IT'S HARD TO THINK OF A POLITICAL PHENOMENON...:

Where's the Party of Ideas? (Michael Gerson, September 11, 2009, Washington Post)

This failure of imagination was on full display during Barack Obama's address to Congress. In a moment that demanded new policy to cut an ideological knot, or at least new arguments to restart the public debate, Obama saw fit to provide neither. His health speech turned out to be an environmental speech, devoted mainly to recycling. On every important element of his health proposal, he chose to double down and attack the motives of opponents. (Obama was the other public official who talked of a "lie" that evening.) Concerns about controlling health costs, the indirect promotion of abortion and the effect of a new entitlement on future deficits were dismissed but not answered. On health care, Obama takes his progressivism pure and simplistic.

The emotional core of the speech was a closing request to win one for Ted Kennedy -- an appeal that seemed designed to rally Democrats rather than unite Americans. And that clearly is now the goal. Eke out 60 Senate votes for passage, or perhaps 50 using the riding crop of "reconciliation." Victory without concession (except, maybe, on the already doomed public option). Victory without consensus.

This is the most consistent disappointment of Obama's young term. Given a historic opportunity to occupy the political center, to blur ideological lines, to reset the partisan debate through unexpected innovation, Obama has taken the most tired, most predictable agenda in American politics -- the agenda of congressional liberalism -- and made it his own. Elected on the promise to transcend old arguments of left and right, Obama has systematically reinforced them on domestic issues. A pork-laden stimulus. A highly centralized health reform. Eight months into Obama's term, American politics is covered in the cobwebs of past controversies. Obama has supporters, but he has ceased trying for converts.

This should surprise no one. Obama did not rise on Bill Clinton's political path -- the path of a New Democrat, forced to win and govern in a red state.

...that's been repeated more regularly without being understood than the way the two party bases react to the new ideas. After all, Margaret thatcher was forced from office by the Tories, not the people. Ditto her heir, Tony Blair, by Labour. Bill Clinton was only able to succeed with the help of the GOP--on trade bills, deficit reduction and Welfare Reform--not his own party, which blew itself up pushing the Second Way. Meanwhile, George W. Bush handed his party three unprecedented election victories and passage of most of the big ideas they'd fought decades for--school vouchers, HSAs, etc.--but the Congressional GOP turned on him savagely over Dubai ports, Harriet Miers, immigration reform, the bank bailout, etc., costing themselves two elections and clearing the way for Barack Obama.

Comes now President Obama, who was smart enough to run to John McCain's Right, as Bill Clinton had run to GHWB's. But the very fact of winning seems to have done to him what it did to Mr. Clinton, convince him he can govern as a retrograde figure rather than the reformer he promised. And he can't embrace the new ideas because they are too closely associated with despised figures like W, Tony Blair and President Clinton for his own party to accept them. He finds himself exactly where his predecessor was in 1993, dependent on the slaughter of his own party at the midterm so that he can work with the Republican Congress to pass an agenda consistent with the Third Way.

America is the ultimate Red State and to govern it he'll need to ape the later Clinton Years and the Blair premiership, becoming what his own party hates.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 12, 2009 7:37 AM