I do get tired feeling like I have to be a constant defender of Obama, but there really seems to be a total lack of perspective about his presidency and what it means to progressive politics.
First, let's look at just one aspect of the stakes involved in Obama remaining in office for another six plus years. Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a book party for Linda Greenhouse, the New York Times' longtime Supreme Court reporter. Greenhouse is quite simply one of the finest journalists of the last generation, a person who, without being a lawyer, mastered the intricacies of constitutional and Supreme Court litigation, and managed to convey this knowledge in remarkably concise and precise prose. She was so well respected in her work that seven of the nine Supreme Court Justices attended a retirement party in her honor when she finally left the Times. She earned this respect while never sacrificing a bit of her journalistic integrity (a phrase that is not inherently ironic, even if it seems to be these days).
Greenhouse has a new book out, Before Roe v. Wade, that documents the state of the abortion debate in the years preceding the Roe v. Wade decision. (Greenhouse is an unapologetic supported of Roe by the way.) The book is largely a compilation of original documents from the pre-Roe era, including everything from philosophical statements for and against legalized abortion, to campaign memoranda from Pat Buchanan suggesting how Nixon could use abortion to his advantage, to individual stories regarding the hardships imposed by the restrictions on abortion that existed prior to Roe.
Greenhouse did a lengthy Q and A session with us and when asked if Chief Justice Roberts would look to overturn Roe v. Wade -- not distinguish it away, not slowly chip away at it, but reverse it -- she answered unequivocally that if he could get the fifth vote he would do it in a heartbeat. In a heartbeat. She is confident that he has three votes to join him and that all it will take is a Republican presidency and a Court vacancy.for him to be able to accomplish this.
When the most acute observer of the Court for the last generation tells you something like this, I think it is worth taking very seriously. These are the kinds of stakes for which we are playing over the next few years, and it is why I am so concerned about the state of mind of the progressive community as we gird for battle in the mid-terms and thereafter.
Let's review again what Obama has accomplished in 18 months: A stimulus bill that has created or preserved 2.8 million jobs. (Was it big enough? Clearly not. Would co-presidents Snowe and Collins have permitted a bigger bill? Probably not.) The apparent preservation of General Motors and Chrysler and the domestic auto industry. The avoidance of a collapse of the financial markets -- and at far less cost than initially forecast. A health care reform bill that should result in 30 million people becoming insured and the transformation of the basic rules under which people are insured. No, it's not single payer. But the expansion of Medicaid, the additional money for community health centers, the provision of subsidies to middle class people to buy insurance, the elimination of pre-existing condition clauses, the banning of rescission, the removal of annual and lifetime maximums, the requirement that certain services be provided without co-pays or deductibles, the ability to keep your children on your insurance through age 26 -- these are huge accomplishments. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. And on deck -- Don't ask, Don't Tell repeal and financial regulation reform. (I liked this comment and post at Balloon Juice the other day.)
And all being done by a guy who is intelligent, level-headed, and secure in himself. (Let me digress for a minute -- Maureen Dowd has written some of the most execrable drivel in the Times over the last few months about Obama's insufficient emoting and his unforgivable failure to love the press. But this piece by Charles Blow on Saturday might have been the worst thing I've read during Obama's term to date:
He’s the emotionally maimed type who lights up when he’s stroked and adored but shuts down in the face of acrimony. Other people’s anxieties are dismissed as irrational and unworthy of engagement or empathy. He seems quite comfortable with this aspect of his personality, even if few others are, and shows little desire to change it.
This just strikes me as the complete opposite of reality. Obama, in my estimation, appears to be the most emotionally healthy occupant of the White House since Eisenhower. He doesn't appear to desperately crave being stroked and appears non-plussed by the unbelievable vitriol thrown his way. Indeed, it is his seeming lack of concern regarding the opinion of the Dowds of the world that drive them crazy. I think that he tries to avoid getting overly caught up in the craziness of the 24-hour news cycle and tries to keep his eyes on the prize, advancing his agenda patiently and deliberately.
In closing, let's reflect a bit on what the last Democratic occupant of the Oval Office allowed to occur on his watch -- the passage of Glass-Steagall repeal, NAFTA, the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, Welfare Reform, the Defense of Marriage Act, the adoption of Don't Ask, Don't Tell as policy -- not to mention the triangulating, and the rhetorical disaster that was "the era of big government is over."
We need to make sure that we avoid a 1994 type election in the mid-terms and we need to remind ourselves that, whatever his shortcomings, this man in the White House is, for better or worse, the vehicle on which any reasonable hope of liberal progress lies.
