After Senator Obama's decision to forego public financing came the FISA mess, then the Supreme Court decisions on the death penalty and handguns, then his comments on General Clark's criticism of Senator McCain, and now his statement to evangelicals that he will not only preserve but expand the Faith-Based Initiatives program instituted by President Bush.
Each of these positions has upset many progressives, who see these acts as proof that Senator Obama is "just another politician," "betraying his base," "caving in to Republicans," "Republican-Lite," and the like. Most of Senator Obama's defenders, echoing the prevailing media narrative, say Senator Obama is following the usual general election strategy of "moving to the center."
While I disagree with some of the positions Senator Obama has taken in the past few weeks, I also disagree with both his detractors and many of his defenders. Please follow me over the fold for an explanation of why Senator Obama is not, in fact, "moving to the center."
If Senator Obama is "moving to the center," that is true only through the lens of the previously prevailing media narrative about him: that he was "the most liberal candidate in the race."
Senator Obama is not and never painted himself as a "liberal" in the common usage of the term. The perception that he was is based on three points: his endorsement from supposedly "radical left" groups like MoveOn.org, his broad support from the progressive activist Netroots base, and a National Journal article proclaiming him the most liberal Senator of 2007. These three factors played into a media narrative of Senator Obama as being far more liberal than his life history, books, or speeches indicated.
Progressive ideologues were indeed "sold a bill of goods" on Senator Obama, not by the Senator but by those who talked about him, describing him in terms that were favorable to their own interests. Right-wing voices wanted to paint him with the "liberal" label to weaken him, while left-wing voices did so to prove - perhaps to themselves - that he was one of them. Regardless, with both right and left describing Senator Obama as representing "the liberal wing of the Democratic Party," the media narrative gained traction and stuck.
But it was never true. A close reading of his history, books, and speeches simply does not show Senator Obama as a liberal ideologue. From his days as a community organizer where he had to game Chicago politics to get things done, his attending Trinity United Church of Christ because it lent him better access to the city's black leadership, his University of Chicago ties to both Keynesian and Friedmanite economists, his support of Senator Lieberman in the Connecticut primary race, Senator Obama has never walked in lockstep with progressive ideology.
And Senator Obama made no secret of that. His oft-repeated suggestion that parents should turn off their televisions and video games and make their kids do more homework confused MSNBC pundit Chris Matthews, who openly asked: "Isn't that a conservative position? That's a conservative solution, not a liberal solution." (That is a paraphrase from memory, but it fairly reflects the intent of Matthews' comment.) Senator Obama speaks often of his faith, how it came to shape his values, and his view that Democrats should not cede religious voters to the GOP. Indeed, one of the most compelling passages in his "breakout" keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention began with: "We worship an awesome God in the blue states."
Senator Obama's "move to the center" is, in my view, simply another false media narrative. It perpetuates the media's familiar analysis: that all candidates campaign to their base in the primaries, and then move to the center for the general election. That analysis may be familiar, and may even have been true in past cases, but it's not true here.
Senator Obama is simply staying where he was all along, because he never tried to present himself as a liberal ideologue. Quite the contrary, he made it clear that he sought to transcend the historically divisive memes of "liberal" and "conservative," to step away from ideological partisan warfare and focus on solving real problems for real people. He painted himself as the anti-ideologue, in stark contrast to the ideology-driven policies of the Bush Administration. His writing and speech were subtle and nuanced, focused on details of fact and process. Many of us lauded him for "speaking to us like adults."
And while we perhaps didn't recognize it, that demonstrated the break between Senator Obama and progressive ideology. Ideology by its nature consists of simple, indeed simplistic, memes and narratives. Ideology postulates an ideal, pure world within which ideal, pure solutions exist and should be implemented. Ideology is easily reduced to sound bites, because it tests policy against theory - that ideal, pure world - rather than against the complex, contradictory, and chaotic facts of reality.
When Senator Obama "spoke to us like adults," when he declared that he was "willing to bet on the good sense of the American people," he was rejecting the simplistic narratives of ideology, and turning instead to the nuanced and difficult narratives of pragmatic problem-solving. When he painted beautiful word-pictures of hope, change, and empowerment, he did so in the context of the gritty, difficult choices of pragmatism.
Given the prevailing media narrative of Senator Obama as "the liberal," as compared to his principal primary opponent, it was too easy for too many progressives to imagine him as one of them, as doctrinaire, as an ideological purist, fully committed to progressive values and progressive solutions. Now they are understandably disappointed as he seems to "move to the center."
But he hasn't "moved" anywhere. He's always presented himself as a pragmatist, a detail-oriented, nuanced problem-solver, willing to find common ground with anyone if it would help get things done. Senator Obama hasn't "betrayed" progressives. He never pretended to be one, not even when progressive activists were his most vocal supporters. He is who he's always been, and who he's always presented himself to be.
Please do not read this to suggest that progressives must not criticize Senator Obama. The notion that progressive criticisms will undermine his candidacy is, I think, both false and dangerous. False, in that while I think progressive values are seeing a revival, they've not yet become the dominant political narratives; Senator Obama is not harmed, among voters at large, by being seen as "not a pure progressive." And dangerous, because in doing so we abandon one of the most fundamental progressive values: the idea that every voice matters, that no one should be bullied into silence. Silencing criticism asks for a cult of personality - "our leader right or wrong" - which is the very heart of conservatism.
Progressives have a civic duty to criticize Senator Obama - and then President Obama - when his policies violate their principles. But we ought not to couch that criticism in terms of "betrayal," because Senator Obama never presented himself as a progressive ideologue. Representative Kucinich was the only progressive ideologue in the Democratic field, and he gained so little support that he was among the first to withdraw.
And then Representative Kucinich endorsed Senator Obama. Not because he believed Senator Obama was a progressive ideologue - he surely knew better - but because he believed Senator Obama was the best Democratic candidate in the field. Perhaps Representative Kucinich came to believe, as I slowly did, that while Senator Obama was not a pure progressive, he shared our basic values and would, more often than not, support policies that we could live with, and that would help solve real problems.
For all of the comparisons to the Brothers Kennedy, I've come to think the better lens through which to view Senator Obama is that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR was as cooly calculating a pragmatist as perhaps ever sat in the Oval Office. If his legacy is that of a progressive, it is only because progressive solutions were more often pragmatic for the problems our nation faced. And we often forget that FDR's legacy, seen in detail, is far from pure. He made decisions that progressives at the time, and progressives today, would decry in the strongest terms. Some of them were mistakes, and some of them were not. Still, FDR is widely and fairly seen as one of the greatest presidents in our history, and a virtual icon among progressive thinkers.
I am confident that, if he is elected, and if voters also elect enough Democrats to give Senator Obama a solid Congressional base, his legacy will also be viewed as solidly, though not purely, progressive. But only if progressives lay the groundwork in their local communities - as the union movement and other activists did for FDR - to enable progressive solutions ... to make them pragmatic solutions.
Because Senator Obama, like FDR, is a pragmatist. He will choose from the menu of the possible, not the menu of the ideal. If we want to see progressive solutions to our nation's problems, we'll have to make them possible for him, by working and organizing in our communities, tilling the fields within which progressive seeds can be sown, nurting them as they take root, and demonstrating their pragmatic value.
Senator Obama is not "betraying" progressives, because he was never one of us. But he does share our values. Let us not betray him by failing to lay the groundwork for progressive solutions.
We can and must criticize, but let's criticize as we work to make better solutions possible.