Now, this is not an effort to boost Books Sales. I just figured that anyone who actually took the time to read Audacity of Hope (first published in 2006) wouldn't at all be surprised by the Barack Obama that is now the President of the United States.
Yet, we're suffering through a week long Woodstock of Misery, fearturing (frankly) whiny Liberals bitching and moaning about all that could have been with the Obama Administration.
And again, stop with the "One Year in..." crap. He was elected one year ago today. He didn't actually gain Executive authority until January 20th. Last I checked, we Liberals actually liked the Constitution. Skipping the fact of it now, for the sake of a week of bullshit stories seems a bit hypocritical.
In thinking about all this, I am reminded of two things. One is from a speech the future-President gave in Powder Springs, GA:
"You're not going to agree with me on 100 percent of what I think, but don't assume that if I don't agree with you on something that it must be because I'm doing that politically," he said. "I may just disagree with you."
And of course, the statement he made on Page 11 of Audacity of Hope (apparently, Arianna and most of the Huffington inteligentsia stopped reading on Page 10).
I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views. As such, I am bound to disappoint some, if not ail, of them. Which perhaps indicates a second, more intimate theme to this book-namely, how I, or anybody in public office, can avoid the pitfalls of fame, the hunger to please, the fear of loss, and thereby retain that kernel of truth, that singular voice within each of us that reminds us of our deepest commitments.
I write all this because, I read a piece by John McQuaid in the Huffington Post today (as well as Bob Cesca, who's a reliable contributor).
Mr. McQuaid (and Mr. Cesca, too, I'd bet), actually read Audacity of Hope past page 10:
As Jon Stewart put it, "so when does 'hope' turn into 'change'?" As Arianna points out, we still don't know. To any outside observer it sure looks like Obama has lost his campaign mojo and gotten crushed in the whinging gears of Washington's political apparatus. But I'm not so sure.
I've been in Washington since the early 1990s. During that time, let's face it: very little happened. Well, that's not quite right: a lot of things happened, many of them consequential. There was a presidential impeachment, a government shutdown, and several military campaigns and wars. But when you get right down to it, what did all that mean in terms of the way the government ran and its basic priorities? Very little.
The basic structure of American politics -- the array of interest groups and party structures, the government's basic assumptions about what was politically possible and desirable -- didn't change much at all. Mainly, well, it got stupider. Media coverage got stupider. Electoral politics got stupider. And, especially during the Bush administration, government itself got stupider, or at least prone to spectacular breakdowns. With the assent and encouragement of the White House, large swaths of the federal government became hostage to narrow-minded interest groups of one kind or another that simply didn't have a stake in making it work.
Meanwhile, the world was changing. Fast. Big problems such as global warming and collateralized debt obligations emerged. They were catastrophic and just plain weird, and they didn't fit any of our usual political paradigms. When the government can't respond effectively to the real world, it's going to pile one disaster on another.
Obama clearly recognized this problem -- a government adrift in a revolutionary age, with all its constituent parts hardwired to stay that way -- and set out to change it.
But there was never going to be a revolution. Obama ran on change, but he also made clear that he is a centrist and an institutionalist. He believes in making things work, in practical results -- not in blowing things up and starting from scratch.
As a result, the poetry of the Obama campaign has been transformed into the software users manual of the Obama White House.
This is not to deride the software manual approach. Most of the work of actually reforming government is a) politically very, very hard and b) not especially inspiring or even interesting to the media or the public. That includes big stuff like guiding health care reform through Congress. Or lower-profile stuff like staffing scientific agencies with scientists rather than hacks. At every turn, there are obstacles large and small that have been in place for decades and can't easily be dislodged.
So I'm willing to cut Obama some slack. I think his approach is substantive where those of some of his immediate predecessors were variously incremental, empty or dangerous.
But Obama's problems are more than merely rhetorical. (Tom Friedman's suggestion for a lofty thematic fix, "Nation Building at Home," even if basically correct, was politically suicidal as slogans go.) I'm still wondering: Can someone who is temperamentally conservative and pragmatic, and who clearly doesn't relish political combat, ever make truly revolutionary changes? Or in our system, is this the only kind of president who can? That's the riddle we're all facing right now.
UPDATE: 1:24pm. Read Cesca's piece, and it's all right. I'm not a fan of "blame Rahm" ideology, and I wasn't comfortable with him even coming close to agreeing with Arianna (which he did), but hell...it's his piece.
