Ideas Matter

America is a country of immense wealth, blessed with rich natural resources and a diverse, energetic people. Yet the conservative domination of our politics over the past twenty-five years has burdened us with staggering challenges of our own making.The next president must address the fallout from a lost war and the worst foreign policy debacle in our history; accelerating climate change of catastrophic consequence; a global economic and military posture that we can no longer afford; the shredding of the corporate social compact; Gilded Age inequality; the worst corporate crime wave in memory; a democracy suborned by cronies and cash, and a costly investment deficit--from overcrowded and aged schools to collapsing bridges and sewers.Yet in a time of bitter partisan division, dissent from the conservative consensus of the last quarter century has been remarkably limited. No leading presidential contender challenges America's unsustainable global strategy. No contender dissents from a military budget that now equals that spent by the rest of the world combined. And the issues that matter most to middle-class America--secure lifetime jobs, with health care, paid vacations, and pensions--receive scant attention on the campaign trail.In Ideas Matter , Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation , and Robert L. Borosage lay out a compelling description of the failure of the conservative era, and create the foundation of a new America.