestyle" factors and organizing faith communities - they are way ahead of progressives.

An otherwise interesting recent USA Today piece on the Millennial generation unfortunately contained some tired-ass conventional wisdom:

Volunteering is rising, says Robert Putnam, author of the 2000 book Bowling Alone, which is about the breakdown of social connections and the decline of civic engagement. But he says civic involvement has been declining in every generation.

"Everybody who has worked in this field has talked about this increasing youth volunteering," says Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard. "It's not true of all other measures. It's not true for voting, interest in politics or joining organizations."

Barnard, though, says he reads newspapers and magazines and is very interested in politics and in voting.

Though he may be unusual in that respect, researchers would see much about his life as pretty typical of a generation in motion.