Nationalists versus Globalists

In his editorial of today's NY Times David Brooks analyzes the change of a paradigm. Left-Write confrontation belongs to the past, today it is about nationalists and globalists. Each orientation is represented in both major political parties of America. Mark Warner, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giulianni are progressive globalists, while Jim Webb or Pat Buchanan, Kevin Phillips and Lou Dobbs are populist nationalists, that's what Brooks says. Topics of the new confrontation: immigrants, relations with China/India, Dubai and the NY harbor, American presence in the Middle East.

Bedfelowships across the two major parties. Populist nationalists are liberal on economics, conservative on values and realist on foreign policy. Progressive globalists are market-oriented on economics, liberal on values and multilateral interventionists in foreign affairs.

Says David Brooks, Of course these alignments won't come about instantaneously. Our political institutions and habits have staying power, and the politics of globalization is lagging far behind the reality of it. But the issues that realigned politics in the 1960's are fading, and issues like immigration, trade and interdependence are rising to the fore. Politics is becoming less about left versus right and more about open versus closed. Or, to put it in starker terms, the populists are getting more populist while the elitists are getting more elitist.