krebscycle

Many people, including supporters of the President, don’t understand the crazy ambition of Barack Obama’s political project. He’s not trying to get some alphabet soup of programs passed or win on this or that issue, he is trying to fundamentally change the political climate in the USA, on an staggeringly optimistic bet.  He believes he can turn a functioning majority into engaged citizens instead of passive and defeated consumers of political entertainment. He is attempting to create an actual Republic where responsible citizens exercise power and take responsibility.

I firmly believe that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, or oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose.  Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose.  A polarized electorate that is turned off of politics, and easily dismisses both parties because of the nasty, dishonest tone of the debate, works perfectly well for those who seek to chip away at the very idea of government because, in the end, a cynical electorate is a selfish electorate.

When politically engaged supporters of the President complain that he is relentlessly positive and polite and that  he rarely smacks down liars and the nasty crackpot critics and hackish press – they are complaining that the President is  sticking to the analysis and ambitious project he outlined years ago. He  firmly believes that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, or oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose – or at least he acts as if he does.  He thinks that kind of argument turns off voters and makes them cynical and the result is powerlessness and despair. Obama believes that people can be convinced that government is not the problem, democratic government is the way we solve problems and defend and perfect our society. He is attempting to overcome the success of Ronald Reagan’s “the scariest thing you can hear is ’ I’m from the government and I’m going to help you’”. He wants to create a political environment when people think: this is my government, I want it to do this or that, I have to convince my fellow citizens of my point of view or reach a compromise or take some other action. He is trying to break the public of years of magic ponies, scapegoats, impossible promises, of pretending that people have no power or responsibilities or consequences.He’s trying to defeat politics as spectacle which reduces citizens to hapless consumers.

  When I first read the President’s theory, I didn’t get it at all – it’s so different from the left wing politics I had accepted as correct. Then when I started figuring out what he meant, I thought he was a well meaning fool.  But the unfortunate result of my education as a scientist is that I keep evaluating theories against evidence. And so as Obama  defied odds to win the Presidency, stopped the power dive to economic collapse and the failed wars bequeathed to him by the disaster of George Bush’s administration, created green manufacturing, saved the auto industry, pushed through Obamacare, I was forced to admit that all that naive and foolish stuff worked. Not always, and often in ugly ways, but it worked. And the oh so clever left wing politics I had thought so brilliant was most useful as an excuse. Admiring Cornel West’s erudite wordplay or Robert Scheer’s polemics or Dennis Kucinich’s provocations or Doug Henwood’s pseudo-marxist ranting turned out to be as useful as getting drunk  and cursing the TV.  It didn’t stop a war, feed a single child, create a job, cure a sick person, or protect the environment. And Barack Obama’s naive commitment to organizing did all of that.  Weirdly, I know a number of former Republicans who made the same discovery I did.