What To Expect While We're Expecting: Politics In the Time of Obama

So who is Barack Obama?

Not only do we still
not know, but in a very real sense, I don't think he knows either.
Presidencies have a nasty habit of being shaped by external events and
pressures that can sometimes be completely unanticipated.

I think the greatest
parallels to this moment and this president are not so much to JFK or
Lincoln in their times, but to 1932 and the Roosevelt presidency.
FDR turned out to be one of America's greatest presidents (he's
actually at the very top of my own list) and a very liberal "traitor
to his class", but neither of those seminal attributes of his presidency
were much anticipated by many.

Similarly, Barack Obama
strikes me as something of an ideological chameleon, coming into office
in a moment very similar to 1932, though obviously not (yet, anyhow)
as dire. Like FDR, he enters the presidency inheriting a massive
economic crisis, the proportions of which we still don't know, other
than that it is already very, very big. Like FDR, he inherits
this from a discredited Republican Party which has effectively ruled
the country for decades. Like FDR, enormous hopes are riding on
this rather unknown quantity about to be sworn in as president of the
United States.

And, like FDR, I expect
that this combination of conditions will give Obama wide latitude to
govern, and even to fail to produce quick results, provided he is at
least seen to be trying. I mean, think about it. If you
wanted to follow any president in American history, who would it be?
Look at what happened to John Adams, Andrew Johnson and Harry Truman,
each of whom followed the most renowned and most revered of American
presidents. Adams, one of the great patriots of the Revolution,
one of the top handful of members in the Founders pantheon, couldn't
win a second term. Johnson got impeached, in part for not being
Lincoln. And Truman was run from office in 1952 with job approval
ratings that matched those of a certain chimp-like character with whom
we're all too familiar today.

On the other hand, look
at who the great presidents followed. Washington came after George
III and the Articles of Confederation. If you were Washington's
chief political strategist, you couldn't write a script that good.
Lincoln succeeded James Buchanan, the guy who was, until 2001, widely
considered the worst president in American history. FDR followed
Herbert Hoover, a president who refused to do anything while the country
melted into poverty. People began naming the cardboard shanties
in which they were forced to live after that guy. In short, Obama's
going to have a lot of good will and latitude by virtue alone of having
the good fortune to follow the most disastrous cock-up of a president
in American history. Anything will be a relief after Bush.
It's the Beatles coming on stage after the local beer hall cover band
with the wasted drummer and out-of-tune guitarist, not the other way
around.

For this reason and others,
then, Obama is going to have a solid and likely long honeymoon, I suspect.
And if he gets through the first two years looking good, he'll also
likely keep and possibly even increase his Democratic majorities in
the House and the Senate. That is traditionally not so easy.
With rare exception over the last century, the party controlling the
White House loses seats in midterm elections (particularly the sixth
year of a presidency). But I'd bet money right now, a month
before Obama is even sworn-in, that Democrats do well in 2010.
Not because they're so brilliant, of course. They're not.
But because of the conditions described above, because of certain characteristics
I see in Obama discussed below, and because the Republican Party has
dug itself into a massive pair of holes.

The first of these holes
is one of form. The GOP has run ugly campaign after ugly campaign
since the days of Joe McCarthy, and as recently as the McCain-Palin
attempt to turn Obama into a socialist who pals around with terrorists.
I don't think the public is much in the mood right now for another
round of insanely-divorced-from-reality carping, brought to them by
the very folks who created these ugly disasters, while their president
is making reasonable and centrist efforts to rescue them from sinking
out of the middle class. Personally, I hope the Republicans continue
to make this most egregious of mistakes, as they have been doing lately
by running hysterical ads concerning the non-existent Obama-Blagojevich
scandal. When even Newt Gingrich criticizes the stupidity of the
party's move, you know you're hurtin', eh? But I say, bring
it on, fellas! Please, please, go ahead and self-destruct.
Er, self-destruct more, that is.

