Posted by
Buster Foghorn on Tuesday, February 02, 2010 12:47:19 PM
For an important look into the animating political principles, goals, and methods of President Barack Obama, an article by Harvey Mansfield (What Obama Isn’t Saying) offers unique insights and guidance for action, explaining “the apolitical politics of progressivism.”
How does President Obama view progress? How can we reconcile his statement: “I am not an ideologue” with his populist attacks on business, banking, capitalism, the media, and others? What is the best way to counter the various positions President Obama is advancing that seem so antithetical to past American core values cherished by so many Americans?
Mr. Mansfield explains Barack Obama’s goal to move beyond politics to a post-partisan era where the issues are settled and the arguments are over. Mr. Obama wants, in other words, to take politics off the table: settle the issues without debating the underlying principles and values and accept his view. And his first target was to finish the health care debate without debating the underlying principle issues. Mr. Obama’s goal according to Professor Mansfield is to “Nudge” us into this choice without realizing that we are not reasoning through the underlying principles nor are we discussing the pros/cons of moving to Mr. Obama’s end game.
What every progressive wants is to put the particular issue he espouses beyond political dispute. Obama wanted, and as his first State of the Union address showed still wants, to put health care beyond politics so that he can be the last president to be concerned with it. He did concede in that speech “philosophical differences” between the parties, “that will always cause us to part ways.” But he did not say what these differences are and seemed to assume that they would only infect “short-term politics” by serving the ambitions of party leaders. True leadership in Republicans would require them to cooperate in the reform despite their ambitions and their philosophy. Once the bill is enacted, health care need only be administered by experts whose main task will be to adjust (i.e., expand) its extent and to cover its costs. The principle will have been decided. It becomes an entitlement that is no longer open to political controversy; it is secure from second thoughts prompted by reactionaries.