Of all the problems we face, Obama can use two to show how things have gotten worse – and how government can prevent them from deteriorating even further. One is increasing income inequality. The other is climate change.
Neither of these issues, it is worth pointing out, made much of an appearance during the 2012 campaign. Both candidates, to be sure, addressed the question of jobs. They were right to do so: The rate of unemployment has been too high for too long. But the real economic scandal of the past decade has been a return to levels of inequality that no civilized society should accept. This is the great moral issue of our day, one, moreover, that has been addressed over the centuries by all our major religious traditions. (It is also an issue that once motivated conservatives, who worried that such inequality would disrupt the social contract; but those days are long gone.) Each individual, or so one hopes, has a conscience. The president can serve as the country’s collective conscience, reminding us of what holds us together as a people. Elizabeth Warren touched on these themes in Massachusetts. Obama can do it in Washington. When it comes to the common good, no one person builds that. We all do – or we all don’t. (Source)
Assuming Obama wins and won't have to worry about getting elected again, will he use the presidency as a bully pulpit? Of all the ways Obama disappointed me, it was in his failure during his first term to take a stand and to make his case to the conscience of the nation, especially on these two issues.
That's probably expecting too much, and we all know where expecting too much of Obama leads. And his taking to the bully pulpit assumes that he is capable of taking an unambiguous stand on these issues when he's in governing rather than campaign mode. It's not at all clear that he is capable of that. But maybe, just maybe, now that he'll be freed from some of the constraints of political expediency (not worrying about the next election), now that he'll have four years of experience and the confidence that comes with that, he'll be able to relax and remember his better self and rise to what the historical moment presents to him.
I don't expect him to be able accomplish much in terms of legislative programs, but I'd be plenty happy with him if he would get into that pulpit and make the case against Republican and Neoliberal Social Darwinism and for a more humane vision of who we are as a nation.
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