On Firebaggers And King

Blog friend Matt Osborne has really upped his game as of late and is writing the good fight over at Crooks & Liars.  Today he takes aim squarely at the "professional left" and sinks a few battleships.

I know better: if there hasn't been a progressive march on DC yet, it's because the Democrats, liberals, and progressives with the fancy websites and big organizations haven't made it happen. I keep saying that reform is hard -- that progress will be slow -- but mostly see the online left engaging in firebaggery because they're the cool kids and Obama's too square to get it done for them.

There's another analogy in Martin Luther King, who was too square for the more radical elements of the era. But unlike even Malcolm X, the "professional left" has utterly abandoned America's democratic showcase to teabaggers. Last time I checked, it took lots of us to have democracy. Heck, even with King you needed tens of thousands of people to make the Civil Rights Era happen.

And that's just it.  More than anyone else I can remember, Obama believes in the "arc bends towards justice" theory of Dr. King.  The distance we have to cover is massive, but Obama at least moves forwards.  It's not fast enough for some people and a lot of things are out of his hands and his control right now.  What a concept:  Matt's asking for people to make constructive changes.

The president has applied the King formula to build a consensus for reform on health care and consumer financial protection. The left sneers at these achievements because the president hasn't farted a global green-energy socialist paradise out of his armpit. Obama does not write legislation with his veto pen because he is a constitutional law professor; indeed, he understands his appointed role only too well.

He's not enough change from the unitary executive to bother getting excited about. That seems to be the perspective of the opinion-leaders, anyway, who don't see Obama as a president with limited powers. They do not accept that against a center-right legislature he does not control, his powers are limited. That he respects those limits simply earns him no cred with teabaggers or firebaggers.

It's easy...so very easy...to attack Obama over what he does not control.  I've laid into Obama but when I do it's over executive branch issues:  the HAMP program, his decisions on Af-Pak, his decisions on the Fed and Treasury and his economic team, his decisions on Bush-era executive decisions on terrorism, and his decisions when and how to use the bully pulpit.  These are things Obama can and should control and when I disagree with him I state my case and spell out how he could improve the situation.

But Congress and legislation is not something he has any control over and should not.  He gets a veto check on the Legislative and can appoint the Judicial, subject to confirmation by the Senate.  That's it.

He has even less control over the Village, too.  That's what really bothers me about firebagging in general...it plays right into the Village's hands and they never miss an opportunity to make Obama look ineffective.  That doesn't help.

Matt's right:  the Right gets angry, it mobilizes.  The Left gets angry, it recriminates.