By suggesting ???Obama???s success is dependent on???access to 60 votes in the Senate??? it is obvious Mr Alter has completely missed the point. The idea isn???t to get 60 Democrats in the Senate to strong-arm their agenda in-spite of the 40% of the country who vehemently disagree with them. What Obama is proposing is a new type of politics in Washington where partisanship takes a backseat to the collective interests of all Americans. He???s proposing a brokering between Republicans and Democrats where the focus can shift from shortsighted legislative gamesmanship designed primarily to gain votes in the next election, to long-term solutions to vital problems this country faces. Obama doesn???t need 60 Democrats in the Senate to succeed. What he needs is buy-in from members of both parties that working together to find real solutions is more important than blind party allegiance. To that end he also needs buy-in from the American people that they will no longer accept politicians who insist on perpetuating partisanship but will shun any such candidate and encourage growth in a new pool of politicians who???s foremost allegiance is not to special interests or political parties or even to the people who voted for them, but to the interests of Americans as a whole.
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The Theater of Big Change
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To that end, Obama has hatched a plan for governing in public. Instead of hammering out a health-care program behind closed doors, Obama says he would invite all the players to a conference on C-Span. (President-elect Clinton did something similar with a televised economic conference in Little Rock in late 1992. It helped lead to his breakthrough budget package.)
Dopey idea? I don't think so. All presidents who achieve big change have been first-rate communicators in the theater of the presidency. No FDR "fireside chats," no New Deal. No "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"—and the Berlin wall likely stays up for a while longer, whatever Ronald Reagan's other efforts. The health summit could be transformative. (One could even imagine Obama's turning the floor over to John Edwards for some questioning of the drug- and insurance-company representatives, forced by public pressure to attend.) With the help of a few inspiring Obama speeches, even a boring summit would help educate the public and shape the debate. As Roosevelt used to say, an effective president must be the educator in chief.
Will we learn? The question of who can take the country to a different place is as much about us as it is about the new president. That's what Obama meant when he said on the night of Super Tuesday that "we are the ones we've been waiting for." To succeed, Barack Obama must bet not just on himself, but on the public's appetite for change. We're about to find out how hungry we really are.
© 2008
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