DU, Obama, winter wheat, and the Anthony/Stanton debate

Here's a framework for almost any political action Obama has taken over the past year:

1. Take essentially a Republican idea, and state it in terms of progressive values
2. Get it done over unified Republican opposition and half-hearted Democratic support
3. Wait a generation

Exempliae gratiae:

Health care: take Bob Dole's health care plan from 15 years ago, but restate it in terms of universal access. Very little changes for most people, but the seed is planted that health care is a right.

Iraq and Afghanistan: continue essentially unchanged the deployment strengths you were handed, but restate the goals in terms of regional stability and an end to the conflict rather than "victory" and "spreading freedom".

Nukes: (this one is a little different) restate Reagan's goal of a nuclear-weapon-free world. Negotiate a modest SALT-type treaty with Russia. State that compliance with the NPT can be any non-nuclear power's defense against America's nuclear arsenal.

He said during the campaign he wanted to be a President like Reagan, and so far he is: he's sacrificing short-term objectives for long-term ones, like Reagan did. The main difference is that he doesn't have a bunch of "Obama Republicans" in the Capitol, though remember Reagan didn't really have that many Reagan Democrats either for the first couple of years. And, as we never tire of pointing out, Reagan never got the tax cuts and government shrinkage he wanted: that happened under the next three Presidents (including one Democrat). But he fundamentally (indeed, catastrophically) changed the narrative about what the proper role of government is.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (one of my heros) famously said of Susan B. Anthony that she " suffrage only". Anthony's response (well, really she said it decades later, but still) was that "we are sowing winter wheat, which other hands than ours will reap and enjoy".

We will probably not see a national health care system in our lifetimes, but we have seen the creation of a system that can, in a few generations, turn into one. We won't see nuclear disarmament in our lifetimes, but we have just seen the enunciation of a principle that could in a few generations lead to one.

We need to take to heart Ralph Reed's lesson from 1980. He was as disappointed with Reagan's coolness towards his theocratic objectives as we are with Obama's towards ours. The answer is to do what Reed did and elect school board members and city aldermen in every district. OFA is great, but are they spending energy and time finding candidates for these offices? We're in a position to shape America for the next generation, but we're so hung up on what we're not getting right now that we aren't tending the winter wheat. Are you telling me OFA couldn't have put one or two more progressives on the Texas board of education? Or at least on some of the local school boards? What about mayors races and city councils? The next few years are not going to give us sweeping New Deal style victories; I don't think that's how the country changes anymore. It's going to clear away enough political weeds that the next generation will be able to actually do something useful.

The only thing is, will the effect of the economy wipe that out for the Dems in 2010? Obama can still successfully win another term with partial Rethug control (or even full) of Congress. Bill Clinton showed how to do that. But the changes will not be big in scope at that point. There will be gridlock then and who will come away on top depends on who frames their arguments better to the America public.

:thumbsup: