21 months. Is that really how long it took to elect the next leader of the sometimes free world? We know that the Bush administration is leaving some pretty big shoes to fill (or is it that they gave America concrete shoes?), but asking that kind of commitment to a person, let alone a political party, was more than many of us could bear. If the electorate woke up naked in a dumpster with a pounding headache and bruises all over its body after the Democratic primary finally came to a close, it’s closer to being permanently blinded with forcibly amputated limbs now. As before, it is our solemn duty to assess damages, ask hard questions, posit solutions to unsolvable puzzles and construct a chronology of the terrible events that led us to this point in history. Then, like our forefathers before us, we will die of exhaustion.
Finally: With jackasses in charge of the White House for the first time in eight years, how much “change” can we really expect?
Yes we did. But with victory comes responsibilities – and culpability. The sum of the nation’s woes can no longer be blamed on George W. Bush or the Republican Party. When things go wrong, they’ll be laid at the feet of president Barack Obama and his nearly veto-proof majority of liberal allies in Congress. If the victory is, as Ambrose Evans-Pritchard put it, “the revenge of the left across the world,” it is a poor revenge. It has been speculated – and not without reason – that Obama senses the enormity of the task before him. He is, from all credible accounts, blessed with usually inward insight for a politician, sensitive to his own abilities and faults. And in 2006, when he was still considering his run for president, long before the country reached its current precipitous state, the Senator from Illinois certainly wasn’t taking the position lightly:
For the meeting, Rouse had prepared a list of six questions. The third question was: “Are you intimidated about being the leader of the free world?” Obama had a ready answer: “Who wouldn’t be?”
But understanding and action are distinct entities. For Barack Obama’s predecessor, they were often mutually exclusive. He comes into power at a time when the role of the nation’s leader has been fundamentally compromised, where the parameters of the office have been reshaped into that of a unitary executive, accountable to no one over anything. Like the mythic Wild West sheriffs George W. Bush wishes he could be, the president is the law, and so, above it. Obama, a former professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago, faces the onerous chore of reconstituting the Constitution. Thankfully, he appears to be up to the challenge. Less than a week after winning the election, Obama’s transition team has already compiled a list of 200 actions and executive orders that spewed forth from the White House in the past eight years. Some changes will be enacted immediately upon assuming power; others, due to their political sensitivity, will have to wait.
There will be laserlike focus on calming the lurching economy in the early weeks, or months, of the Obama administration. During Obama’s first press conference, held Friday, the president-elect volunteered another stimulus package, this time targeting the middle class and poor, which he will attempt to shoehorn through Congress’ lame duck session, but, if stalled, will be “the first thing I get done as president of the United States.” Considering how much of his outstanding lead over John McCain in the final stretch of the campaign was directly related to the economy, both his press conference and reaffirmation of its priority in his political future indicate he’ll at least give the outward appearance of trying to keep his promises to America (caterwauling from Rush Limbaugh about the “Obama recession” notwithstanding).
In another stark departure from the venerable role model and current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania, Obama appears to be making important appointments at least somewhat based on relevant qualifications, rather than by the obscene cronyism that gave a grateful nation FEMA head and Arabian horse enthusiast Michael Brown. Politics being politics, Obama’s approach is more akin to guarded nepotism, with appointments and potential appointments that strongly favor Democratic allies. Meanwhile, lobbyists will have no quarter in the White House. Okay, maybe some quarter. Fine! The lobbyists working with Obama’s transition team won’t be able to lobby the agencies they’re helping set up… for one year. It’s not exactly a revolution in the way Washington, D.C. operates, but as a mostly symbolic baby step away from the status quo, it will keep select barbarians away from the gates until the contracts they signed expire.
Barack Obama is making great headway towards being the competent administrator the country needs (if not a black Jesus who will heal the sick, raise the dead, walk on water and create green jobs from a single loaf of bread). Still, of equal or greater importance in the direction of the country lies with Democratic party apparatuses and the legislative bodies in which they currently enjoy the upper hand. Perhaps the greatest apparatchik Dems have in their arsenal is Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, whose tireless rallying of the grassroots and enactment of his 50-state strategy were key – along with Obama himself, of course – in rebuilding the party. His ceaseless labor extended the reach of the DNC to areas of the country that had been written off as hopeless, because Dean understands the potential for increased influence in future election cycles. The party would do well to continue to implement his philosophy after he relinquishes his position.
Congressional leadership has proven to be more problematic – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi are emblematic of the Bush-era Democratic establishment, impotent to enforce the mandate that restored power to their branch of government. It’s no coincidence that both Reid and Pelosi initially opposed Dean’s chairmanship in the DNC. Their congenital caution prevented Democrats from effectively playing the role of the opposition party against the most unpopular American president in recent history after he had been reduced to lame-duck status. That’s truly impressive: it takes grit and determination to accomplish such refined mediocrity. However, with their party now flush with victory, it seems unlikely that power will be changing hands anytime soon.
The questions, then, are these: Now that political conditions are as friendly as they’ve ever been, can Reid and Pelosi capitalize on it and turn from intra-congressional politicking to legislative accomplishments? What is the unvarnished power the duo holds over their own ranks and fairweather allies, can wield against opponents who suddenly find themselves at great disadvantage and in selling their agenda to the American people? Can they shape events to favor the Democratic Party, instead of relying on faith in eventual victory and the political contratemps on their enemies? How much goodwill can they siphon off of the president-elect during his honeymoon period with the press, the country and the world? These are questions that need to be asked. With their respective political track records over the last two years noticeably pockmarked, Reid and Pelosi are deserving of every hard question asked and doubt raised.
It wasn’t so long ago that Congressional Democrats were uprooted from their comfortable positions of majority rule by Newt Gingrich and his Contract With America All-Star Players. After decades of entrenchment on Capital Hill, the jackasses of yore were considered thoroughly corrupt, and during the 1994 midterm elections the American people used an influx of eager right-wingers as a referendum on the job the legislature was doing. The same thing happened in 2006, but with the roles now reversed. Power is never permanent, and poor leadership and shenanigans will only be tolerated by the electorate for so long. Modern Democrats should be emboldened to stand up for the principles of their party, but not so emboldened they begin to resemble their sometime oppressors. Because when politics becomes the means and the end, it’s not just the electability of individual politicians that suffers – America does too.
