Editor's Note: This is the fifth installment of a six-part series by Jim Wallis reflecting on the past two years and painting a post-election vision for people of faith and Sojourners. To read more from Jim and join in a discussion with other Social Justice Christians check out his blog at God's Politics.
An election like this one always calls for both moral centering and political recalibration. Leaders of both parties were talking the morning after the election about cooperation to solve the nation's problems. We'll see, but that will likely also take a movement.
Despite huge Democratic losses in Congress, both sides acknowledge that Barack Obama is still president so what he now does is still important. And Obama has the beginnings of a framework for more serious change in some of what he has already done or proposed, but he will have to lift up a much more powerful vision for change, risk a bolder leadership style, and work with social movements as partners in a creative tension. What's lacking is the big vision and the big movement.
Obama could go back to where he should have begun -- with the need to create real jobs and good work that rebuilds the nation's crumbling physical and moral infrastructure -- roads, bridges, airports, rail transport, schools, and a new clean energy grid; undergirded by healthy families and communities; through new innovation and creative entrepreneurial leadership in all sectors, public and private partnership, focused investment, and a clear set of values. He could offer both a work ethic and work; an entire country of homes and buildings needs to be retrofitted for a renewable energy future -- work that cannot be outsourced to other countries. And when the private market isn't providing the leadership necessary, then smart public policy must provide the catalyst and the incentives. Obama has said some of this, but the nation has not heard a clear call for shared purpose, collective sacrifice, and persistent patience to accomplish a national vision and mission. And without that vision, the people are perishing.
What are some other basic building blocks?
Obama's education reform agenda is very likely the most far reaching and potentially most impacting of everything he has done so far -- and with bipartisan support. He could bridge the ideological gap between big and small government by leading with the idea pioneered by Bill Clinton and George W. Bush in providing social services by partnering with both faith-based and secular nonprofit organizations. Conservatives have better understood the importance of culture than many liberals have, and Obama's Fatherhood and Mentoring Initiative has the potential to be one of the most culture-changing, and therefore, nation-changing things he has done. Instead of running away from the still deep and divisive issues of race in the United States, Obama could much more directly address them, as he did so brilliantly in his 2008 Philadelphia speech. And prioritizing real and comprehensive immigration reform could be a key part of a positive agenda for America's multicultural future. The president's early focus on ethics in government has mostly disappeared from view, but could be transformed into what will likely be the single most important issue in recovering our democracy -- the campaign for electoral financial reform.
Finally, the president's remarkable speech in Cairo, intended to reach out to the Muslim world, could be followed up with a real action plan, beyond endless wars of occupation. And the urgent need to turn the world toward nuclear disarmament, one of the things that keeps Obama awake at night, could be one of the signature accomplishments of this president.
Never has there been a time riper for a "call" and a "response."
Jim Wallis is the author of Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street -- A Moral Compass for the New Economy and CEO of Sojourners. Get e-mail updates from Jim Wallis.
RealClearPolitics - Obama's Movement Politics & the Midterms
The 2010 Midterms: How Barack Obama Was Undone By His Own Brand Of ...
Lessons from the mid-term elections: Lessons for the tea-party ...
Opinion | Barack Obama: the relay race of social change | Seattle ...
Organizing for America | BarackObama.com | Education
Obama's Education Reform Agenda Under Fire - The Daily Beast
Obama: Money without reform won't fix schools - Parenting ...
Education Reform: Will Obama Plan Get Bipartisan Support? - TIME
"1.1 The old moral, social, and political order of humankind is now dead.
1.2 This is the moment when it will be decided what the future is going to be.
1.3 The future is either going to be catastrophic disaster, or it is going to be the turnabout moment in human history, in which humankind will step out of its dark ages of “tribalism” into a new mode of human cooperative order."
"Only everybody-all-at-once can change the current chaos."
Principles Regarding A Global Cooperative Forum
http://www.dabase.org/not2p1.htm
Not-Two is Peace
http://www.dabase.org/not2.htm
The New Great Transformation
http://www.archive.org/details/PaulHawken-TheNewGreatTransformation-2007
http://www.globalcooperativeforum.net
But the truth is that we're not shortchanged when it comes to vision. On the contrary, the real problem is double-vision. There are two entirely different and competing visions vying to become the narrative that defines America at this time.
One vision comes from Roosevelt, the other from Reagan. Proponents of each can find good reason to critique and deconstruct the other.
Dems, liberals, progressives, lefties are all federalists. Repubs, conservatives, tea partiers, righties are all anti-federalists.
The middle third of the country - the so called independents - is historically persuadable by both sides.
The side that does a better job selling its vision to those in the middle is going to win. It's that simple.
Ultimately, for either side's message to prevail, it must be embodied in a single person - the President. He becomes the icon, the archetype, the leader with the vision who rallies the people towards his causes and goals.
The Dems had it with FDR. The repubs had it with Reagan. The dems HOPED they've have it again with Obama, but right now at least he's not looking like that sort of president.
No populist movement can make up for that sort of leadership deficit. Wallis is wrong.
Because he's still fighting two unprovoked wars, it's evident he intends force to control the world rather than leadership. He intend a war machine producing USA the rest of the world is controlled by, the purpose for a third of the nation's budget being military. That violates the preamble to the constitution's saying "for the United States of America" to even consider masking things The United Nations of the New World Order.
That's what politics in the US is about, promises unfilled. The few appearances of change for the people has a people's price tag and corporation's the profits as the bottom line. There's only one way he can bring any change favoring the people in this nation, resign for failing to uphold his oath. I see a continuing Obama is the whirlpool of destruction continuing to suck this nation down to its demise but not according to prophecy.