Legal Commentary

"If It Is Realism We Need"

By Big Tent Democrat

[I]f it is realism that we need, how about this for "realism": Fifteen months ago, America elected the most compellingly progressive president in fifty years. It also elected the largest Democratic majority in the House and Senate in more than a generation. Yet practically every major reform that this young president has promised is now stalled in Congress. [. . .] Loyalists, of course, blame all this on the crazy Republicans. [. . .] The defeats of the past year were not forced on this president by Republicans alone. [. . . MORE . . .]

Somehow this Administration forgot to "take up that fight." Somehow it has allowed the enemy to become the second largest political party in America (Republicans) rather than the single most vilified profession (lobbyists, just below lawyers and used car dealers). Somehow Obama has been convinced that his promise of bold leadership was a mistake. Somehow he has come to believe that realistic if puny ideas are the ways of transformational presidents like Reagan and FDR.

Yet somehow we have got to get this president to recognize that it was the "realism" of 2009 that was his mistake. What American democracy needs right now is leadership. It needs a President who shows us a way to restore our democracy. It needs the anger and impatience of the Republican Roosevelt (Teddy), railing against the corrupting influence of money in politics. It needs the strategic brilliance of the Democratic Roosevelt (Franklin), architecting the long and difficult campaign to, as Arnold Hiatt put it, "convince a reluctant nation to wage war to save democracy."

So I'm not against what the Democratic Leadership has proposed. Of course they should pass it. I am against believing that we should settle for these puny changes. For I believe that true "realism" shows that this is not enough -- not enough leadership, not enough change, and certainly not the kind of change that will make "change believable."

Full post as published by TalkLeft on February 18, 2010 (boomark / email).