Dear Mr. President,
Administration officials, whether expressing opinions you share or not, have frequently articulate frustration with the public expressions of disagreement from the progressive side, especially progressive bloggers. I'd suggest that -- aside from particular issues -- there are three points where your decisions have led directly to this public disagreement:
- In the "big tent" of your administration, left Democrats are notably absent.
- Quite often your administration has begun with a compromise offer. Then, predictably, has had to compromise from that position.
- The level of criticism from people who should be your spokesmen seems to be more extreme for dissent from the left than for obstruction from the right.
I'll clarify and expand each of these after the jump.
- The administration is centered on moderate Democrats. It seems, however, to have more space for moderate Republicans than for left Democrats. You have two Republicans in your cabinet. There are plenty of technocrats, and nobody is complaining about them, but Howard Dean is not Secretary of HEW; Hightower is not Secretary of Agriculture; Paul Krugman heads neither OMB nor the Council of Economic Advisors. This is not a complaint about the people who do hold these posts; it is examples of the voices that you didn't include in the range you chose for the center of your administration. Van Jones was great, but he is no longer there; and he wasn't all that high in authority when he was there. I get the impression that what was offered to some of the top progressive bloggers was private briefings on what the talking points were; that might have slightly mollified the old media -- the new media didn't regard it as a favor.
- The legislative branch is where compromises occur. You know this from your experience in the US Senate and in the Illinois legislature. That means that any compromise that the administration does before making its proposals is a complete waste of time. The proposal will still be compromised. The administration proposal has two uses:
a) It starts the discussion rolling. You can see how effective an extreme proposal is in determining debate with the Bush Administration's original TARP proposal. Democrats were so busy removing the Secretary of the Treasury's power to pass out this money without supervision or recourse that they hardly debated the essential nature of the program.
b) It energizes the troops. When the proposal is a pure expression of my ideology, I can get back of it 100%. It will never get through the "sausage factory" with that purity intact, but I have something to support wholeheartedly. When the proposal is already a compromise, my enthusiasm is quite lower. Alinsky didn't start his battles with an announcement of a compromise position.
A proposal which begins with compromising with the right does not quiet their opposition. Check this assertion against recent history. It does weaken the enthusiasm of many of the people who campaigned for you.
Think how much better the political situation would be had the administration asked for a siimulus bill twice as large as the one it asked for, and got no more than Congress finally passed. At this point you could say, "We asked for 1.5 trillion to fix the economy; Congress appropriated half that. The economy is half fixed -- the free-fall is ended, but the recovery is much too slow."
- Having given Republicans seats at the table and modification (nearly fatal modification in the case of the stimulus program) of your proposals, having given the left neither seats nor proposals that they can support wholeheartedly, you have received criticism from both sides. However, the Republican criticism has been unrelenting and has blocked many of your programs. The left criticism has been specific, and mostly -- if not always -- respectful. The response from administration spokesmen has not reflected that difference.
Emanuel called progressive critics "retards." Partly, this is simply the man -- Rahm left the schoolyard, but the schoolyard never left Rahm. But only the language is restricted to him. What we hear every week is some form of: "We've made the decisions, why haven't you fallen in step?" Well we never signed a pledge of blind obedience. We embraced a dream -- and we're still loyal to that dream.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
This is the first of a pair of diaries.
Dear Progressive Blogger will appear Tuesday.