The Obama-Warren humbug endures

I was a trifle reluctant to revisit the Obama-Warren uproar so soon -- after all, progressives still have nearly another month to squabble, splinter and self-destruct over this issue -- but yesterday a conspiracy of events intervened.

First, I happened to see Joe Lowery on "Hardball" last night. Lowery will be the benedictory speaker at Obama's inauguration; he's a solid liberal and of course veteran civil-rights leader whom many progressives have hailed as a nice and necessary counterbalance to the unwanted invocation of the semi-reactionary Rick Warren.

Yet what Lowery had to say must surely have disappointed. For starters, he supports civil unions but not gay marriage (I do, by the way, having always regarded the latter much as Jefferson did Free Thought: "It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my legs"), and then added with no minor bewilderment that Obama's invitation to Warren was merely a fulfillment of his campaign promise to "reach across the divide."

Lowery made no secret of his philosophical and policy differences with Warren, some of them profound, but noted, simply and with a further air of consternation: "That doesn’t stop me from being on a program with him." Tsk-tsk, Mr. Lowery, that kind of Obamian pragmatism could very well get you banned from next year's progressives' Christmas party for the ideologically pure.

Second, just prior to seeing Lowery unload a bit on MSNBC I had read Adam Nagourney's NYT piece, "For Now, Obama Proves to be Elusive Target for GOP." In it, Nagourney led with the painfully obvious:

Two months after Barack Obama’s election, Republicans are struggling to figure out how -- or even whether -- to challenge or criticize him as he prepares to assume the presidency….

He has defied attempts to be framed ideologically. His cabinet picks have won wide praise. An effort by the Republican National Committee to link Mr. Obama to the unfolding scandal involving Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich … was dismissed by no less a figure than Senator John McCain….

The toughest criticism of Mr. Obama during this period -- in fact, the only real criticism of Mr. Obama during this period -- has come not from the right but from the left, primarily over his selection of Rick Warren, a leading opponent of gay marriage, to deliver the invocation on Inauguration Day.

Hence the GOP's Napoleonic strategy of leaving one's enemies to their own means of destruction. Just stand back and let the left eat him alive, is the right's attitude for now, and one must admit it's a rather sensible one. In fact, it's a historically reliable one.

Third, prior to reading Nagourney I had read E.J. Dionne's "A Gamble for Obama," in which was evident an almost inexpressible frustration with his own ilk.

One need not be too pious about any of this [pleaded Dionne]. Both Warren and Obama are shrewd leaders who sense where the political winds are blowing….

In a recent interview with … Beliefnet.com, Warren … called upon evangelicals to be "the social change leaders in our society" engaged with "poverty and disease and charity and social justice and racial justice."

Obama wants to encourage this move, which would be good for him and good for progressive politics….

Although I support same-sex marriage, I think that liberals should welcome Obama's success in causing so much consternation on the right [and not merely the right, as noted]. On balance, inviting Warren opens more doors than it closes….

Dionne's piece in particular reminded me of Lincoln's problems with the "progressives" of his own era -- abolitionists -- who were livid with his emancipating procrastinations. Abolition now, they demanded early in the war; no dallying because even temporary compromise with evil is unconscionable.

Yet had Lincoln shared their attitude, he likely would have lost the war and Southern African Americans would therefore have remained enslaved for many more years to come. It was politics that restrained Lincoln -- managing all the assorted and difficult factions, timing his moves judiciously, luring the tentative opposition and momentarily rebuffing "progressive" demands so that his entire coalition assembled to win the war wouldn't collapse.

And need I remind you, history has been kind to Abe's patient and politically pragmatic ways.

But what's more, the Obama-Warren brouhaha is a development quite fundamental to the future of progressive politics. That is, if progressives intend on behaving like their reactionary counterparts by fleeing in horror at every pragmatic conciliation which naturally fails to pass ideological muster, then they should abandon the self-referential term, "progressive" -- because only pragmatism translates into progress.

"[L]iberals … need to come to terms with what it means to build a durable majority," wrote the eminently sensible E.J. Dionne. And their shortsighted devaluation of political pragmatism isn't one of those terms.

Now, finally, Merry Christmas -- a portion of which I'll spend reading my hate mail.