Eugene Robinson: America’s New Trajectory

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090302_robinson_obama_revolution/

America’s New Trajectory
Posted on Mar 3, 2009

White House / Pete Souza

President Obama reflects during a budget meeting.

By Eugene Robinson


Sometimes, it turns out, politicians can be taken at their word. More than a year ago, while campaigning for the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama told the Reno Gazette-Journal that “Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not, and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.” Reagan, he said, “put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.” The implication was that Obama, if elected, would be no less ambitious.

Just six weeks into his term, Obama has opened his bid to redraw the boundaries of our politics and expand the realm of the possible. Reagan shifted our whole political spectrum to the right, and now Obama intends to shift it to the left. Like Reagan, Obama senses that the nation is already moving in his direction, well ahead of its political leadership.

You’d think that Republicans who claim to idolize Reagan would recognize what’s happening, but they seem oblivious. After Obama gave his prime-time speech to Congress last week, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal began his response with a patronizing, cringe-worthy riff in which he congratulated the president on being the first African-American to hold the office—as if we hadn’t noticed. The governor went on to lay out a program that would have sounded bold and innovative if the year were 1978: lower taxes, smaller government, wave the flag, etc.

Obama’s speech was merely to set the stage. The week’s main event—and the most important act thus far of his already eventful presidency—was the $3.6 trillion budget he proposed two days later. The sums of money involved are so huge that commentators used up a year’s worth of adjectives: unprecedented, staggering, breathtaking. Ultimately, though, the numbers will mean less to history than the way Obama’s budget reorders the nation’s priorities and changes the relationship between Americans and their government.

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There’s a reason why Obama’s approval ratings remain so high. He senses that Americans yearn for greater fairness and accountability in our society, especially after the excesses that threaten to wreck our economy and destroy so many dreams. He knows that American individualism is tempered by the need to feel community in the nation and the world.

He also knows that windows of opportunity for fundamental change remain open just briefly before slamming shut. His declaration Saturday that “I didn’t come here to do the same thing we’ve been doing or to take small steps forward” may be the understatement of the year.

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