Change the World – Nellie McKay
Subtle Changes – Sambassadeur
Change – Lightning Seeds
The newest cool thing to do in the Left–leaning blogosphere is to freak out about how Obama isn’t going to live up to expectations, or will fail to carry out a progressive presidency. A similar current runs through the more mainstream media where they love to talk about how his appointments run counter to the “change” mantle on which he ran. Rahm Emanuel in particular has been a focus of such criticisms. “He’s not change.” “He worked with Clinton.” “He’s like, totally partisan.” “He hates the 50 state strategy.” And so on.
My response to both of these camps is that they need to chill out. I know we don’t have a ton of information to go on right now, and we’re in full election withdrawal mode so every little thing we can find has to be analyzed to death, but sometimes things are a lot less complicated than people make them out to be.
So how does this comport with the idea of “change”? There are two answers. One is simple (and in my mind sufficient). The other is complicated and gets into a long tangent about what the Obama administration is really going to be about.
The first one revolves around the simple point that what people really care about is getting things done. In their mind, “change” doesn’t mean changing everything. It means changing the stuff that’s broken. Marc Ambinder characterizes it thus: the people complaining “may be conflating the direction of policy with the peopling of the administration.” From this perspective, partisanship isn’t bad because there’s some inherent morality to compromise, but rather because it gets in the way of actually fixing problems. Change thus can mean: no more stupid wars, and an administration that will pay attention to fixing your problems. The process by which that happens will matter a lot less than it actually happening.
And that’s why having people like Emanuel around is important. He’s competent. He knows the ins and outs of the White House. He knows the Democratic caucus. He’s not likely to make dumb mistakes on Day One. He’ll be ruthless in pressing the agenda and putting people in line. In short, Obama has an agenda and Emanuel’s job will be to help get it through.
Now, I think that’s a sufficient answer. But there’s also a second element here, an even more basic one.
From reading the campaign stories, from his books, from basically all available information, one defining characteristic of Obama is his interest in seeing issues from multiple perspectives. I know the hard-core leftist blogs don’t like it – because it reflects a refusal to participate in ideological campaigns – but this is just part of Obama’s personality. It’s not going to change, no matter how much you rail against it. And frankly, I’m glad for it. It’s what made his campaign so outstanding, and hopefully what will make him an excellent president. He simply doesn’t think in absolute terms. No person is simply their ideology. No issue is so clear that it can be put aside without examination.
What is interesting is the way you can counterpoise this with another defining characteristic of the Obama campaign: the almost unworldly degree of discipline they displayed. They stayed on message, they rode out the ups and downs, they identified their path to victory and they pursued it with incredible determination.
These two things are, in one sense, completely at odds with each other. On the one hand you have an obsession with nuance and flexibility – a recognition that the world is endlessly complex and every issue must be revisited. In short: the perspective of a scholar. On the other hand you have an intense focus, a refusal to go off message, a capacity to keep their eyes on the prize and ignore all the little bumps along the way. Or, more bluntly, the hard-nosed perspective of a party operative like Emanuel.
However, the contradiction is not quite what it seems. Because the one unifying current that runs through both of these ideas is a deep sense of pragmatism. You treat issues as complicated because they are complicated. And yet you recognize that the art of government necessitates acting upon them, in a measured, considered, and directed fashion.
It’s a delicate arrangement, and can quite easily tip into vacillation and an ineffectual presidency on the one side, or into a sort of purely political game-playing that characterized the Clinton years on the other. Keeping a balance between the two, then, has always seemed to be one of Obama’s main priorities. My impressions is that his natural inclination is always to stray toward the former, and that is precisely why he surrounds himself with people who will push for the latter.
The thing that drives the lefty blogs nuts is that neither of these reflects their own perspective: a zeal for progressive causes and a commitment to put these issues front and foremost at every opportunity.
And that criticism is fair, but I think it is too often deployed in Manichean terms, as if the only possible worlds are “progressive government” or “siding with the establishment.” In some ways, this dichotomy ends up replicating precisely the same tropes as the mainstream media they so love to criticize.
To explain: in my mind, the real difference between Obama and Joe Netroots is a matter of form vs. content. The traditional approach assumes that it’s all about results. Talk is fine, but if it doesn’t produce results, who cares? What really makes a difference is where rubber meets the road. This is why you get the profound derision for any Democrat who plays into “right wing frames” or gives up an inch on matters of contest.
In contrast, Obama believes (very genuinely, I think) that the process by which we produce policy matters almost as much as the actual details. That’s why he is so utterly not an ideologue. Despite having fairly liberal beliefs on most issues, he appears to have a great skepticism for politics where people start from ideology. In Obama’s world, nothing at the level of policy is fixed absolutely. Instead, you delve deeply to discover shared principles and then work from there. It’s about starting from the premise of consensus rather than conflict.
That’s what makes it “new.” That’s the “change” he’s talking about. And that’s what neither the lefty blog folks nor the mainstream folks ever seem to quite grapple with. They treat the form as completely irrelevant. It’s all about the material product. “Show me the beef” and all that. But Obama simply doesn’t seem to think that way. Content matters, obviously, but the form is not simply theatrics. For him, it really matters. The way that you approach these issues influences in profound and game-changing ways the product you eventually end up with.
