My point is that successful presidents will minimally exploit the opportunities given to them, something the Obama administration has utterly failed to do. More importantly, though, they make their own realities when the one they've inherited is unfavorable to their agenda. This is so critical right now, because the single biggest deficiency for progressives on the national stage is that we're being pummeled in the war of narratives. Indeed, we're not even in the arena. I cannot think of a single prominent voice in American politics today articulating a genuinely progressive agenda and, more crucially, pitching a progressive frame for the understanding of what ails us. There is no Rush Limbaugh or George W. Bush of the left. No one even close. This is all the more astonishing for three reasons. First, because progressive ideas - such as fighting discrimination, environmental protection or regulation of the private sector - have a long and esteemed history of great success. Second, because regressive policy prescriptions - such as tax cuts, needless wars or deregulation - could not possibly have blown up in our faces more obviously and more emphatically than they have this last decade. And, third, because the logical benefits of progressive solutions are often so plainly transparent to anyone with half a brain.
Given all these factors, it would be so easy to make the sale, if only there was a salesman. But since there hasn't been for a long, long time, deeply destructive sheer idiocy, like the effluent that spews from the sewers that are Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck's mouths, is uncontested and our politics somehow miraculously gets stupider daily, just when you thought that was no longer physically possible.
Regrettably, Eric Alterman's article has given us no evidence whatsoever that a progressive presidency is "impossible" right now. To put it in stark, non-abstract terms, what would have happened if Barack Obama had used his mandate and the set of enormously favorable conditions surrounding his inauguration to be a progressive president, and if he had sold those ideas as effectively as Bush or Reagan or Johnson or Roosevelt did in their respective days? Alterman never answers this question. Would the blogosphere and talk radio go ballistic? Would pundits and paid hacks make up huge lies about him that millions of dopes would actually believe? Would he encounter stiff opposition in Congress? Would his poll ratings drop twenty points? Would his reelection prospects and those of fellow Democrats be imperiled?
Of course, all those things are precisely what has happened!! Except that they happened as Obama has pursued a non-progressive agenda, non-boldly. So, given that he has already paid every imaginable penalty for not being progressive, what exactly would be the cost of instead pursuing progressive politics? What additional stumbling block remains to make a progressive presidency "impossible"?
Many progressives feel that it's a mistake to focus so much energy on electoral politics generally, and presidential politics specifically. I certainly agree that movement organization is crucial, and that there is some point after which enough focus on electoral politics transitions into being too much. But I might dispute where that point is. The presidency remains crucial. There is no other soapbox in the country - or even the world - that comes close to the power of the White House bully pulpit.
And that power would be hugely magnified if the bully pulpit was not only used properly and effectively, but also infused with some absurdly necessary truth-telling. What if we had a president who made it issue number one to tell the American people that its government is for sale to special interests and this must be stopped right away? How hard a pitch would that be? How foolish would Republicans look in opposing that idea? How self-destructive would their defense of the status quo be? And how huge a difference would this make in American government, across the board, if we could finally break the stranglehold of money over government?
Imagine if a progressive president explained to the American public how badly they've been wounded by regressive economic policies for three decades now, which have shifted wealth in this country back to nineteenth century-style distributions, have left the middle class tattered and insecure, and have rendered the federal government drowning in debt. What if that president led the way toward the reform of tax and trade and labor laws so that this kleptocratic imbalance could be rectified? How hard would that be? How much would the debate change if the White House was shaping it in a full court press every day? How clearly would the opposition be perceived to be the tool of plutocrats, especially if the president called them just that, and pointed out the connections?
What if we had a president who honestly told us that the Iraq war was based on lies, and gave us the evidence for that? What if he informed Americans that, while their schools and roads and local governments were falling apart from resource starvation, their country spends more on 'defense' from a non-existent enemy than all the other countries in the world combined? Could you not maybe sell massive cuts in military spending if you told the truth, made a ridiculously logical argument, and said it loudly, repeatedly and boldly? Wouldn't people really rather have schools than expensive military bloat that does nothing for national security?
What if the president had the courage to tell the public that our for-profit health care system costs us vastly more than any other country's in the world, and still does not provide health care for tens of millions of people, leaving the quality of the US model ranked almost fortieth on the planet, according to the World Health Organization? How many American have the slightest clue as to how the American system compares to those of other developed countries? I would bet that very few do. In fact, it's worse than that. I'd bet most Americans suffer under the corporate-promulgated and regressive-promoted illusion that the systems in Britain and Canada and elsewhere are abysmal. That's because, in part, nobody - including no president - has ever had the guts and an interest in selling a counter-narrative, which also just happens to be true.
We could go on and on here, but the point is made. There is no persuasive power in the country anything like the presidency, and if we had a bold progressive in that position, articulating a truthful counter-narrative to the endless lies we get from the right and from the talking heads of the media (both avowed right-wing screamers and the mainstreamers who pretend to be dispassionate centrists), it would massively change the dynamic of politics in America.
There's even a certain efficiency argument to be made here. You get a lot more progressive bang for your buck by just putting one good person in the Oval Office than you do by the long and hard and expensive work of movement organizing. In the end, though, both kinds of political work are critical. Neither should be dismissed.
Progressives were right to be hopeful in 2008. A bold progressive president would have had a dramatic and sustained impact on American politics for generations, changing not only policy today, but sticking a spike tomorrow though the heart of right-wing vampires who have long been bleeding the country dry.
That Barack Obama is not remotely that person does not mean that it's impossible to have a progressive president.
Or that the presidency doesn't matter.
It does.(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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