Like it or not, the US Constitution demands that our president play multiple roles.
Most of the internecine arguments I see around here on Daily Kos focus strictly on the role of Chief Executive: president as policy maker.
But there are important arguments -- both philosophical and pragmatic -- for treating other presidential duties just as seriously as the executive duties.
Our Head of State is our country's "face" as seen by the outside world, and our National Leader is, ideally, the chief representative of all of us.
As much as we progressives would like to pretend otherwise, Barack Obama is the leader, not just of the middle class and oppressed, but also of those who believe in trickle-down economics, jingoistic foreign policy, and "traditional" values.
This does not mean he should blindly acquiesce to their perspectives. But, as national leader, it is his job to listen authentically to their concerns, to be genuinely open to their perspectives, and, yes, sometimes to compromise.
Progressives, if anyone, ought to recognize the destructive effects of a president who is too arrogant and patronizing to listen to opposing ideas.
GW Bush failed miserably as both a head of state and national leader. His go-it-alone approach to foreign policy effectively alienated the majority of the outside world, leaving the homeland less secure. And his pronounced disdain for local political adversaries left more than half of us feeling like we had no leader capable of empathizing with, or even considering, our point of view.
Barack Obama is clearly committed to reviving the roles of National Leader and Head of State.
It's understandable that his fiercest critics on the left tend to forget these forgotten duties. A diary here today champions the Bush administration's prowess in forcing its ideological ball "80 yards down-field." But the diarist fails to mention that Bush and Cheney's executive-heavy "progress" was destined to be reversed by history -- not only because so many of their policies turned out to be destructive, but also because their disdain for opposing viewpoints was cancerous to the American process.
The job of head of state is an inherently conservative position. It's just not the same as, say, being a community organizer. To be an effective national leader one needs to convey a sense of being solid, not rash, and capable of judiciously considering diverse points of view.
Call Obama naive if you like, but all evidence points to a deep insight on his part into the limitations of football-style politics. All evidence points to someone determined to forge a new (or rediscovered) political culture in which policy is not determined by an unstable pendulum fueled by hatred and disdain.
Obama is often labeled a "moderate" because of his unwillingness to use all the executive tools at his disposal to force through as progressive an agenda as possible. I think this label misses the man. Merely on a pragmatic level, he's intelligent enough to avoid skin-deep successes that are likely to be reversed sooner or later, or cause unforeseen consequences. E.g., his slow-walking of the DADT repeal, no doubt, is helping ensure that an old-guard military leadership doesn't feel ignored and disrespected. Ultimately, they will be able live with the eventual repeal because they will feel that their values and concerns were not thoughtlessly trampled.
Yes, Obama could throw the long ball. But he knows doing so could weaken or even destroy his presidency and, in the process, set back the progressive agenda.
I know. Healing a political culture that has been on life support for decades is a formidable task. After watching the GOP's obstructionist spectacle this past year; after watching the lies of Hannity, Beck, Palin, et al; after watching the racist Teabaggers' accusations that our country has been stolen by a foreign influence; after watching Cheney, Giuliani et al accuse Obama of appeasing terrorists; and after watching progressive critics who are convinced Obama is nothing more than an incrementalist wimp; it's awfully tempting to just give up. The easy approach for a politician these days is to just play the ball where it lies, making no attempt to alter the playing field.
But that's not what real leaders do. And Obama is not giving up. He is determined to keep plugging away at his long-term, big-picture goals at the same time he tackles policy. Anyone who has followed his career knows that it's just silly to accuse him of being an ideological moderate. I.e., if he could implement policy with a magic wand -- and, at the same time, convince skeptics of the rightness of his policy (so that the policy would be solid and long-lasting) -- yes, of course, he would do it (like he said he would prefer a single-payer healthcare system if he were building one from scratch). But he's very aware of the practical dangers of executive-heavy leadership.
And, more so, he knows it's un-American.
He knows he must remain steadfast in his commitment to be leader of the entire country.
Personally, I think the obstructionist strategy of the opposition is similar to terrorism. The goal is to get Obama to abandon his deeply held convictions about what America can and should be. But terrorism is only effective if it causes us to bow to fear and lose our core beliefs. I think the "loyal opposition" (not) has seriously underestimated Obama in thinking they could knock him off track. I think he will, by and large, stick to his vision of a renewed political culture because it is core to who he is, and because he remembers (even if we forget) that this is one of the biggest reasons we elected him.
As he steadfastly demonstrates, year after year, that he sincerely sees value in listening to diverse points of view, his detractors simply will not be able to sustain the narrative that he's trampling on everyone else's worldview.
Now, I'm not going to address every specific progressive complaint against Obama here, but I realize some people might find it ironic that I'm arguing he is in the process of re-balancing the executive/head-of-state duties by, apparently, maintaining odious executive powers (see Gitmo, Miranda, etc). But please consider my larger argument. You and I may think that a more sweeping and immediate change in policy makes more sense. But a significant percentage of Americans would be profoundly troubled, alienated, and fearful of what they see as a surrender to our enemies.
I do think Obama takes his head-of-state role seriously -- which is in keeping with his long-held value of recognizing -- and even learning from -- opposing perspectives. But even if you think he's tilting at windmills with his devotion to forging a healthier political culture, there is every reason to believe that his strategy of openess, purely on a pragmatic level, is leading to more substantive and lasting progressive change -- even if ten yards at a time -- than throwing righteous long balls designed to impress the base whether or not doing so puts any permanent points on the board.