I think Pierce is a little too starry-eyed about Obama’s part in all this, but whatever:
Watching the administration’s momentum fade on this issue is to see a president presented with the final, practical refutation of the speech that made him famous. It turns out there is a red America and a blue America. It turns out that there is a conservative America and a liberal America. It turns out that the things that divide us are stronger than the things that unite us. Or, at least, that the things that divide us are more politically salient than the things that unite us. The failure on guns is the last, final refutation of what Barack Obama said he believed about the people of this county.
It always depended on the notion that we were all together in the creative process of self-government. The fact is, most of us aren’t. Most of us have checked out. At the encouragement of two generations of ambitious politicians, we have accepted the notion that “government” is something alien, and therefore that it is something we cannot influence. You tell me that 91 percent of Americans support background checks. Wonderful. Put them on the ballot. They’ll pass, but only 40 percent of the eligible voters will bother to go to the polls, so where’s the danger to anyone in acting contrary to the expressed public will? Who does Mitch McConnell really fear in this particular controversy? He knows that there is a solid, active core of support behind the work he’s doing frustrating the expressed public will.
This is the fool’s gold that this president has been chasing ever since he broke onto the scene. He staked his entire career — and certainly, his entire presidency — on the notion that the right person at the right time could heal the “divisions” in our society — which, he told us, were not the real products of our politics, but the temporary fever dreams of a country led astray. The fact is that those “divisions” are our politics. They’re all we have, since we have determined as a political entity, that politics and government are a show, that nothing is permanent, that the scoreboard starts at zero every day. Who will win the morning?
Recently, Washington Monthly published the most important piece of public policy journalism that has appeared anywhere since Charlie Savage’s first dispatches in the Boston Globe describing the spelunking he’d done through the dark places in the Bush Administration’s national security apparatus. It was by Haley Sweetland Evans and it describes the diligent work done on behalf of the people who stole most of the world economy in 2008 and wrecked what was left to undermine even the moderate attempts of the Dodd-Frank legislation that sought to rein in merely some of the worst excesses. Read the thing. Gaze in awe. There was very close to a national consensus during the 2008 election that we’d all been the victims of obvious crimes. There was very close to a national consensus that something serious had to be done to keep the crooks from coming back for seconds. And the one expression of that consensus is steadily being picked apart by the very same crooks and their sublet hirelings in the Congress. This piece will make absolutely no difference to anyone. And there will be absolutely no price to be paid for any of it. And we’ll all treat the next collapse of the next economy as though it were a blizzard nobody saw coming, and nobody — least of all “the government” — was able to stop.
This is not cynicism. Honest to god, it’s not. Well, some of it is, but it’s more what I believe to be a realistic appraisal of what happens when, for private purposes, the citizens of a self-governing political commonwealth are estranged from the process of creating it. This process predates Barack Obama by several decades and it is now a permanent feature of our politics that will long outlast him. Nothing is permanent. The scoreboard is resetting to zero again, and the poor man should have run for president of a better country than this.
I’m not sure what he means. Are citizens “estranged from the process” when they keep petitioning the government, and the government does the opposite of what they ask? Seems to me that for the past ten years, citizens have been fighting as hard as they can (at least, without starting a war) to take our country back. Seems to me the fault lies with the money-grubbing, power-hungry empty suits of Capitol Hill, but that’s just me.
Normally, Charlie Pierce is as astute a political analyst as there lives and breathes, but I’m with you on this one, Suzie.
I’m not sure what he’s trying to say, either.
Ooops, I forgot to add that his commenters, who are on the whole a very insightful and funny bunch, seem to be largely disagreeing whith him on this one as well.
I agree, ‘we the people’ have stated loudly, clearly and often what policies are wanted. The Corporate owned politicians, and I’m including Obama here, have inevitably done the opposite. I do agree with Charlie on one thing and that’s as long as only 40% of those eligible actually get out and vote, politicians will see no downside to continuing to collect their big paychecks from the 1% parasites actually running the country. I’m afraid I have to side with Ted Rall call to civil disobedience as the only means left to implement the ‘public’s’ policy.
I don’t see where the confusion is, nor the disagreement. I think he’s being pretty clear and honest and saying the same thing most of us have been saying for quite a while – that the process of government has been hijacked and that there’s very little to fear from opposing the will of even an overwhelming majority. In most countries, a few days of protest outside the halls of government even by a relatively small (as a percentage of population) mob will cause a government to collapse. But not in America. Because even though 91% believe guns should be regulated and even though only 40% of them vote, almost none of them believe strongly enough that guns should be regulated to get them to change their vote against someone who supports their other important issues, such as preventing Obama from giving cell phones and Cadillacs to young bucks.
The article should perhaps be titled ‘The end of Pierce’s Illusions about Obama.’ The president’s actions have never aligned well with his hopey-changey rhetoric. We liberals accuse him of bargaining with himself. That he really wants more progressive policies, but he’s a bad negotiator. At what point must we call BS on this proposition? Obama’s policies have always originated right of center, and he has signed many pieces of legislature that have continued or strengthened the corrupt and regressive policies of the Bush administration.
“Are citizens “estranged from the process” when they keep petitioning the government, and the government does the opposite of what they ask?”
Yes, almost by definition. It doesn’t seem to me like you’re really disagreeing with Pierce- just phrasing the same problem in different ways. There can be both broad-based public apathy about the political process- due its trivialization/game-ification (not a word), and also a failure on the part of politicians to be responsive to those people who DO actively engage with the process.
I’m with drjimcooper – you’re both seeing symptoms of the same thing. I’ve been an independent voter for years – but that pretty much means I’m locked out of the process, so I switched to Dem – but even so, the national party filters the candidates and actually works against populist liberals. Until we break the lock that parties have on the election system we’ll be ruled by the gatekeepers.
Obama’s policies have always originated right of center, and he has signed many pieces of legislature that have continued or strengthened the corrupt and regressive policies of the Bush administration.
Absolutely this. I have never understood why a guy that clearly appeared to be an Eisenhower Republican from way back in his Senate days is expected to be Bernie Sanders. He may seem lefty because this country has gone absolutely nuts over the last decade, but Barack Obama is pretty conservative (in the non-insane sense of the word).
Guns are such an explosive issue that he won’t touch it with a 20 foot pole. He is too cautious a politician by his very nature.
Agree with all of the above. President Obama’s actual policies are far to the right of where his speeches might otherwise suggest.
And as long as only a small fraction of eligible voters actually vote, “politicians will see no downside to continuing to collect their big paychecks from the 1% parasites actually running the country.”
One million marchers in Washington won’t get their attention. Only votes will. Civil disobedience might be the only way to get those potential voters’ attention.
There seems to be a large change rather abruptly occurring in Democratic circles, and that’s the recognition of President Obama as a Clinton style middle-of-the-road moderate who sometimes veers rightward but rarely leftward.
We hoped against hope for The Man from Hope, and did the same with Obama, rationalizing all the way because they were buffeted by the Republican National Media (VSP), had a disorganized (and sometimes minority) party backing them, and were apparently frequently forced to compromise.
But it’s Maggie I hardly knew ya time again.
Okay, we say, politics is the art of compromise. But if so, why have Conservatives made a success of the politics of non-compromise?
Certainly the flow is shifting in our direction, what with the meme of the 1%, but the Tea Party and other Gullibles are petitioning and demonstrating just as actively, if not more so.
“Pity the Billionaire” by Thomas Frank shows the methodology.
A Southerner in Yankeeland