As a philosopher, I always cringe when people say things like "his work is widely interpreted as providing a philosophical foundation for egalitarian liberalism as imperfectly manifested in the modern capitalist welfare state or in a market-oriented social democracy."

This is only true if 'imperfectly manifested' means 'not manifested'. Social democracy is an improvement over the system of natural liberty but on Rawls's view it is NOT JUST. Why? Because it does not fully ameliorate the distribution of arbitrary factors. Instead, we must choose between liberal socialism or property-owning democracy (which most of us don't even understand). Rawls preferred property-owning democracy.

Rawls was SIGNIFICANTLY more radical than the publicly white-washed figure we are acquainted with. Rawls was a great political philosopher, but he was not a hop, skip and a jump away from policy adviser to the Democrats.

It is worth noting that there are few if any cases (I can't think of any) of democratically elected politicians winning on platforms that explicitly and wholly eschewed appeals to economic desert (be it a Marxist, capitalist or social democratic conception of economic desert) and advocated redistribution solely to correct for the arbitrary distribution of natural talents.

But is it actually clear that American politics would look even a little bit changed?

Possibly. Might the ascendance of Rawls set an upper limit to the Overton Window, marked the decline of socialism and communism in acceptable American political discourse? After the mid-70s, it was Rawls & Nozick, and Marcuse and Harrington became marginalized and irrelevant.

Wilkinson has managed to find a meld between Rawls and libertarianism, and I find his work convincing. Pareto optimalism, or the limit to distributionism at the infringment of liberty...Rawls seems much closer to classical liberalism than Christian communitarianism.

It is all Social democracy now, and demcratic socialism is off the table. ToJ may have contributed to that change.

"But is it actually clear that American politics would look even a little bit changed?

Possibly"

Brrrraaaack! Wrong! The correct answer is that American politics would NOT look even a little bit changed.

One problem with the when-were-things-published analysis is that "Justice as Fairness," a seminal essay by Rawls, was published in 1958. A Theory of Justice was by no means the first introduction of the concepts contained in the book, though it's the most comprehensive, well-developed explication, and known to people who otherwise have a limited reservoir of knowledge about political philosophy.

There are, I'm sure, plenty of other points to be made on both sides. But this one is worth keeping in mind, as well, at least if you're going to argue about when things happened.

It is worth noting that there are few if any cases (I can't think of any) of democratically elected politicians winning on platforms that explicitly and wholly eschewed appeals to economic desert

And why not? There used to be, back in the 60s.

We use the Rawlsian discourse all the time. We are bailing out the banks supposedly because letting them fail would hurt the least advantaged, by collapsing the economy. We have to let wingnut Republicans have a seat at the table, in order to have some public reason, or something.

Rawls was a bourgeois liberal, thru and thru. For the academic left, or what passes for it, and what they teach future businessman and politicians and bureacrats in college, Rawls ended the fricking discussion.

Rawls was at least important enough to fit into John Hart Ely's criticism of incorporating political philosophy into judicial decisions: "We like Rawls. You like Nozick. We win, 6-3. Statute invalidated."

Rawls doesn't matter because the "theory" of American liberalism does not matter. Social justice is won by movements of people working and struggling in their own insterests: black folks, workers, women, sexual minorities, the elderly, etc. Abstract theories about what the world should look like are functions of social history, not the engines of history.

Nor is it likely the case that Rawls saw this as his role. Rawls was answering for himself (and put his answers on offer for us) fundamental questions raised by the ad hoc political responses to the economic and political circumstances of his era. That's what he was up to. He did not have a political program, but merely offered a systematic way of addressing some very big questions that very much interested him. End of story.

Shorter Ezra: I bet Rawls didn't even get face time with LBJ or Mike Mansfield during the Great Society. Stupid egg-head professors with all their, you know, IDEAS! Look, I can twitter!

"[T]he flow of impact seems to have gone from politics to philosophy, rather than the other way around."

Perhaps*. But that's not to say "that American politics would [not] look even a little bit changed".

How we interpret and judge past policies can be heavily influenced by how we talk about politics today, which cannot help but be influenced by political philosophy.**

* There's some ambiguity about the level of influence Rawls' 1958 essay "Justice as Fairness" may have had on the the public dialogue surrounding the civil rights movement.

**When we talk about justice in talking politics, can we help but think of Rawls?