Of course, their other
problem - a substantive one - is even more intransigent. This
is the party and the ideology that delivered the country into the perfect
storm of multiple simultaneous crises. Hey, would you buy a used
government from the same people who brought you 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan,
Katrina, global warming, skyrocketing national debt, torture, isolation
from our allies, hatred of the world, and now what is - at the very
least - the biggest economic meltdown since the Great Depression?
If you think I'm just being cute here, ask yourself this question:
Which prominent Republicans have you heard calling for a wholesale restructuring
of their party's ideological commitments? Or even partial reform?
Better yet, have you heard even one of them take a significant shot
at George W. Bush, the very personification of regressive politics?
No, we haven't heard that. Indeed, pretty much all we've heard
is some mumblings about how the GOP needs to become more 'conservative'.

Not only do these guys
not intend to change, but they fundamentally cannot. The party
has become nothing more than a vehicle for plutocratic kleptocracy,
run on the backs of an army of scary-monster, sex-obsessed, religious
freaks who act as shock troops for the money boys. My guess is
that the latter group has long ago now left the sinking ship and is
already fast cozying up to the new bosses in town, the ones with
D's after their names on the ballots. These thieves couldn't
possibly care less about which party they buy - they're happy to
do business with anyone. Heck, they're probably relieved not
to have to attend those stinking prayer breakfasts anymore in order
to keep their marionettes convinced that they give a shit.

But, of course, with
the kleptocrats out the door, that leaves the religious right in full
ownership of the GOP, and they ain't letting go, brother. This
crowd would rather lose elections than their principles, and so they
will. And, indeed, so they have been. Yes, it's true,
ladies and gentlemen - Republicans will no doubt continue to be a
force to be reckoned with in Utah and Mississippi for the foreseeable
future. Meanwhile, though, the rest of the country appears to
have come to its senses. As a side note, that creates some interesting
new political dynamics with potentially far-reaching consequences.
I can't recall during my lifetime a moment more ripe for the development
of semi-viable third and even fourth parties in America, but that will
only happen, if it does, a few years out. Meanwhile, one senses
that the national GOP leadership needs at least one or two more solid
electoral drubbings to disabuse them of their sorry ways, by which time
it will probably be too late.

But what of the Democrats
and Obama? I suspect that one of the primary reasons that the
Democrats have been so disappointing to progressives these last two
years is that their years in the wilderness have made them 'smart'.
Of course, another explanation is that they're also nearly as bought-off
as the GOP, but what I mean by this is that they have learned from their
past experience and have therefore resisted doing anything remotely
courageous with their majority powers - like basic oversight, investigation,
impeachment, ending the war in Iraq or national healthcare, for instance.
From the perspective of a political party seeking only to aggrandize
power, one might see why. The old adage applies well here:
when your opponent is busy self-destructing, get out of the way.
From the perspective of the country's needs, however, this has been
something less than a powerful agenda for progress.

But, more than anything,
I think Democrats have learned lessons from three unhappy experiences
ranging from the Carter to the Lil' Bush years: what happens
when you go off on your own without your president, what happens when
your president goes off on his own without you, and what happens when
you not only don't have a president, but are additionally stuck in
the minority in Congress. Because they will be anxious, above
all, not to repeat the latter experience, because the Harry Reids and
Nancy Pelosis of this world are nothing like a Sam Rayburn or a Henry
Clay, and because they seemed to easily be able to stomach rolling over
for George Bush, I doubt seriously we're going to be seeing much in
the way of strained relations between the two ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Congress, and especially Democrats, have gotten good at deference, and
they'll be happy to defer to Barack Obama as he helps them cement
a generation-long realignment of American politics these next two, four
and eight years.

