GregsOpinion.com

Best news I've read in a while ...

In December, New Republic editor Peter Beinart responded to John Kerry?s defeat with "A Fighting Faith," a 6,000-word manifesto on the future of the American left. Now Mr. Beinart will be stepping aside to spend the next eight months expanding his theory of New Liberalism into a book for HarperCollins?for an advance in the mid?six figures.

On the phone from Washington, D.C., Mr. Beinart said his aim is to "create a conversation about the way the Democratic Party and the way liberals speak to America."

To recoup his advance, Mr. Beinart will need to have that conversation many thousands of times over. Mr. Beinart declined to discuss the specifics of his payday?or the rumored bidding war behind it?simply saying he was "very, very excited to be working with HarperCollins."

But rival publishing sources said the deal was worth more than $600,000. Doubleday contemplated offering Mr. Beinart more than $650,000 for a two-book deal, according to a Random House source familiar with the bid.

"If [Mr. Beinart?s deal] is less than that, it?s not a lot less," the source said.

"I think liberals are in desperate need of a big idea now," said Tim Duggan, Mr. Beinart?s editor at HarperCollins.

Mr. Beinart plans to write his manuscript from the peaceful setting of the Brookings Institution, where he will be a guest scholar. New Republic executive editor J. Peter Scoblic, who has been at the magazine less than two years, will take over as editor, with Mr. Beinart dropping by the offices two mornings a week to stay in touch.

Strain between Mr. Beinart and minority owner and editor in chief Martin Peretz had been visible during election season, with the hawkish Mr. Peretz less willing than Mr. Beinart to blame the Bush administration for cooking the evidence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. But Mr. Beinart said that he plans to return to his post by Labor Day.

Mr. Beinart?s goals for the book, which is due out in 2006, are hardly modest. In his essay, he wrote of the need to wrest liberalism from the soft-on-terror likes of Michael Moore and refocus the Democratic Party on national security.

"The key things I want to try to argue are, first of all, I don?t think George W. Bush and the quote-unquote neocons are true heirs to the Cold War liberal tradition that I believe is the right tradition for Americans to connect with," Mr. Beinart said. "The idea is that through a reorientation of liberalism toward that idea, through this fight against totalitarian Islam, liberalism can achieve its fullest ideals."

To say nothing of achieving a hefty advance!

Meanwhile, in the red corner, 23-year-old Weekly Standard scribe Matthew Continetti is inking a right-wing version of the examine-your-own-party deal with Doubleday?albeit for a mere five figures.

His editor, Adam Bellow, said Mr. Beinart?s and Mr. Continetti?s works mark the beginning of a wave of self-reflective projects. "You?re going to see a number of books, mostly pegged toward the midterm elections, cranked out in a hurry, trying to prognosticate what went wrong, what went right, what should we do differently," he said. "Basically, there?s going to be a lot of head-scratching in print."

Mr. Continetti said the working title for his project is The K Street Conservative, taken from an essay by the Weekly Standard stalwart?turned?New York Times lovable righty David Brooks. His book is an assessment of the Gingrich revolution a decade down the line.

Mr. Bellow said that Mr. Beinart?s work will likely be the most anticipated of the navel-gazing?uh, soul-searching?genre. "The reception of Peter?s book, when it?s published, is going to be fascinating for those of us who follow cultural politics," he said. "It will reveal whether there remains any serious constituency in the Democratic Party for a traditional liberal approach to foreign policy."

Even with that advantage, Mr. Bellow said that Mr. Beinart has "got a tough assignment. He?s not breaking any new news in the book. So it?s all going to be in the writing."

?Rebecca Dana

Not mentioned but worth looking forward to is that David Sirota also has a book in the works.