'Thomas Paine and the Promise of America': Founding Father of the American Left

By JOSEPH J. ELLIS

WHAT we might call the Founders' Surge keeps rolling along. Harvey J. Kaye's ''Thomas Paine and the Promise of America'' is the newest entry in the founders' sweepstakes, making a spirited argument that Paine merits a place on the Mall or Tidal Basin as the only authentically radical voice, the only unblinkered democrat, the only patriotic prophet whose vision remains relevant and resonant for our time.

If the criteria were exclusively journalistic, Paine's status would be assured. In 1774 this working-class unknown from London, uneducated and a former corset maker, arrived in Philadelphia. Less than two years later he did what every American journalist since then has dreamed of doing: changing the course of history with a piece of writing. His ''Common Sense'' (1776) galvanized popular opinion around the idea that American independence was not impossible, but indeed inevitable.

Several months later he became America's first embedded journalist, accompanying the tattered remnants of the Continental Army as it fled across New Jersey after a devastating defeat in New York. In retrospect, this was the most vulnerable moment the American republic ever faced, the greatest threat to what we now call national security. In this all-consuming context, Paine wrote the defiantly reassuring words that would echo through the ages: ''These are the times that try men's souls.'' Long before Edward R. Murrow could tingle spines during World War II with ''This is London,'' Paine had already set the standard against which all subsequent American journalists would be measured.