If you accept that, then it suddenly makes a lot of sense why he might appoint people unpopular with the traditional progressive folks, even if he remains committed to pursuing relatively liberal policies. Because when you treat form as important, it also has to be part of the internal administrative process. It’s not simply a tool that can be deployed haphazardly when it’s convenient, or a winter coat that can be cast aside once you return to the warm confines of the oval office. It has to be embedded in the very methods of Obama and his inner circle. And that’s what Emanuel is there for. As I pointed out above, he’s the counterweight, the guy who will keep this from spinning out into nothingness. But more than that, he’s the guy who won’t always agree, who will tell him that they should go out and knock heads, who will yell and scream sometimes. He’s one example of the larger project that Obama has pursued: one where ideological purity is far less important than a shared commitment to the process of simply getting things done.
To give a broader picture, I encourage you to think about what it would mean if we take Obama seriously when he talks about this stuff. With that in mind, reconsider his call for a new kind of politics: a transcendence of “red states” and “blue states.” When most people hear this, they immediately assume he must be talking about “bipartisanship” or “governing from the center.” But bipartisanship still presumes the divide. And “the center” is an imaginary place, one that always seems to be full of whatever issues the speaker personally happens to care about.
But Obama isn’t saying that. Instead he literally is talking about a different way of conceiving politics.
I know, I know. That sounds goofy and messianic. But bear with me. I don’t mean to make it sound like it’s a radical break or something utterly foreign. In fact, that is precisely what it is NOT. The problem is that people hear a phrase like “new kind of politics” and they assume we must be talking about grand gestures and sweeping changes. And that’s not it at all. Rather, it’s a very simple reappropriation of pragmatism. What makes it “new” is simply that it allows for a wide swath of gray areas. It is a recognition that on a whole swath of issues it will be impossible to generate consensus. It’s a call to jettison the endless game of tug of war where the issue is pulled back and forth from team to team over the years. You don’t fight tooth and nail for the idealized version of a policy – you fight tooth and nail for a policy that will produce genuine good results. But even more than that, you fight tooth and nail to generate a provisional consensus.
The idea is not to find a “better than nothing” compromise that enough people will grudgingly support. It’s to take ownership of the debate in such a way that the rigid beliefs and ideas are given even the tiniest bit of freedom to roam about.
Put another way, Obama doesn’t want to govern from “the center,” he wants to govern from “what’s best for the country.” And, in his mind, what’s best for the country looks quite progressive. It’s an attempt to blow up the whole notion of “the center” and replace it with an approach where politics is driven by policy debates rather than inchoate ideas.
And the thing is, that this way of approaching politics is, of course, intensely progressive. It’s all about openness to new ideas, to new possibilities. It is the almost literal embodiment of “change” insofar as it treats all things as susceptible to improvement. And that’s where the (faint, but perhaps real) kernel of true transformation may lie. Because if it works (and that’s certainly a big if) it has the potential to be a Trojan Horse for a huge progressive change to politics. But it won’t be a change that happens because of an election, or even in a few elections. It will just be a change in how we think and talk about politics. It will take hold not because people consciously decide so, but instead because of a whole series of minute, almost imperceptible little changes in the way people think.
Obviously, the account I’ve just given is idealized. No one (least of all me) thinks that it can survive the rough and tumble of day to day politics completely intact. Of course Obama is going to make decisions out of cold, calculated political ruthlessness. Of course he is not going to really let every perspective be part of the conversation. Of course the Habermasian ideal speech situation that would be necessary to perfectly actualize this account is purely hypothetical. And it’s possible that I’ve just been completely hoodwinked and Obama is simply Clinton mark II with a new catchphrase about hope.
But I think the issues I’ve raised are legitimate, and that they provide a window into the perspective of the campaign right now. And if the folks at Open Left want to freak out about him associating with Clintonites (funny how the left is worried about his corporate buddies in precisely the same way the right was worried about him having brunch with William Ayers), they should consider that there are explanations that do not comport with their intensely ideological account. Similarly, if the mainstream mediates of the world want to constantly talk about how Obama has promised a “new form of politics” and judge every tiny decision through that prism, they would do well to consider what biases they are bringing to the table.
Both sets remain committed to their personal take on politics, where it’s all still about conflict. And I think they would improve their accounts of the situation if they at least tried to imagine that Hope isn’t about gamesmanship (or, that it isn’t only about that), but in fact Obama might genuinely think beyond the immutability of partisan divisions.
65 million people just voted for Obama, many of them because they genuinely supported not just his policies but also his approach to politics. I think we owe it to ourselves and each other to at least stop and consider what it might mean if he actually meant what he was saying. Not if he meant it in the constrained, simple way its usually talked about. But if he meant it in the transformative way it was framed.
Maybe it doesn’t change the underlying grittiness of politics, but perhaps it can offer a different perspective on the few cabinet decisions that are trickling out.
