How does one respond to commentary that is insightful about present circumstances, but reaches the exact opposite conclusion from what they indicate? A recently Rec Listed diary, You may have already lost far more than an election, argues that setting aside referendums on parochial, single-issue politics and deranged personal animus toward Barack Obama in order to ensure a proper Congress and Supreme Court somehow amounts to making it all about Barack Obama. I and many other supporters of the administration have been doing our damnedest since January 20, 2009 to hammer into certain people's heads the fact that we have three branches of government, and that failure to properly take any one of them into account will result in breakdown or perversion of the process and compromise of gains successfully made in other areas.
But some people just don't want to hear that, and certainly don't want to accept responsibility for addressing it. If Congress does something heinous or fails to do something essential, it's because Barack Obama didn't stop them or didn't "argue forcefully enough" (dog whistle for "didn't circumvent the separation of powers") for it, not because we as citizens failed to make the correct choices and set rational electoral priorities in Congressional races.
In 2010, a lot of left-wing voters who turned out for the President in 2008 either didn't feel obligated to repeat their performance for a Democratic Congress, or were "turned off" by the "failures" of one man to be the shoe-pounding, inconvenient-legislature-dissolving, tanks-in-the-streets populist dictator at least some of them seem to deeply yearn for. And today, as a result, we have a Congress that not only will not pass a single iota of progressive legislation, and not confirm any appointees most of us want to see in government, but has to be fought at every turn from passing legislation none of us wants to see.
I don't know, maybe that was the point all along - maybe some people are more at home in a desperate battle always on the verge of total defeat than a state of perpetual disappointment at the modesty of successes. Unfortunately, real people are suffering because of it, and I don't have the slightest bit of sympathy for revolutionary romanticism when it gets in the way of actual progressive work.
But I think there is a lot more going on here than mere quixotic attachment to the responsibility-phobic myth of the noble failure. There is evidence - painfully strong, gut-wrenching, and plain as day - that a large portion of our "progressive" community no longer understands the basic concepts of democracy and American government that were once taught to children as a matter of course. The Presidency, in this view, is no longer a specific set of authorities within a wider legal framework intended to implement, manage, and check the decisions made by a Congress elected by the people, but the symbolic repository of all hopes and fears, and all value judgments made about the entire US government. The result is often an inverse-personality-cult, treating POTUS as some kind of collective totem of the status of millions of individual decisions, and obtusely citing the horribly misinterpreted principle that "the buck stops here" as justifying absurd (and at times crazed) personalization of immensely complex issues.
Frankly, the conclusion is hard to avoid: A large part of the resistance to this President is that he is not the King certain people want him to be, not that he has been disappointing in his actual capacity within the political framework of our republic. It's evident in much of the utterly clueless retorts to being advised of the inherent limits of presidency, arguing that "But Bush did so much more for the right!" or snarkily insinuating that saying a President is not a dictator means you are holding the President to be helpless.
The implied framing is that if a President - one, single man - cannot implement a person's detailed agenda in toto without the support and consent of the Congress we elect on a far more regular basis than Presidents, then (a) that President is somehow "weak," (b) it is his fault for failing to adequately protect us from the consequences of our own electoral stupidity or neglect with respect to Congress, and (c) the presumed ideal leader would be one willing to elevate his personal agenda above the objective outcome of elections, the prescribed legal framework of political decision-making, and the ability of institutions to function without dictatorial micro-managing and constant political interference from above. In other words, that we should wish Obama was Bush III, and that his failure to be so is the single overriding basis for failing to adequately support both him and the Democratic Party in general.
This is a horrifying attitude on more levels than one. A democracy cannot function with a citizenry that increasingly views itself - on both the left and right - as simply competitors for an all-powerful, winner-take-all throne. Rhetoric about "freedom" does not protect people - you have to actually know what the word means, and understand the practical framework that makes it possible.
Ultimately the people get the government they deserve, and if both the left and right are filled with outrage because their leaders aren't dictatorial enough; aren't disrespectful enough of the political framework; aren't narcissistic enough to be constantly flouting every limitation placed on them by a system of checks and balances; then eventually that is precisely what our society will become, much like what happened to the high ideals of the Bolivarian state in South America: It was reduced to a raw, value-free competition of brutality and corruption among would-be tyrants who preferred paternalistic bribery of The People as an intellectually and morally devoid mob vs. would-be tyrants who preferred to rule as indolent, laissez-faire aristocrats that largely ignored The People as long as they kept their mouths shut.
Well, I reject that false dilemma, and so must every liberal progressive worthy of the label: The very soul of our nation is founded on commitment to the idea that that is not the limit of humanity's options, and our history is enlightened by examples of limited, human leaders who were able to prove it. I refuse to submit to any framing of American politics - by any constituency - in terms that corrode our democracy, promote attitudes that reward circumventing legitimate checks and balances when they become inconvenient, and make abundantly clear that the only objection to a decision they find legitimate is that it doesn't serve their personal agenda. We each of us can assert the ultimate freedom to make decisions about our own lives, but there is something wrong - something crooked and false - with a mentality that feels oppressed being denied the power to dictate its own terms to others in matters of mutual significance. And I do not agree that such counterfeit values have any legitimate role to play in progressive politics apart from as cautionary warning posts of the dangers of arrogance and solipsism.
Now, I find this President admirable and his accomplishments tremendous, but you don't have to agree with that opinion in order to understand the essential value of what it is Barack Obama has proven he brings to the table: He has signed every single piece of progressive legislation that has passed Congress; his two Supreme Court Justices are plainly on the liberal side of the current 5-4 divide; and whatever your reservations (or even outright loathing) of some of his Executive appointees in areas such as finance and Defense, very few would argue that the overall picture of his appointments fails the smell test - and in some individual cases, we can each come up with at least a few examples that border on ideal.
So vote for Barack Obama precisely because he is not the guy who would try to implement his idea of what you want by circumventing your freedom to elect Congress. Re-elect him as what his nameplate says he is - President of the United States - and at the same time elect a Congress that will pass more and better progressive legislation, consent to a liberal majority Supreme Court, and confirm other appointees who should be confirmed. Vote as a citizen of a republic whose government has three coequal branches, not a jilted subject of a monarchy who wants a more paternalistic kingdom. If you want bread and circuses, that's what you'll get - for a while, anyway, until you've thrown away every last iota of your vestigial power as citizens looking for a more skillful panderer at the expense of democratic statesmanship.
But if you want a More Perfect Union, an educated public, a prosperous and broad-based economy, and an assertive citizenry, I'll tell you exactly what your next move is (at least with respect to elections): Elect a progressive House and Senate with a Democratic supermajority in the latter body, and re-elect Barack Obama President. If we do these two things, and President Obama vetoes any piece of progressive legislation we support as passed by Congress, I will eat my hat and post a video of my doing so on Youtube. I mean that pledge literally. I have a '30s-style newsboy cap that I will cut up into manageable little bites, sprinkle with some sauce to make it palatable, and eat it for the satisfaction of all the people who've always considered me a fool, a blowhard, or both. But see, I'll never taste that hat, because there are only two things that are going to happen:
1. We will do it, and we will get something satisfactorily resembling the agenda we demand. Or...
2. We will not do it, and either the status quo will continue, or less than nothing will be done with a government ruled by Republicans.
Democracy is based on the proposition that ordinary people not disposed to any kind of divine insight or superior abilities can predict the logical consequences of their decisions and act rationally on the basis of that knowledge, so now's the time to start proving it. Prove that a citizen is something more than a failed competitor for aristocracy looking for a consolation prize in feigned democratic principles. Choose your fate.