Compete or wither.(Book Review)

Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Battle for the Nation's Future By Michael Barone Crown Forum, 178 pages, $22

Somehow, observes Michael Barone, America produces "incompetent 18-year-olds but remarkably competent 30-year-olds." For decades our young have performed badly on standardized tests and generally seem "unready for adult endeavor." But Americans at 30, by contrast, are "the most competent people in the world." They power the globe's strongest economy, are unmatched in science and technology, and "man the strongest and most agile military the world has ever seen."

What explains the paradox? Barone says young Americans live in "Soft America"--where there is little competition and accountability. But from 18 to 30 they live mostly hi the nation's crucibles of competition, high standards, and accountability. "Soft America coddles." Hard America, in offices and in foxholes, "plays for keeps."

And so Barone, co-author of the Almanac of American Politics, sets out to describe the landscape of Hard and Soft America, bringing the same keenness of vision for which his "Bible" of politics is famous. Calmly and fairly sketching the country's last century, he has written a pithy and convincing brief for conservative politics. He begins in 1900 with the hardships faced by the 90 percent of Americans who didn't even graduate from high school. Those suffering illness, injury, or abandonment could expect no government aid and only spotty private assistance. Life, especially in the cities, was so hard that a quarter of urbanites never married (today the figure is 8 percent).

Still, there was surprisingly little political unrest. Social criticism came mostly from intellectual elites like the so-called Progressives. They achieved some softening of work conditions and relaxed educational standards. The New Deal further softened the economy and, together with World War II, brought about what Barone calls "Big Unit America," dominated by Big Business, Big Government, and Big Labor. The Big Unit economy produced "rigid, pyramidal organizations" that were "full of Soft niches."

Mid-century America was ripe for change. A "Hard private-sector economy" slowly began to overtake "the Softer Big Unit economy." Post-war Los Angeles, for instance, generated one out of every eight new jobs in America, and most of these came thanks to "small operators."

Another critical mid-century development was the civil rights movement. The lives of blacks in the South were, in Barone's terms, hard but not Hard. They faced many injustices, not least being barred from "the rigor of Hard America" and the achievements it inspires. Many whites tried to compensate for this unfairness by softening the criminal justice system, the welfare system, and the schools.