Don't throw away those old clothes in your closet. One day, they'll be in style again.
Like the fashions of yesterday so too does the history of American Politics repeat itself. In the 1960s John F. Kennedy took office with three assumptions. He was convinced that the Third World was about to go Communist, that the Soviets would soon have a nuclear advantage, and that civil rights legislation could wait. He was wrong on all three counts, but was still able to be the transformational figure he sought out to be even in a shortened Presidency because he saw that he was wrong and righted the ship.
Like Kennedy, Barack Obama also came to the White House to be a transformational figure on three wrong assumptions. He was convinced that as long as Wall Street was sound, the rest of the economy would follow; that as long as he surrounded himself with smart old pros like Larry Summers, he was in good hands; and that bipartisanship was a worthwhile goal unto itself. Obama was wrong on all three, but his response to the Massachusetts defeat shows that he has the chops to learn on the job. He has to continue that trend, though. When he does, he will be the transformational President he sought out to be.
It is with the win by former Cosmo centerfold turned Republican Scott Brown that I will start. It seems as if after his victory on Tuesday night Tea Party Republicans were ready to storm the Bastille and declare revolution while the Democrats were running into the Boston Harbor with their hair on fire. Neither is necessary. In fact I would encourage my friends on the left to take heart. Scott Brown is just one person, one Senator and if my intuition serves me he won't be a very effective one. The bottom line is that even after the defeat, Democrats still control the Senate and the House. They still have the ability to steer the debate. On the flip side of that coin Republicans shouldn't be too over zealous of the victory. I think perhaps I could have won an election against Martha Coakley. Brown's win in Massachusetts wasn't a referendum on Obama it was a vote against a weak candidate in Coakley.
To watch The Fox Noise Channel's talking heads though you would think that the special election was a direct referendum on the policies of Obama. The point is that this country isn't on the cusp of a "Teabagger" revolution and we aren't headed down a path to socialism. Turn off The Glenn Beck show for a short minute and read the realities: Barack Obama is still a President who polls over 50 percent in most National approval polls. Even at his worst in approval ratings he's head and shoulders above his predecessor, Dubbya. Where Obama has gone wrong is in his belief that the country was ready for sweeping government reform. Yes, we were ready to move on from the unsuccessful, super conservatism of George W. Bush but we weren't quite as ready as Obama had thought to move much further past Bill Clinton's moderate liberalism. The assumption that Obama would be swimming mostly with the current rather than often against it on issues such as health care, financial regulation and global warming was naive, in retrospect.
The same dynamism that took a skinny state senator and put him in the Oval Office is now operating to turn against a lot of his agenda. It's uncomfortable right now for Democrats, but the truth is it's a very dynamic culture, and without that dynamism we would never have a President Obama. The challenge will be — and this is the same challenge Clinton faced — how adept and adroit will he be in adapting to a fast-changing culture.
John F. Kennedy was able to do it, and if he is any student of history, so too will Barack Obama. When I cast my vote for him, I voted to give him four years in office, not one.
Obama will increasingly have to choose - whether to hold to his vision and raise the stakes, or compromise his vision to cut the deal. And those of us whom he has inspired also have to choose. Whether to sit back and hope he does the right thing against the odds, growing cynical when he fails our expectations, or to stand up, mobilize, challenge the Congress and the President to get on with the change we need. The first year is but the opening scene. We should still have the audacity to hope, the patience for real change and the commitment to act.
