Two textures.(Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Battle for the Nation's Future)(Book Review)

Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Battle for the Nation's Future, by Michael Barone (Crown, 192 pp., $22)

PICK your adjective. He is the brilliant Michael Barone. The encyclopedic Michael Barone. The unparalleled Michael Barone. Every other year, Barone co-authors The Almanac of American Politics, a bible for political junkies and journalists on deadline who need to know something about Kentucky's Fifth congressional district and know it fast. Barone doesn't just write the Almanac; he seemingly memorizes it. Being around him is to be in a constant state of saying, "Gee, Michael, I didn't know that."

Barone writes a political column for U.S. News & World Report, in which he analyzes contemporary political and social trends, and has also written a substantial work of history, Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan. The new book Hard America, Soft America combines a little of both, as Barone takes a theme he has worked out in his columns--the opposition of two cultural and operational styles, which he at first called (borrowing from The Economist magazine) "crunchy" and "soggy"--and applies it to 20th-century American history.

At the outset, Barone remarks on a puzzle: Immature and irresponsible American 18-year-olds are often transformed into the most competent people on earth by the time they are 30, especially if they happen to be in the military. "How do I explain this phenomenon?" Barone writes. "Because from ages six to eighteen Americans live mostly in what I call Soft America--the parts of our country where there is little competition and accountability. But from ages eighteen to thirty Americans live mostly in Hard America--the parts of American life subject to competition and accountability."

He traces the competing fortunes of these two tendencies over the past hundred years. The first part of the 20th century witnessed much Softening. The rise of progressive education, emphasizing social and emotional development over academic rigor, put the teaching of our children in a fuzzy focus. The economic and social legislation of the New Deal provided new cushions from the hard knocks of the free market, while Big Business and Big Labor devalued innovation and accountability in favor of the values of the organization. "America at mid-century," Barone writes, "was a far Softer country than it had been in 1900. Security, a word seldom heard and a concept that seemed unrealistic in 1900, became a watchword."

Mid-century saw mixed trends. The GI Bill and mortgage programs were Hard in their orientation, giving benefits to recipients who did something in return and promoting educational attainment and ownership. The panic over Sputnik led to the Hardening of math and science standards in schools. But it was in the resulting extraordinary burst of educational excellence--SATscores peaked around 1963--that a Baby Boomer elite was forged that took America's Softening as one of its chief ambitions.

Welfare and crime policy began to turn definitively Soft in the 1960s, as the advent of affirmative action undermined merit and progressive education again began to dominate in the schools. Barone finds the cause of the Softening of the 1960s in the shock and guilt over the realization that blacks had been denied their civil rights. "Compensating for such injustice meant Softening many parts of American life," he writes. "This Softening was the response not just of a liberal elite but of the great bulk of the American people, who were determined to make up for the unfair and evil things that ...