The Progressive Base Knows Better, I Hope

Flood the inbox.

Personally, I tend to trust Senator Obama's motives--and yes, we do have to get him into office to find out whether that trust was misplaced or not. And yes again, putting him in office will involve getting the votes of tens of millions of people who get all of their information from network news and anonymously sourced chain e-mails.

Still and all, progressives or not, we must keep our political eyes open to the allure of power--we must not be pollyannas who can see only the silver linings around the clouds. Politicians seek power, for good or for bad. While our Founders lived and died long before Lord Acton famously remarked that "power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely," they were clearly well versed in the concept and designed our whole system of government to counteract not the possibility, but the absolute certainty, that unchecked power will be sought after and abused once had.

But it's not just having power that corrupts, or enables the already corrupt--the mere prospect of acquiring power has the same effect. So--to the point--it's occurred to me that this Congress's failure to do anything serious about Mr. Bush's power grabbing has to do with wanting that unchecked power for themselves. Maybe at the outset of this Congress in 2006, they confronted a choice. First, they could take Mr. Bush down, necessarily weakening the Imperial Presidency in the process, then watch as the Republicans systematically exploited that weakness to hobble the new Democratic president as they hobbled Clinton. Or second, they could thank their lucky stars that the Republicans had entrusted their own attempted coup to a strutting, self-absorbed fool; bide their time without provoking a polarizing crisis; and wrest that power from his clumsy grip intact.

Can we trust them with that power? Of course not. Nobody can be trusted with it--not you, not me. On the other hand, if they succeed, there's always the hope that they will use the power to hammer progressive policies into place unimpeded by Republican obstructionism--perhaps to bury the Republican dragon once and for all. Bill Clinton, after all, was very possibly as corrupt an individual as George W. Bush--but he actually played the game with an eye toward policy and effective government, whereas for Mr. Bush power is an end in itself.

If the Democrats do have their eye on that unchecked power, and do manage to acquire it, perhaps there will be some red meat thrown to the citizens. I have to admit that it would be fun to watch Mr. Bush, in shackles, loaded aboard a rendition flight for Syria or the Balkans--while his own legal rationales for the power to put him on that plane are read aloud. It would be fun to watch an exhausted and disheveled Ann Coulter struggling to keep her baggy inmate's pants up as she defended cheerleading the deaths of 4,000 American soldiers before a military tribunal, never to be informed of the specific charges or evidence against her--each session to be introduced with one of her own columns urging exactly that kind of justice on others.

Sooner or later, though, red meat or no red meat, the purpose of that power would turn out to be what it's always been: first, perpetuating and expanding itself, and second, working to benefit its possessors. At that point, it doesn't matter whether the power belongs to "Republicans" or "Democrats," or even whether the system of government be "democracy," fascism, or communism--any government dependent on the whim of a single individual is like any other such government.

On balance, the hope that they're just waiting for a large enough congressional majority and a sympathetic president to rein in the executive branch is just attractive enough to stifle my fears that one way or the other, the people of these United States are screwed--that by their negligence and indifference, they've left an imperial crown lying around, and the only question now is who picks it up and puts it on.

Robert Crawford

A strong leader stands up for the one thing that makes the US the fountain of liberty - the US Constitution.

A weak leader follows DLC/neocon advice, surrenders to the wingnuts, and follows Gore and Kerry into the history books.

Remember the acrimony around here and other progressive websites during the Obama/Clinton conflict?

Where have all the Clintonites gone?

Now they seem to be Naderites declaiming that since Obama won't stand for their and only their platform, they're voting third party.

Interesting. If Obama acted according to their wishes, he'd lose.

If enough people vote third party, he'd lose.

Which means McCain wins and we all get a front row center seat for the final Grande Opera.

Isn't this all very interesting? You finally get a Democrat smart enough to beat the Repubs at their own game and... and...

All the sudden Obama is a fascist, war mongering, small business taxing and on and on and on and on.

I smell a flea ridden freeper rat.

And you could see Keith biting his lip from time to time, knowing that the progressive blogosphere has to grow up on political tactics. I liked Alter's line..."there are 130 million voters out there and most are low information citizens, not even aware of these issues yet." But you can be sure they will respond to GOP smear-mongers who are trying like all hell to paste something "un-American" on Barack, anything considered "weak".

The flag pin, Rev. Wright, Ayers, and his name have lost their punch. They would love to use the race card more, but they're smart enough to know how that will backfire on them. They were surprised that Barack would be this aggressive on refusing the government's $85 Million for campaigning...and that one isn't getting any negative traction either. So Barack's got his $300M+ war chest and they've got nothing that will stick. So they would love to go after him on defense, terrorism, etc. I was amused at Dennis Miller's evident frustration at this problem. He labeled Barack as being "tedious" - imagine that from a guy whose jokes all have 2 minute long, derivative punchlines that require dictionaries to get.

Alter also pointed out that the FISA bill expired last year and so the government has a defense to actually continue to act illegally until something takes its place. Also, read Barack's written statement of June 20th regarding the House FISA bill - he goes after the telecom retroactive immunity and pledges to fight it....

Keep it up PM.

Well, this is two things just this week that we have to believe that Obama is saying and doing but doesn't really mean.

1. forego public financing. -- The only reform we need in politics is to get the special interest money [and the vast totals being spent] out of the campaigns forever. If we level the playing field, then fairness will return. Since 90% of Obama's contributor are under $200, we will never know where his money is coming from. Oh, well, we can just hold or breath and hope that Obama is doing the right thing. He says that he is a Democrat and that he is doing the right thing. George Bush told us he was doing the right thing and everybody believed him. So that will probably work out really well.

2. vote for telecom (and Bush/Cheney) immunity because we don't want to be mean to Bush -- and the bill contains a ten cent raise in the minumum wage that goes into effect in 20 years or some such hogwash.

3. Oops, make that three things in just one week (so far). He is for the death penalty and he is for extending it to crimes other than murder [an eye for an eye]

Shall we take bets on what his next capitulation to the right wing will be? He is filp flopping so fast that it is hard to for those who would excuse him for expedience to keep up. Keep cutting the slack for Obama even though you were not willing to cut Hillary Clinton any slack to express centrist opinions that might get her elected in November.