One day during the presidential transition, when I had been named the liaison to the progressive community, someone observed to me that "my people" didn't seem to be very happy. I responded that it was not the job of the progressive movement to be happy.
I wasn't intending to be snarky. My point was that progressives' job is to keep pushing, keep organizing, keep agitating, keep demanding better things. Martin Luther King said that people kept asking him when he would be satisfied, and he answered, we will never be satisfied "until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."
It's the nature of our movement to never stop fighting for things to get better, there are of course substantive issues where at least some progressives are going to part ways with Obama. On foreign policy, the most important areas of concern so far are leaving so many residual forces in Iraq and expanding forces in Afghanistan without a clear understanding of the overall strategy (including an exit plan). On the economy, some of us remain extremely concerned about the Geithner/Summers bank bailout strategy, which appears to be too much of a continuation of the Paulson bailout strategy while giving banking executives far too much leeway and far too little accountability. These are not small issues.
Having said all that, though, I find myself walking around in a little bit of shock that a president, at least on the central strategic approach to the big policy issues, seems to be following the path I would advocate.
In traveling all over the country promoting my new book, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, I have been saying that the lesson of history is that Obama should seize this opportunity to think very big and bold, to be transformative in pushing to fundamentally re-structure our economy, our energy system, our health system, and our very politics. And that is exactly what President Obama is doing - no credit due to me or any other advice given. He is just listening to his own remarkable political instincts.
Though the recent economic recovery bill was too small and had its flaws, it was literally the biggest single investment in progressive social capital - health care, public education, green jobs, infrastructure, universal broadband - in history. His budget might well be the most audacious and sweeping in progressive history as well - certainly one that competes with LBJ's 1965 budget and FDR's 1935 budget. Obama is fulfilling his promise to the America people in the 2008 campaign: big, bold, truly transformative change.
Frankly, I didn't expect this would happen, at least not right away. Watching him pick mostly centrists for cabinet positions, and knowing how the DC establishment can use a thousand big and small reasons to argue against transformative change, I feared that Obama would be convinced to scale back his ambitions for what I call in The Progressive Revolution a Big Change Moment, similar to ones we had in the 1860s, early 1900s, 1930s, and the 1960s. Over the last few decades, Democrats have adopted a culture of caution - they have tended to think small and go slow. I feared that Obama would succumb to that culture.
But he is rising to the challenge. And it is imperative that those of us in the progressive movement rise with him. We shouldn't hesitate to say where we disagree, especially on the big things like Iraq, Afghanistan and the banking crisis. And we shouldn't hesitate to push for the best possible policy details - to make sure that health care reform really is universal and has a public plan option for people being screwed by insurance companies, that the climate change policy really is effective and tough in reducing carbon emissions ASAP, and that the budget maximizes investment in the things that matter.
But we should be very clear: Obama has decided to cast his lot with those of us who have been fighting for big, transformative change. If he succeeds, we succeed, and if he fails, we fail - and we fail for at least another generation, because no Democrat will take big risks again for a very long time if Obama loses this gamble.
2009 is the year. This is the moment when progressives, and America, show whether we can live up to the heroes of our history. Progressives in the past have ended slavery and Jim Crow, given women and minorities and the poor the right to vote, created the National Parks System, made dramatic improvements in cleaning up our air and water, and launched transformational programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Head Start. Barack Obama has boldly announced his ambition to join those historic heroes and create another Big Change Moment. This year will decide whether Democrats in Congress and the progressive movement can help him deliver on that noble ambition. Seize the day.
Mike Lux is the author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be.
Brought to you as a public dis-service by the Porkulus Council of America.
"I'll keep my freedom, my guns and my money, you keep the change."
STG44
Indeed, the latest sign of allowing such crimes to go unpunished comes in the form of federal prosecutor John Durham signaling that even though he has yet to complete his investigation, he is unlikely to indict any CIA employees for incinerating 92 secret interrogation tapes that purportedly show suspects being waterboarded.
Furthermore, we have not seen Obama repeal Patriot Acts I and II, nor have we seen a reversal of Bush’s signing statement that would effectively repeal the John Warner Defense Authorization Act.
We have not seen any evidence to suggest that the NSA will cease warrantless secret surveillance and phone-taps of American citizens.
We have not seen any deviation from the Bush-era war on terror policies.
We have not seen any CHANGE.
* Reveal Justice Department rationalizations for egregiously anti-Constitutional executive powers?
* Present a budget that does not use blatant off-the-books accounting tricks to favorably shade our critical national debt issue?
* Seek to protect unique environmental treasures from oil and gas drilling?
* Put a timetable on our exit from Iraq?
* Begin to re-balance our position vis-a-vis the Israelis and Palestinians?
* Lead a national effort to reduce CO2 emissions?
* Strongly promote alternative energy, stem cell research?
* Budget the beginning of a reshaping of our bloated, fraudulent health care system?
