Counterpoint: I'm Okay, My President's Neck Is Okay

Quick retort to the previous entry, which seems to suffer from the persistent refusal to acknowledge the institutional realities that has been such a hallmark of progressive thought over the last year. I’ll see your HuffPo and raise you an Andrew Sullivan.

Here’s what has happened: a liberal Democratic president has just passed universal health insurance. No Democratic president has done something like that since Johnson. It is designed to show that government can do something real and tangible for the working poor. And in that respect, its impact on the political culture will be deep and lasting…

My suspicion is that… this new landmark for liberalism will reorient American politics the way Reagan’s first year did — profoundly. I may be wrong and I will be accountable for this judgment. But the age demands government action. And Obama is doing as much of it as consensually and as civilly but as ruthlessly as he can.

Why so pragmatic and centrist? Because he wants it all to last.

There is also this, from TNR’s Jonathan Chait, on the subject of employment:

Obama’s trickiest dilemma is that the public does not agree with — or, to put it less charitably, understand — the basis for his anti-recession strategy. Whatever your view of deficits, they clearly make more sense during a recession than during an expansion, when deficit spending can help fuel overheated growth. The trouble is, public opinion tends to get loose with the purse strings during boom times and tight during recessions, which is the opposite of what you want. During the 1990s boom, the public favored expanded social spending and tax cuts over paying down the national debt. Today, by overwhelming margins, they favor an immediate balanced budget, even in the face of economic catastrophe.

That is, of course, insane. But Republicans have taken full advantage of the public’s fiscal insanity.

Would we all love to live in a world where compromise was unnecessary, where acknowledging political realities didn’t require strategy and incrementalism? Sure, why the hell not? Do we? Maybe in Kucinich-land. The rest of us are stuck here. And guess what the alternative is? Actually, you don’t have to guess. Look back at the last eight years.