E.J. Dionne Jr. writes about the problems with liberalism in the United States. First lets look at what President Obama has accomplished in two years.
And, yes, there is the small issue of Obama’s real achievements, the health-care law, above all. If insuring 32 million more Americans is not an enormous social reform, then nothing can be said to count as change. The now well-rehearsed list of additional accomplishments – from Wall Street and student-loan reform to the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell” to the simple fact that the economy’s catastrophic slide was halted and reversed – would, in the abstract, do any administration proud.
Then Dionne gets into the Fringe Left’s complaints that Obama hasn’t done enough.
For the left to ask Obama to be bolder in testing the limits of the possible means it is doing its job of pushing the president to do more, and to do it faster. Conservatives have mastered this approach. Why can’t liberals do the same?
Agreed. My biggest problem with the Obama Administration is that they stopped campaigning. Maybe it’s the dichotomy of governing and campaigning, however the administration needed to be out there selling what it was doing and not depend on the hapless Reid. But, where I diverge from the Fringe Left is saying that the Obama Presidency is an abject failure. If nothing else, the Fringe Left is all but adding to the stereotype that liberals are inherently negative.
But too often progressives have spent more time complaining about what wasn’t done than in finding ways to build on what has been achieved. It took decades to complete the modern Social Security system and years to move from tepid to robust civil rights laws and from modest to comprehensive environmental regulation. Impatience is indispensable to getting reform started; patience is essential to seeing its promise fulfilled.
So, the Fringe Left has a decision to make. Do you work with the Obama Administration and try to get more of your agenda passed? Or do you throw the baby out with the bathwater when you don’t get what you want, because President Palin would be a much better choice?