(Of course, none of this will matter if O's handling of the banking/credit crisis doesn't shape-up soon, that is, inspire enough confidence in the major players of the credit market to allow them to start serving their primary customers again rather than their investors and counter-signers. If the banks continue to enable spiraling deflation by not providing more credit, they will continue to get more signals that will only abet more small business and consumer de-leveraging. Only the Feds can put strong brakes on the spiral, but extraordinarily poor communications strategies and executions -- way beyond the intentional vagueness -- have severely hurt Treasury and the Fed's efforts.)
crica is using the reference to "change" in one way. You are using it in a different way.
When taken in context, crica's comment is tied into and refers to the specifc post, including the first sentence:
"If Obama were truly committed to ending the legacy of torture and secret detention, he would authorize the prosecution of those officials responsible, all the way up to the top. Instead, he , "
In what way, if any, is crica's observation wrong?
He has spent more money in 6 weeks than the country has since 1776.
His policies will destroy the American economy and god knows what else.
IMOA he is a failure already.
It used to signal that someone was to the left of the democratic party
So for instance Kusinich is a progressive whereas Ted Kennedy is a liberal
But mainstream liberals have destroyed their reputation so thoroughly that now they all are trying to use the progressive label
The President of the United States is, among other things, a CEO with a Board of Directors consisting of more than 600 people. His (or her) challenge is to set the course of the ship-of-state, while being expressly prohibited from actually taking the wheel. The President must rule by diplomacy, negotiation, brow-beating, tea parties, or anything else he can think of. All of the necessary powers to do anything are vested, not in him, but in the Congress.
This President has been in office all of eight-odd weeks now, and already the honeymoon is over. I think that he and Mr. Biden well understood that this would happen, when they first accepted the position. Well, we don't really need honeymoons or popularity-contests. We need enough strength of leadership ... and enough wisdom and finesse ... to "set the course of the ship-of-state" even though a great many of the present Members of Congress are as corrupt as corrupt can be.
I think that these two gentlemen do possess the qualities needed to accomplish the job, but it will not be an easy one.
1. Idealists - good people to whom the agenda is ethically compelling, but who have not looked in to how that agenda actually works out when put in practice.
2. Those who know exactly how it works out, concentrating all power in the hands of a few, usurping it from the people, who are then enslaved.
Most of you posting here, I would have to believe are in the first category.
Your leadership however, one would have to suspect is in the second.
Thus you are as sheep to the slaughter (I won't be unkind with the useful idiot label that was Lenin's).
I am trying to give Mr. Obama the benfit of the doubt by thinking he's possibly in the first category.
Which makes him a TOOL.
Carol
I would add to your warning that progressives need to understand (as I think many do) that progress is incremental. Two steps forward, one back. The American political system is DESIGNED to be slow and filled with compromise. It does not reward the impatient.
Anyone hoping for rapid, ideological shifts will be sadly disappointed. If you look to history (as Lux does), you see that most periods of major policy change (a) take place within a national crisis (check), (b) involve the coordinated and sustained pressure from the party in power coupled with the internal collapse of the party out of power (check), and (c) move incrementally to address existing problems, not radically towards a future utopia (the possible exception is the Civil Rights/Voting Rights Acts, but this was after 100 years of sustained pressure).
Obama is clearly capable of the job at the national level. While I too winced at some of his nominees (esp. on the economic side), I think we've all learned to trust his instincts towards moving policy through to law.
I think progressive's next frontier should be at the state level... that's where we will be most successful in the more "radical" social policies (such as same sex marriage, environmental justice, and the like). I would love to see the beginnings of a state-by-state progressive agenda along the lines of O's successful 2008 campaign.
To some people, thinking about incremental change is the same as bringing it about. Divisiveness comes from how people define incremental.
The administration seems to be leaning too heavily toward the smallest possible increments over the longest possible time frame so as to not upset the very sensitive Congress or bankers or insurance companies.
I agree that opponents will use divisiveness to their short-term advantage but, again, Obama seems to thrive in this kind of political hothouse.
That's the exact same lemming reasoning that got us into Iraq.
Building a successful political coalition around a popular election that showed such clear divisions between the parties (and such a clear verdict in the election) is the basis for every major political shift in this nation's history.
Bush had no coalition other than the neo-cons who bullied Congress and the intel community into the greatest fiasco in American history (and that, my friends, is saying something).
I'm trying to figure out what you are implying here. It sounds like you're saying he's the only option we have so we better shut up and put up. Or that Obama is doing us a favor. I thought we did him a favor with our support.
This country is in bad shape because the American people have been settling for less for too long.
The one issue I have been especially concerned about since the start is Afghanistan/Pakistan. But let's admit it. He is doing exactly what he said he would. As for economics? Who really knows?
So many people are mired in worrying about what President Obama is not doing that they lose sight of what he is doing and wants to do for the progressive agenda.