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Today, many on the left prefer to be known as Progressives instead of liberals. At this Bradley Lecture, Sidney M. Milkis, White Burkett Miller Professor of Politics and assistant director for academic programs at the University of Virginia's Miller
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Center of Public Affairs, explains the origins of the Progressive Party, its beliefs, and its importance for American democracy. Led by Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party made the 1912 campaign a passionate contest for the constitutional soul of the American people. Promoting an ambitious program of economic, social, and political reform--"New Nationalism"--that posed profound challenges to constitutional government, Roosevelt and his Progressive supporters provoked an extraordinary debate about the future of the country. Beyond the 1912 election, the Progressive Party's program of social reform and direct democracy has reverberated through American politics, bequeathing a "living" Constitution that subordinates natural rights to mass public opinion and limited constitutional government to national administration. Today, the Progressive idea of politics and government is a critical starting point for still another searching look at the meaning and responsibilities of American democracy.
5:15 p.m.
Registration
5:30
Introduction:
ARTHUR C. BROOKS, AEI
Lecture:
SIDNEY M. MILKIS, Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia
Question and Answer
7:00
Adjournment and Wine and Cheese Reception
American Enterprise Institute
1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-862-5949
E-mail: mallory.johnson@aei.org
Speaker biography
Sidney M. Milkis is the White Burkett Miller Professor in the Department of Politics and assistant director for democracy and governance studies at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. His books include The President and the Parties: The Transformation of the American Party System since the New Deal (Oxford University Press, 1993), Political Parties and Constitutional Government: Remaking American Democracy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), Presidential Greatness (University Press of Kansas, 2000, with Marc Landy), The American Presidency: Origins and Development, 1776–2007 (CQ Press, 2008, with Michael Nelson, 5th ed.), and Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party, and the Transformation of American Democracy (University Press of Kansas, 2009). He is the coeditor of three volumes on twentieth-century political reform: Progressivism and the New Democracy (University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), The New Deal and the Triumph of Liberalism (University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), and The Great Society and the Rights Revolution (forthcoming). His articles on American government and political history have appeared in Political Science Quarterly, Studies in American Political Development, the Journal of Policy History, Perspectives on American Politics, and several edited volumes. In addition to teaching graduate and undergraduate students, he regularly gives public lectures on American politics and participates in programs that teach political history to public school teachers and international scholars.
