I seem to have a habit of writing comments to diaries that get way too long-winded, and need to be promoted to full-fledged diaries. In this case, I was commenting Bob Johnson's rec-listed diary "Oh no! Obama's a Blue Dog (or whatever)!", and my comment got to over 600 words. Bob expresses his surprise about others who are surprised that Obama hasn't turned out to be more liberal, since his political positioning as a centrist has been clear all along.
I agree with Bob, but there's something about Obama that I really didn't expect and it has left me quite disappointed -- and as I argue further down, it has left our national political converation in a dangerous state. The text of the erstwhile comment comes after the jump.
My surprise has been that I thought we liberals were invited to the "post-partisan" party. But all of my perceptions during the Obama administration have been that the ideal of "post-partisanship" exclusively means expressing sympathy for and attempting to forge compromises with conservatives, not with liberals.
Yes, Bob is right that Obama has never positioned himself as someone who is liberal as most Kossacks. That shouldn't be a surprise. The fact that he seeks compromise with the opposition was also very much on display, in fact it was presented as his greatest strength, as a unifying leader. (I think that it's a powerful element of his self-image, extremely difficult for him to let go of, and it renders him off-guard and unable to cope with an opposition that obstructs all the time; but that's a subject for another diary).
What has really surprised me is this: If Obama's philosophy is that "there's something understandable and potentially valuable about everyone's political worldview", then to me it seemed just obvious that this is true of the liberal worldview as well. Finally, I thought, an American leader who, while he might not implement every liberal policy we hope for, can be counted on to show some respect for our ideas, letting us have a place in the discussion. He is a Democrat, after all, someone who inspired the liberal base, and if he means what he says, then of course he's not going disdain everything liberal just because it's liberal, of course he will counter the knee-jerk rejection of liberalism by articulating the merits of liberal policies and viewpoints, of course he's not going to cringe and run away from everyone and everything called "liberal", as so many Democrats have been doing for so long. After all, he's always expressing understanding for conservatives; it seemed only natural to me that he'd do it for us as well.
Indeed, just the other day he was saying that conservative economic canards (the kind I regard as utter nonsense) are as "American as apple pie". And I suppose some commenter will trot out examples of Obama defending liberals to prove me wrong, but the fact is that these are my perceptions and perceptions are what they are: I have not perceived Barack Obama expressing understanding and sympathy for liberal ideas even remotely as often as he does for conservatives. In my view, it's not even close.
The worst part of this is that the merits of liberal policy ideas hardly ever enter the national discussion, and after they're abandoned by Democrats, particulary by Obama himself, they're dismissed as radical and unthinkable, no matter what the merits might have been. For the past two years I've been reading Krugman on the economy, Ezra Klein on health care, and various other experts setting forth what I see as very sound reasoning for policies that fall under the label "liberal". Meanwhile, the conservatives have descended into dogmatic, fact-free, irrational ravings. I always expected that Obama, because of the political ecumenicism he said he believes in, may realize that he can't implement all of our policy ideas, but at least he could articulate the merits that recommend them. At least then, the arguments in their favor would become a part of the conversation, part of our national awareness, and the risks of leaving them aside for the sake of compromise would be evident.
Is that difficult to do, for some reason? "Here's a good idea, it may not get through Congress, but it's good nevertheless for the following reasons ...". There, that was entirely normal, wasn't it? If the President values ideological compromise as much as he says, what's wrong with acknowledging the strengths of the various ideas including the ones that might lose out in the political horse-trading? Doesn't he do that for Republicans all the time? Again, by my perceptions, he does that for them far and away more than he does it for us.
The result is that, despite the merits, the liberal ideas become marginalized as radical, unachievable and even disloyal, while the ravings of the right become mainstream, "serious", and a test of your patriotism. This has made the current state of the national conversation crazier and frankly more dangerous than I can ever remember (maybe McCarthyism was worse, but that was before my time). It's where I think Obama's leadership has come up short; it's precisely the opposite of what I thought his leadership would accomplish.