We in the progressive community have projected our own visions onto
Barack Obama ever since we first noticed him as a remarkable political
novice. It was clear from the 2008 campaign that he was a basically a
centrist and seeker of common ground. But sometimes a crisis makes a
presidency. And history has seldom delivered a more graphic, teachable
crisis than the one that Obama inherited. So we voted our hopes that
events could compel Obama to govern as a progressive.We are still waiting, and we are a cheap date. . . .
Now, who am I to second guess the cleverest politician to come along in decades? Well, I am old enough to remember the Vietnam era when the Best and the Brightest were just dead wrong, and the kids had a surer sense of American foreign policy than the experts. I have also watched Obama's loyal opposition — people like Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Elizabeth Warren, Sheila Bair — be proven right by events, again and again. So there are alternative paths, as there always are. But the White House has disdained them.
And I've noticed that it is the populists among Democratic elected officials who are best defended against defeat in November. That tells you something, too. Why should the project of rallying the common people against elites in Washington, on Wall Street, and in the media, be ceded to the far right? But that is what this White House is doing.
Progressives by nature are optimists. We believe that things could be better than they are, and that a decent society is worth fighting for. We're hopeful, sometimes bordering on wishful. A counsel of despair is not our thing. We tend to look for the best in people. That's why we keep playing Charlie Brown to Barack Obama's Lucy. (Source)
It really is pretty remarkable to me how "moderate" consensus opinion almost always proves itself to be wrong. I think that's because it really isn't interested in getting to the bottom or roots of things. It's more interested in finding safety in consensus, no matter how ridiculous or corrupted the positions of some of those with whom one must find consensus. Consensus making only works when the parties involved negotiate in good faith.
Bad faith is the political reality in our democracy and an absurd consensus is what must almost always follow from it. And for this reason we shouldn't pretend there's any substantive value or wisdom in the consensus thinking that develops in Washington. It is what it is, and it's mostly nonsense not worth a minute of your time if you're interested in finding real solutions.
I used to think that Obama's speeches were different because they didn't sound like the typical nonsense. He actually seemed to make some real sense. He spoke like a man who wasn't defeated by Washington nonsense. But that's no longer true. He sounds defeated now; more and more of what he says sounds like the typical Beltway nonsense.
UPDATE: Paul Krugman makes the same point:
And you just have to wonder how it’s possible to have lived through
the last ten years and still imagine that because a lot of Serious
People believe something, you should believe it too. Iraq? Housing
bubble? Inflation? . . .The moral I’ve taken from recent years isn’t Be Humble — it’s
Question Authority. And you should too.
Not that it will make any difference to question authority until we have what I've described as a "clarifying moment." The authorities have authority not because they are correct, but because they have the power and they are quite comfortable with the nonsense explanations that justify the status quo arrangements.
And so we're stuck with nonsense until something shakes us out of it. The best, most compelling, evidence-based argument in the history of the world would not change the way we do things in this country. All our arguing and our voting won't change a thing until history forces it, and history will force it sooner or later.
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