And what of Obama himself?
There are many laudatory words that come to mind when thinking about
this supernova who has burst over the American landscape. Smart,
articulate, inspiring, eloquent, balanced, grounded and thoughtful are
just some of them. But what think most people have not yet fully
appreciated is quite how wise he is. Wisdom is a bit like being
smart, but definitely not the same. Both Bill Clinton and Jimmy
Carter were the smartest guys around. Both had mediocre presidencies,
at best. Wisdom is perhaps best understood as applied smarts.
In any case, it surely involves having a keen understanding of what
works, what motivates people, what the public wants, and how to make
decisions effectively. Look at Obama. He's been doing
some enormously difficult things for two years now, under the most powerful
competition and scrutiny there is. And, not only has he succeeded
in ways that nobody imagined he could, he has made nary a significant
mistake. That's a record unmatched in our time.

Yep, when it comes to
political wisdom, this guy turns it up to eleven. That's why
I think he's going to have a very successful presidency, and in doing
so, he is going to cement in place a center-left, solid Democratic majority
in Congress and out in the country. There will be mistakes, to
be sure, and there will be ugly bummers far removed from the administration's
control exploding in their faces. But what I don't think we'll
see is pitched battles among the top staff, as in Carter's White House.
I don't think we'll see a focus on trivial issues or personal immaturity,
as in the Clinton White House. And I don't think we'll see
the president trying to solve every problem all at once, as in both
these precedents.

I don't know Obama's
politics well enough to say for sure at this point, but I suspect he's
going to be too centrist for my taste (most any president who could
be president in today's America probably would). But, at the
same time, I feel very confident in his competence and wisdom.
That, coupled with all the other favorable conditions for him (which
include many unfavorable ones for the country, chiefly Bush and his
legacy) will probably make this the most successful presidency since
Roosevelt. Maybe we'll even amend the Constitution to give him
a third term!

Talk about getting ahead
of yourself...! I know, I know. Sorry about that.
Meanwhile, back on terra firma, of particular concern to progressives
is the shape of the administration as it has now come together over
the weeks since the election. Not only are there few progressives
on Obama's team, but there are no name progressives at all.
You won't find Maxine Waters there, or Bernie Sanders or Dennis Kucinich
or Mario Cuomo, or even Russ Feingold. Indeed, it's actually
worse than that. It is no exaggeration to say that Republicans
are better represented on this team than are progressive Democrats.
And we are the ones who made Obama president, while they, of course,
had a slightly different plan. And then, with the Rick Warren
fiasco, it manages to get even worse still.

There is, in short, good
reason for suspicion and even anger on the left. I'm not there
yet, and hope not to be. Not because I'm a Barack groupie.
Far from it. My attitude toward him and anyone else is to wait
and see before judging. In any case, I remain still rather hopeful
for two reasons. One is that conditions are already pushing the
new administration and the country inexorably to the left. And
the other is that, within some minor limitations, I really don't care
who is secretary of this or secretary of that. What I care about
is policy, and the broad strokes of policy are typically made by the
guy sitting behind the sign that notes where the buck stops. So
if Obama ends the Iraq war but has Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates
staff it out, I'm happy. If he makes major efforts to rebalance
the distribution of wealth in this country but Timothy Geithner is Secretary
of the Treasury, I don't much care, to be honest.

Indeed, there is every
possibility that his cabinet picks and other decisions are yet another
demonstration of the wisdom that is Barack Obama, in a sort of 'keep
your enemies even closer' kind of way. How soon, and how ardently,
do you think Rick Warren is going to be out there criticizing the new
administration? And if Obama does more such coopting of the center
and even center-right, as he has in fact already been doing quite effectively,
how much more ridiculous will the loonies of the GOP and the freaks
on the radio look, off by themselves, trying to tear him down?

So I'm hopeful.
All the conditions are there. A country demanding change, if not
rescue. A thoroughly repudiated opposition. A public and
in fact an entire world strongly committed to the success of the Obama
presidency. And a skilled and wise occupant of the Oval Office
about to be handed the keys to government.

Of course, I remain wary
and gimlet-eyed for the moment. Everyone should. This is,
after all, government we're talking about, and these are, after all,
politicians. Moreover, Obama has already given us some minor reasons
to be concerned.

At the same time, this
is the most hopeful political moment of my life.