By inviting Americans to play a role...Obama has transformed the nature of US politics

[babylonsister]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/apr/28/obamas-100-days-tone


100 days: Setting the tone for America

By inviting Americans to play a role in shaping their own destiny, Obama has transformed the nature of US politics

* Michael Tomasky

snip//

George Bush and Dick Cheney wanted an infantile citizenry. In fact they didn't really want citizens, in the sense in which the word is used in political philosophy, at all. Especially after 9/11, they wanted wards of the state.

This is somewhat ironic, isn't it, since they were passionate anti-statists. But it's the case. They wanted Americans to be fearful and to need daddy's protection. Hence the red and orange terror alerts, the with-us-or-against-us rhetoric, Ari Fleischer's infamous admonition that people needed to watch what they said and did.

Fully engaged citizens have a say in their fate. Even in a democracy as sprawling and saturated in lucre as this one, a president can still send signals to people about the posture he wants them to assume. Bush and Cheney wanted people to need protection against evildoers – terrorists, mostly, but also tax-raisers and regulators and coastal elitists. This worked for them for a while. But Katrina exposed them as incompetent guardians, and after that the jig was up.

Obama wants people to be citizens. He wants them to play a role in shaping their own destiny. He's not trying to scare anybody. He couldn't anyway. That isn't his thing. He wants people to think. You can hear it in all his speeches – notably, to me, the mid-April Georgetown speech on the economy. He talks up to his audience and not down. He tries to clarify, but he does not try to simplify. He trusts that citizens can hold two concepts, even competing and contradictory ones, in their heads at one time.

The numbers don't lie. The people, committed conservatives excepted, like being treated as adults for a change.

In the realm of state, he'll have success, and he'll experience defeats. But in the realm of nation, even at this early juncture, we can already say that his greatest success is the change in tone. And his success is also ours.

[FrenchieCat]

1. The difference between those 30% who supported Bush and are against Obama

and everyone else.

The difference between those who are afraid of everything, and those who were looking for a government who asks us to think and make our own determinations.

[babylonsister]

2. And now that 30% is shrinking-I think it's down to about 21%?

:thumbsup:

It's nice being treated like an adult!