(Community Matters) “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”
“If he is able to rise to the moment,” Kuttner writes, “he could join the ranks of a small handful of previous presidents who have been truly transformative, succeeding in fundamentally changing our economy, society, and democracy for the better.”
For twenty of the past twenty-eight years, the occupant of the White House was a conservative Republican, and the idea that government should keep hands off the economy conformed to Republican ideology. For eight of those years, the incumbent was a centrist Democrat. Except for a brief and failed effort to secure universal health insurance in 1993, the Clinton administration’s main preoccupations were fiscal.
Despite the severe economic situation, there is an undertow of stale thinking that discourages transformative policies. Even with increased Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress and a great deal of goodwill, progress will be far from automatic. The new president will need to inspire the American people to demand enactment of bolder measures than either the Congress or Obama himself currently thinks necessary or possible.
Community Matters 