In late 1918, as the German Empire collapsed and moderate socialists, conservatives, and Communists grappled for control of the ruins, Max Weber, one of the founders of modern sociology, delivered a lecture to his students entitled "Politics as a Vocation." He gave an implicit warning to his listeners -- if you demand ethical purity from your politicians, you will be disappointed, because a truly responsible politician CANNOT be ethically pure. By the nature of their profession, politicians deal in power, ambition, greed, and compromise. To achieve actual positive results, the truly responsible politician will have to navigate this swamp, and s/he will not remain unmuddied. The ethically "pure" politician will fail outright or become a dangerous demagogue.
I am afraid that too many at Kos are holding Barack Obama to a standard of "purity" rather than of responsibility.
I worked hard for Obama in the 2008 election. I admired him as a highly intelligent, very steady man, even as I knew that he was closer to the Clinton/Tsongas "center" of the Democratic Party than I was. I knew that he would take positions to the right of mine and that I would be unhappy with some of them. But I also knew that he would be a big improvement on Bush II. That's how I still feel about him. He never was a messiah or magician who could solve all of our problems. In health care as in other areas he has accomplished a good deal in the face of intense opposition and structural obstacles.
Vice-President Biden in the New York Times this morning and Senator Al Franken here at Daily Kos have explained why the health care bill in the Senate is a net plus for Americans and for the progressive movement - indeed passage would be a historic victory. I will not repeat their arguments.
But I do want to quote Weber, to remind Kossacks that politics is indeed "a slow and strong boring of hard boards" requiring patience, persistence and compromise. It's not a fantasy realm in which our dreams of what we want (single-payer! public option!) override the reality of crafting better health care coverage in the face of a well-funded reaction and a culture extraordinarily suspicious of the ability of government to get ANYTHING right.
Not only is Obama not perfect, he's a relatively young man learning the toughest job on the planet very, very fast. He's done the best that he reasonably could on health care so far.
Do you really want the Senate's health care bill to fail? To forfeit the substantial gains the bill makes -- a non-profit option for those unable to buy other insurance, an end to limits on lifetime benefits, etc., etc., just because progressives could not win a "public option"? The Swiss have a system of near-universal health insurance without a public option. Wouldn't such a system be better for the US than no system at all?
Here's some more from Weber's "Politics as a Vocation":
"If ... one chases after the ultimate good in a war of beliefs, following a pure ethic of absolute ends, then the goals may be damaged and discredited for generations, because responsibility for consequences is lacking .... what is decisive is the trained relentlessness in viewing the realities of life, and the ability to face such realities and to measure up to them inwardly."
The consequences of rejecting the Democrats' health care reform efforts will be worse health care for millions of Americans and Republican electoral victories in 2010. Weber:
"when ... (purist) politicians ... pass the watchword, 'The world is stupid and base, not I,' 'The responsibility for the consequences does not fall upon me but upon the others whom I serve and whose stupidity or baseness I shall eradicate,' then I declare frankly that I would first inquire into the degree of inner poise backing this ethic of ultimate ends. I am under the impression that in nine out of ten cases I deal with windbags who do not fully realize what they take upon themselves but who intoxicate themselves with romantic sensations. From a human point of view this is not very interesting to me, nor does it move me profoundly. However, it is immensely moving when a mature man-- no matter whether old or young in years--is aware of a responsibility for the consequences of his conduct and really feels such responsibility with heart and soul...."
Let's not be windbags here. Weber:
"Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth --that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else men will not be able to attain even that which is possible today. Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he shall not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or too base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say 'In spite of all!' has the calling for politics. "