Change, Hope, Again

President Barack Obama has made the unofficial official, and announced, in a season of political chaos, his intent to run for re-election.  

Three years ago, the message of change seemed like some cool dew arriving after a long dry season. With the Bush presidency behind us, and the prospect of a McCain/Palin presidency looming, Barack Obama seemed a refreshing alternative to the arid politics of exclusion, marginalization and triumphalist foreign policy. For some, feeling hope again felt like flexing a long decayed, inelastic muscle – it had been a long time. But challenged to hope, we answered the call, and did so with joy and exuberance.

Now, a quiet and nameless unease has taken its place among some progressives, creating an apprehension that occasionally blossoms into unstated dread. It is a growing fear that is sometimes spoken quietly, between friends, but rarely publicly (at least from progressive stages) for fear of being labeled traitorous to an ideal, and for fear that it might actually be true. It is of this: the possibility that the Obama presidency has lost its trajectory; that it is becoming increasing centrifugal, and that the core at the center is losing mass, density, pull.

Those who protest that the evidence does not support this exchange of hope for doubt are right on target – and miss the target entirely. He has, to be sure, delivered much, and will deliver more. Despite the snipes from the right that it feeds imperial government, and despite the laments from the left that it feeds imperial corporations, Obama’s health-care plan remains a giant step toward expanded access for millions of Americans – a momentous (if provisional) accomplishment, one that never really got the standing ovation it deserved. The stimulus packages shepherded through Congress quite probably saved, in significant ways, the American economy, though it’s hard to prove the theoretical absence of a negative, so Americans only criticized it as too little or too much, depending on where they stood. Even on social policy he has advanced the progressive agenda: while the LGBT communities and its allies, for example, have voiced impatience with his general voicelessness on issues such as "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell," it nevertheless remains true that we now have a President who actually believes, and will say so publicly, that being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender is, well, just plain normal, without qualifications.

These are huge achievements, especially in a world where it seems the falcon cannot hear the falconer. Still, the loud assertions of those accomplishments miss the mark because at some point, in the realm of culture and discourse, reason no longer governs. Why is this longstanding war now approaching its second decade, with its long-winded explanations of strategy and geopolitics, and its increasingly long-listed columns of dead and injured? Why hasn’t Obama, who passionately campaigned on this issue, brought it to a conclusion? Why did he equivocate on Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Libya, leaving those who risked their lives for political change to fend for themselves against tanks and missiles? Why did he offer them too little, too late? Why did he lean toward expansion of nuclear capacity after the BP disaster, and then lean back toward fossil fuels after the disaster in Japan, without a coherent long-term energy based on science and sustainability? Why didn’t he publicly say, just once and with conviction, that members of Congress were utterly out of line for trying to defund Planned Parenthood, and that America won’t tolerate such ideological nonsense? Why do we, so many of us, still feel like we earn less than we did yesterday, that our houses and futures seem to be built on sand, that our children’s inheritance is no longer our biggest aspirations, but rather our smallest expectations; why are we sad, frustrated, scared, angry, isolated?

Continued on page two...