Jonathan Chait: Obama's Biggest Problem is with Liberals and the Left Wing
[Jonathan Chait is a senior editor of The New Republic. This article ran in the September 23, 2010 issue of the magazine.]
This is a season of liberal disappointment. Or, rather, another season of liberal disappointment. Liberal disappointment follows liberal triumph as night follows day. It is a multitudinous thing, its varieties including, but not limited to, despair, recrimination, impotent rage, potent rage, and existential angst....
Now, structural factors don’t explain all of the Democrats’ woes. If the party loses, say, 80 seats, it’s fair to say the result was worse than it had to be. The question is what extra factor made it worse. Most liberals say it’s the administration’s insufficient boldness or populism. I say the problem is liberals....
Remember LBJ? Liberals would rather not. They ran multiple candidates against him in 1968 and drove him from the race in defeat. John F. Kennedy was assassinated before liberal disappointment could fully blossom. Liberals hated Harry Truman, too. This magazine called on him to resign—“Franklin Roosevelt kept our interests in proper relation to our values,” bemoaned an editorial. “In President Truman there is no single concept and no superior will”—and Henry Wallace, a former TNR editor, waged a third-party protest candidacy in 1948. (Place your Franklin Foer ’12 Intrade bets today.)
The cycle of disappointment suggests that perhaps the problem here is not the Democratic presidents, flawed though they may be, but their delicate supporters. Liberals tend to imagine progress occurring in a blaze of populist glory, but almost inevitably it requires grubby compromises with powerful and unseemly interests. Medicare, Social Security—they were all half-measures that involved a devil’s bargain. In 1949, Arthur Schlesinger identified the “doughface” progressive tendency as a discomfort with the realities and compromises of governing. “Politics becomes, not a means of getting things done,” he wrote, “but an outlet for private grievances and frustrations.”...
Read entire article at The New Republic
This is a season of liberal disappointment. Or, rather, another season of liberal disappointment. Liberal disappointment follows liberal triumph as night follows day. It is a multitudinous thing, its varieties including, but not limited to, despair, recrimination, impotent rage, potent rage, and existential angst....
Now, structural factors don’t explain all of the Democrats’ woes. If the party loses, say, 80 seats, it’s fair to say the result was worse than it had to be. The question is what extra factor made it worse. Most liberals say it’s the administration’s insufficient boldness or populism. I say the problem is liberals....
Remember LBJ? Liberals would rather not. They ran multiple candidates against him in 1968 and drove him from the race in defeat. John F. Kennedy was assassinated before liberal disappointment could fully blossom. Liberals hated Harry Truman, too. This magazine called on him to resign—“Franklin Roosevelt kept our interests in proper relation to our values,” bemoaned an editorial. “In President Truman there is no single concept and no superior will”—and Henry Wallace, a former TNR editor, waged a third-party protest candidacy in 1948. (Place your Franklin Foer ’12 Intrade bets today.)
The cycle of disappointment suggests that perhaps the problem here is not the Democratic presidents, flawed though they may be, but their delicate supporters. Liberals tend to imagine progress occurring in a blaze of populist glory, but almost inevitably it requires grubby compromises with powerful and unseemly interests. Medicare, Social Security—they were all half-measures that involved a devil’s bargain. In 1949, Arthur Schlesinger identified the “doughface” progressive tendency as a discomfort with the realities and compromises of governing. “Politics becomes, not a means of getting things done,” he wrote, “but an outlet for private grievances and frustrations.”...