It took one more article, just one article, to make me fed up with all this BS about Obama not being a "progressive" because he dared to gasp populate his administration with members of the last and only Democratic Administration in the last 25 year or so.
Obama's not a Progressive. Right. How about we actually define Progressive before we start talking about who is and who isn't.
Let's do a simple Wiki on this:
Progressives like Robert La Follette argued that the average person should have more control over their government.
Barack Obama, as a contrast to Bush's Financial Institution Bailout, wants a stimulus package that actually publishes all details of the money's usage online. Direct control and analysis by the citizens, increased transparency in government (something he has been championing pretty much since the get-go, kthanx).
Many progressives such as Louis Brandeis hoped to make American governments better able to serve the people's needs by making governmental operations and services more efficient and rational. Rather than making legal arguments against ten hour workdays for women, he used "scientific principles" and "data produced by social scientists documenting the high costs of long working hours for both individual society." Reforms included:
Professional administrators
Many progressives argued that governments would function better if they were placed under the direction of trained, professional administrators. (This practice is derided by some opponents as the "nanny state," and more cynically is seen by some as the inclination toward the rise of dictators, the ultimate government professional.) One example of progressive reform was the rise of the city manager system, in which paid, professional administrators ran the day-to-day affairs of city governments under guidelines established by elected city councils.
Centralization of decision-making process
Many progressives sought to make government more rational through centralized decision-making. Governments were reorganized to reduce the number of officials and to eliminate overlapping areas of authority between departments. City governments were reorganized to reduce the power of local wards within the city and to increase the powers of the city council. Governments at every level began developing budgets to help them plan their expenditures (rather than spending money haphazardly as needs arose and revenue became available). The drive for centralization was often associated with the rise of professional administrators.
Movements to eliminate governmental corruption
Corruption represented a source of waste and inefficiency in government. Many progressives worked to clean up local governments by eliminating the power of machine politicians and urban political bosses. Often this was associated with the effort to restructure the ward system. Power was transferred from urban bosses to professional administrators.
Barack Obama names a Chief Performance Officer, creating an office whose entire design is to increase the efficiency of Government and its spending. Again, he has always been for the usage of technology for the purpose of transparency, he has set up a cabinet and administrative style of focused professionals and technocrats.
My own education in early progressivism also talks about a need for building infrastructure, a key plank to Obama's platform.
In the meantime, we're still looking at someone who actually speaks to the Healthcare issue-- enough so that the people may push him further than he'd like to go on the subject.
So Obama hasn't legitimized gay marriage or populated the cabinet with pure, hard-left liberals-- so he's dared to turn the other cheek regarding Lieberman.
We're leaving an administration that practices policies you'd see done during the Taft era.
Maybe, just maybe, we need him to be an old fashioned progressive, this very moment, while the future progressives continue to lay the groundwork for the continuance of the movement. Be happy we've got someone who not only takes his work seriously but convinces the country he actually knows what he's doing.