I was at the mechanic's yesterday. We talked about the oil, of course.
How you gonna not talk about it. Imagine that, in your little Anytown, USA, a huge blob is slowly engulfing everything, all your food and jobs and way of life. Is baseball or TV really going to be your first topic?
So the mechanic and I are talking about BP and drilling mud and blowout preventers and booms and he says something that surprised me a little. "I was kind of hoping Obama'd be a little harder on the companies in this. He's a liberal, after all."
While GF explained to him that Obama had actually been the most conservative of the major primary candidates, I thought about liberals. I'd heard a similar comment from a conservative friend who was hoping for a public option to lower his health insurance premiums. "Where's that liberal guy you elected?"
Neither of these men is anything like me or you politically. We not only expect a Democratic president, with Democratic majorities in Congress, to pursue dynamic, public solutions to national problems, we demand it. And when it doesn't happen, we get pretty smoked. (Hi, Shiz!)
But hearing these men's disappointment at the lack of "government interference" was enlightening for me. These guys, self-proclaimed conservatives, low-tax-small-government types, expect and demand government solutions to problems, too, when the problems affect them. That's why, despite believing that Barack Obama was a wild-eyed liberal, some of them even voted for the guy.
And even they are feeling a bit disappointed right now, as the blob swallows their town. They won't come here and write outrage diaries. They are utterly uninterested in Dem party minutiae like whether or not Obama needs a primary challenge from the left.
But, when it comes to looking out for the actual needs of individuals, protecting them from the forces of pure profit over all else, these guys trust a liberal Dem. They even want a liberal Dem in control.
Me, too.