Last week, voters made a powerful statement about leadership: They'd like some, please. So far, there's no evidence that either President Obama or the top Republicans in Congress were paying the slightest attention.
So begin Eugene Robinson in his column in today's Washington Post. And in response to part of the President's interview with Steve Kroft, Robinson, rightly in my opinion, notes
Well, it may be unfair, but presidents aren't allowed to be discouraged.
With few exceptions, a president receives blame as well as credit for what happens on his watch. An exception might be Truman in '48, when he went head to head with what he was able to describe as a "do-nothing Congress" and the American people accepted his characterization of that body and kept him in office.
There is more in Robinson worth noting. I also plan some additional words of my own, so invite you to keep reading.
Like Robinson, I was not please by much of what the President had to say on 60 Minutes. I wish there had been a more forceful approach on some issue. There are places where I wish he had been willing to more confrontational with both Republicans and Blue Dogs in his own party, so that the American people - who wanted to see things DONE - would have appropriately placed the blame for lack of progress upon the obstructionism of the Republicans and their Blue Dog allies. There are others where I wish his actions in office would have matched his campaign rhetoric, especially on respecting the Constitution - my numerous postings criticizing this administration on issues before the Courts is only part of this desire; so is my disappointment on how he has handled repeal of DADT.
Robinson concludes with a paragraph that I can only hope comes to pass, but with which I also have some disagreement.
The smaller, much more liberal Democratic caucus in Congress has a clear agenda: full speed ahead in a campaign of progressive reform. The newly elected Tea Party Republicans have a clear agenda: full speed astern, all the way to 1789. If nobody else wants to steer the boat, the people full of passion and ideas will be happy to fight over the wheel. Icebergs be damned.
I hope the idea of a clear demarcation in visions for the country is what the Congress takes on, on both sides. The Republicans claim that this is a conservative nation. Their interpretation of what that means would be no Health Care Reform, which they want to repeal; little regulation of business and financial institutions, which they want to roll back; restricting if not eliminating the strands of social safety net - Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, etc., some of which goes too much to unworthy "others"; eliminating public institutions in favor of for profit private ones - we have seen this in sanitation, and now increasingly in schools, prisons, libraries, and public safety.
I acknowledge that the Republicans claim they are rolling back to 'original intent" of the Constitution, and one might say without the Amendments required for some states to agree to ratification, those included in the Bill of Rights. I disagree. I think their vision is that of the post-Civil War Republican party, but only in part, the part that led to a jurisprudence that gave us Plessy v Ferguson in violation of the clear intent of the 14th Amendment, that gave us applying the Sherman Anti-Trust Act against unions instead of Corporations, that led to the Lochner decision restricting the power of governments to regulate businesses, that had much of the 1st New Deal declared unconstitutional. I have little doubt in having read many of their speeches and writings that many of the Founders would have rejected such interpretations, just as I have no doubt that they would have been willing to see restrictions on the accumulation of wealth and its misapplications to political power and law-making to further benefit those who already had. Our Founders were not perfect, but they also were not stupid, and they would have realized the threat to democracy represented by too much wealth and too much power in too few hands.
The title of this diary, like that of Robinson's column, is about our desire for more Presidential leadership. Sometimes, as I have written recently and as the President also noted during the campaign, that leadership comes not from the top, but from lower levels. In this case I think there is some prescience in Robinson's final graf.
What if the Progressives in the Democratic Party began to insist upon putting forth a more progressive agenda - on health care, on financial reform, on all kinds of topics. You would then have a clear contrast with the Republicans. I would argue that this is not the time for a Dick-Morris inspired "third way" approach such as that followed by Clinton after the losses in 1994 - that may have saved his Presidency but it did not helped the Congressional Democrats and did less than it might have in changing the direction of this nation.
I don't expect that we would get a completely Progressive result. But if the Republicans remained obstinate, the American people, as short as their political memories can be, would clearly understand the choices before them - they would in fact be presented with clear choices. If then we still cannot persuade them, we would at least know that the Republican assertion that this is a conservative nation has more truth than we would otherwise acknowledge.
What if the Republicans recognize what I think would be their peril? Would not then the compromises that are a part of advancing an agenda be more friendly to progressive ideas and the real interests of the American people?
And then there is this: how might the American people react if they were to see clear, consistent leadership willing to advocate for a different version of what this nation is, what it can and should be? What if the great mass of people actually had a President who consistently advocated for THEIR interests - including THEIR financial security, THEIR rights and liberties as opposed to those of corporations, THEIR hopes and dreams?
What if we had a President who consistently demonstrated MORAL leadership?
What kind of discussion would we be having now? Would the results of the election have given us a different shape of government and policy, at both federal and state levels?
Like many, I am disappointed by the Presidency of Barack Obama. I can pick on particular issues - education, the administration of justice - where my disappointment is shaped by my strong disagreement on policy. But it is more than that - it is that a man of considerable intelligence and political gifts has failed to use the bully pulpit as effectively as we know he can.
I have no trouble with the idea of the priority he gave health care - it was a necessary first step towards controlling our deficits. I do think he could have framed the debate very differently. And I would have hoped he had learned from that experience, but his remarks to Steve Kroft do give me pause.
It is good to have optimism, and thus I acknowledge these words in that interview:
But I have fundamental confidence in this country. I am constantly reminded that we have been through worse times than these, and we've always come out on top.
It is also good to be able to rally the American people. It would have been far better to have done so at the beginning of his administration, when he had the hopes and trust of the American people. It might be harder to accomplish now, in the aftermath of what is being portrayed as a significant rejection of his administration. Yet a strong leader does not get discouraged, but rather rallies the people to the vision for which they thought they had elected him.
The Republicans are presenting the American people with a real "choice" - that is, we can accept their bloviations that they can add $700 billion to the deficit by tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and still reduce the deficit. Rachel Maddow is right to call this a gift to the Democrats. And yet perhaps one more quote from Robinson will demonstrate what many of us think is missing from the President:
By uninspired, I mean there was no sense that Obama relishes the high-stakes political battles that are sure to come over the next two years. There was no hint, for example, that he looks forward to the opportunity to put Republicans on the spot about all the unrealistic budget-cutting they say they want to carry out. And by uninspiring, I mean that the president offered no vision of a brighter tomorrow. Instead, he sketched a future not quite as dim as the present.
Let me repeat one part of that: There was no hint, for example, that he looks forward to the opportunity to put Republicans on the spot about all the unrealistic budget-cutting they say they want to carry out.
I hope that the Progressives in Congress will continue to push as much as they can for a better vision for the nation. The diminution of the influence of the Blue Dogs may help, although the loss of control of the House will make it difficult to even bring items up for discussion.
But a President is not limited by loss of control of one chamber of the legislature. He has the bully pulpit. He has the ability to propose and challenge the Republicans. He can set the terms of the discussion and challenge them to be inflexible as they say they will be, or to move forward on behalf of the American people. The Democrats control 2/3 of the process of legislating - the Senate and the Presidency. Obama should remember that and show the appropriate leadership.
Otherwise in 2 years the Democrats may well control none of them. And that would be catastrophic for this nation and the American people. It would also be catastrophic for the entire world given the outsized role we still play.
Those are my thoughts this morning.
What are yours?