Does Albany's 2015 Ending Mean Progressive Window is Closed?

As the legislative season was playing out, a book by Julian Zelizer called "The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress and the Battle for the Great Society," was getting a lot of play. It's an excellent book because it picks apart a prevailing myth of popular history—namely that the 1960s were a decade of irresistible liberal dominance personified by a president who happened to be a brilliant legislative strategist. That combination gave us civil rights and the Great Society. Or so it is told.

What Zelizer demonstrates very convincingly is that, as was the case for Franklin Roosevelt during the New Deal and for Barack Obama after his first election, Johnson enjoyed a very short period during which deeply progressive policies were possible. Even then, none of the victories were cakewalks—they required tough negotiation and painful compromises.