Name the president.

He was enormously popular during his eight years in the White House. In contrast to Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter, he not only entered but also left office riding high in the polls. Yet when he stepped down the experts who make it their business to observe presidents closely did not join in the public adulation. The verdict of the Washington watchers was that he had been a passive participant in his own presidency, remaining disconnected from day-to-day politics and policy.

For the young this can have been only one president—Ronald Reagan. But those whose political memories reach back to the 1950s may recognize that he could also have been the only other two-term president in the post-New Deal era—Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The description of Ike as out of the loop in his own presidency was unquestioned at the time that Eisenhower left office. When Arthur Schlesinger asked a panel of distinguished students of the presidency to rank 31 American presidents in terms of greatness, they placed Eisenhower 21st—a tie with Chester A. Arthur (Schlesinger, 1962).

By selecting Theodore J. Lowi to serve as its President, the American Political Science Association has recognized his extraordinary scholarly and professional contributions. Indeed, Lowi's work has played a singularly important role in the intellectual development of the profession during the past two decades. He was recognized in an American Political Science Association survey as the most significant political scientist of the 1970s, and continues in every study to be the single most frequently cited member of the profession. At the same time, as a truly gifted teacher, Lowi has inspired large numbers of graduate and undergraduate students, many of whom have followed in his professional footsteps.

Lowi was born in Gadsden, Alabama in 1931. Much of his family lived in Marks, Mississippi (a city named for Lowi's great-uncle), and Lowi may be said to have considered—but rejected—Marksism in his youth. He chose, instead, to enter Michigan State University on a music scholarship. At Michigan State, Lowi played the oboe in both the marching band and orchestra before receiving his B.A.

There are multiple housing and community development programs involved in scandal at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The New York Times reports that “H.U.D. officials have said that at least 28 of the department's 48 programs and activities have ‘significant problems’ attributable to fraud, mismanagement, and favoritism” (August 13, 1989).

Among the most significant (in both dollar volume and public visibility) are: Section 8 Moderate Rehabilitation, Urban Development Action Grants, Title X Land Development Mortgage Insurance, Mortgage Coinsurance, sales of HUD-foreclosed properties, Retirement Service Centers, and the Secretary's Discretionary Fund. Dozens of former government officials, many from HUD, some presidential appointees and cabinet members, and Republican Party officials have profited through both consulting fees and by securing subsidies for their housing or development projects through these programs. There are now multiple congressional investigations, led by the House of Representatives Government Operations Sub-Committee on Employment and Housing (Rep. Tom Lantos, Chair) and the Committee on Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs (Rep. Henry Gonzales, Chair). The Times reports that the Department of Justice is pursuing 600 HUD-related cases (August 13, 1989).

The End of Liberalism is an ambitious, engaging, and intellectually provocative work even if it is also occasionally ambiguous, ahistorical, assuming, and utopian. This work attempts to build a theory of the modern American political regime which captures its complexity, inherent contradictions, institutional dilemmas, and self-destructive public philosophy. Since America has yet to abandon the politics and public philosophy of interest group liberalism, Theodore Lowi's (1969 and 1979) polemic remains a useful and now comfortable perch from which to observe the continuing crisis of public authority and shout appropriate epitaphs. There is little doubt that The End of Liberalism continues to stimulate, define, and inform intellectual and political debate in America 20 years after its initial publication.

There are two ironies about The End of Liberalism which are now apparent two decades after its publication. First, if Lowi's work had been completely successful in laying to rest the demon of interest group liberalism and its spiritual compatriots, we might not be assessing the longevity and influence of this work two decades later.

Were one to ask the typical, sophisticated American voter what it is that political scientists do, he or she might respond, “Why, they study politics!” Were one to ask the same of the somewhat more sophisticated congressional or campaign staffer, a likely response would be, “they study politics in the abstract,” accompanied by a faintly condescending smile. Lastly, were one to pose the question to the rather more sophisticated subject of this inquiry, the political science practitioner, among the range of amorphous, if not conflicting, responses one might expect would be the following: “We study the how and why of politics, the exercise of power, the underlying patterns and contexts of political and governmental behavior.” Truth, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder.

The following contributions, from significant scholar/practitioners, are characterized by an abiding realism as to the hazards of crossing the line, of venturing beyond the tower, towards the enchanted forest of politics. They are marked by an awareness of the distinctiveness of the two life worlds, of knowledge and power, heirs to a reflective tradition traceable to the Platonic Epistles, Hume, Weber (above all), the Frankfurt School, and Foucault. They stand in a line of intellectual activism, from Plato's tutelage of Dionysius to the examples of Sartre, Camus, Malraux, or of Vargas Llosa and Havel in our day.