Sometimes the hardest part of politics is articulating exactly why you've picked the position you have. Here are our attempts to pin down what makes us liberals, and them, conservatives: We've toyed with the idea that liberals should walk away from an interest-group approach to politics.And dismissed liberal hawks' positioning of incompetence as the problem with the Iraq War. At the midpoint of the decade, we wondered if hubris would bring down the GOP and speculated on what Democrats needed to do to regain power. The 2008 election turned on the question of who had the most effective theory of change. Now that Republicans are out of power, will they resort to identity politics? And now that Democrats are safely in power, it's time to reconsider who gets to set the agenda. --The Editors(AP Photo/Peter Dejong)PREVIOUSLY: The Decade in Liberalism: Defining the Agenda The Decade in Liberalism: What Makes Us Liberals (and Them Conservatives).
Sometimes the hardest part of politics is articulating exactly why you've picked the position you have. Here are our attempts to pin down what makes us liberals, and them, conservatives: We've toyed with the idea that liberals should walk away from an interest-group approach to politics.And dismissed liberal hawks' positioning of incompetence as the problem with the Iraq War. At the midpoint of the decade, we wondered if hubris would bring down the GOP and speculated on what Democrats needed to do to regain power. The 2008 election turned on the question of who had the most effective theory of change. Now that Republicans are out of power, will they resort to identity politics? And now that Democrats are safely in power, it's time to reconsider who gets to set the agenda. --The Editors(AP Photo/Peter Dejong)PREVIOUSLY: The Decade in Liberalism: Defining the Agenda 
