Wisdom as measure, as a sense of proportion, as middle ground.  If it’s defined that way, one sees why there are only a few examples of wisdom in the entire history of the world.

–Charles Simic

A new poll, for what it’s worth, suggests that 81% of respondents think this country is moving in the wrong direction.  I’m sure a good many of them cited such concerns as the war, or the economy.  But what seems to lurk behind the dissatisfaction is a fundamental sense that the government isn’t doing its job.

We’ve certainly been here before.  During the Gilded Age, the federal government seemed to be little more than an instrument for gigantic business interests, giving away vast tracts of land, lucrative government contracts, and absurdly protectionist tax and tariff policies for the benefit of the very powerful and well-born.  For years, despite groundswells of public outrage and drives for social reform, any legislation that sought to actually improve the lives of average citizens was doomed to languish on the Senate floor.  The minimum wage, the progressive income tax, civil rights legislation, national pensions, unemployment and health insurance—all of these ideas predated the twentieth century, and all were killed year after year after year by the contempt and greed of a few, generally very wealthy, men sitting on Capitol Hill.  The citizenry was not quiet; nor were a number of genuinely concerned individuals within the Congress.  But despite often heartbreakingly impassioned efforts on the part of reformers, the system overwhelmingly has tended not to change.

Many of us have been told by history teachers and civics instructors that this very ponderousness—governmental gridlock, and all— is part of the genius of our system.  Supposedly, it keeps us stable.  Well, I can see how, historically, those in privileged positions could believe that.  But I suggest that they hop into a certain custom DeLorian and pay a visit to a 19^th century sharecropper who continues to work the land for nothing and try to tell him it’s good that things don’t move too fast.  Tell that to those who were beaten away from the voting booths, or who were jailed or deported for their political views.  Tell that to the worker paid for eighty hours of backbreaking labor in worthless company scrip, to the child losing fingers in a sweatshop, or to the labor organizer who’s fired on by corporate “security” thugs like the Pinkertons—or even by federal troops.  In most of these examples, it took fifty to a hundred years for the federal government to respond with meaningful reform legislation.

By all means, one can make the argument that there are practical reasons why our system is slow to change.  But one can’t fairly claim that it’s an example of its brilliance.

This is all to say: the need for change is not in itself sufficient to drive reform.  There have always been those in this country who believe that things are just fine as they are, thank you very much, despite all evidence to the contrary.  John McCain, that celebrated maverick, has swallowed the same free market Kool-Aid as every other conservative in Congress; a glance at his imaginary health care “plan” is proof of that.  The Invisible Hand worshippers imagine that, on the one hand, the Gilded Age was not as bad as historians claim; while on another, whatever was bad about those times simply disappeared through the evolutionary effects of “market forces”; while on yet another (yes, they are monsters with three arms), the progressive reforms that actually did away with the worst abuses of the era are to blame for everything foolish and wrongheaded in our society.  It can be difficult to reason with people who cotton to such outlandish notions, and who, indeed, indulge you with a Bill Kristol-like smirk of condescension when you question them on the basis of facts.

But, having said all that, I must confess that laying one’s hopes on a few new spending programs (made possible only by modest Democratic gains in Congress) seems nearly as wacky to me as thumbing the rosary of the free market.

Certain liberal writers have been howling about their desire to see a “fighter” in the Oval Office, and Hillary Clinton has tried to re-brand herself with this disaffected constituency in mind.  Unfortunately, it’s difficult to see how would-be reformers of Hillary’s stripe have ever made much of a difference.  Even the most celebrated and effective “fighters” who made it to the presidency in the twentieth century did not, by the numbers, fare very well.  By my estimation, we had exactly four presidents with fairly robust progressive domestic policy agendas: Wilson, FDR, Truman and Johnson.  (No, Kennedy doesn’t make the list.)  All were deeply flawed men who surprised many with the force of their reform platforms. Wilson and Roosevelt both experienced some initial successes, only to be shut down in the later part of their presidencies—partly because of the very combativeness their admirers so often extol.  Wilson essentially worked himself to death trying to promote the League of Nations.  And despite the FDR-worship that characterizes a number of progressives today (Paul Krugman especially), the New Deal essentially foundered after Roosevelt’s court-packing scheme was made public; as Robert Caro has pointed out, not a single significant piece of progressive legislation got passed in his administration after 1937.  Truman’s Fair Deal was in many ways more ambitious than the New Deal—it included sweeping civil rights legislation and nationalized health care— but it was completely shut down by the Do-Nothing Congress.  Truman took his case to the public, tapped into discontent and outrage, tried to shame the opposition into submission… and was defeated over and over again.  And Johnson—well, Johnson might have been another story altogether, if it hadn’t been for his perverse fascination with trying to pummel the peoples of southeast Asia into submission.

In any case, some of the most pressing domestic issues we are currently facing—and which are, not surprisingly, seldom mentioned in the news cycle or in political speeches—are simply not going to be addressed through federal legislation alone.  For one thing, even if we weren’t facing an almost-certainly hostile Republican minority in the Senate, we’re staring at a gargantuan deficit likely to persist throughout the next president’s first term, even if the recession is brief and we bring all the troops home from Iraq in 2009.  As a result, many of Clinton’s promised policy initiatives will be nearly impossible to pass.  This reality certainly hasn’t stopped Clinton from tacking spending programs to her already ambitious legislative wishlist (and it is just that), nor has it stopped otherwise sensible folks like Krugman from deeming anything short of her best-case-scenario proposals a sellout.  This, incidentally, is why pure idealism doesn’t help matters; one is too busy dreaming about the utopian ideal to confront what is actually practicable in the present.

I begin to suspect, much to my own surprise, that this state of limited possibility in Washington needn’t be a matter for progressives to be depressed about.  For outside the typical cycle of do-nothing, deregulation/tax-cut-loopy conservatism and sweeping liberal reform agendas that die slow, ghastly deaths in Congress lies a third path that promises more robust and lasting progressive change than we’ve seen in this country for a very long time.  What we need more than ever is a greater degree of cooperation and communication among the various levels and branches of government—which, I understand well, is asking an awful lot—in seeking meaningful solutions to specific, solvable problems.  For that, yes, you need a fighter—but more than that, you need a communicator.  I suppose everyone who reads this blog knows by now what I’m getting at, and who I’m really talking about.

(Psst.  It’s Obama.)

But, in a final word, the question of reform rests on far more than who happens to become the inhabitant of the Oval Office next year.  It means that progressives in this country need to adjust our expectations, not of what we want—civil liberties and opportunity for all, a more just and equitable society, sensible and sustainable development of infrastructure and industry, and meaningful stewardship of our environment and communities—but of how to accomplish those goals, at as many different levels of government and society as possible.  It also means persuading people that none of those goals is nuts, despite our inevitable disagreements about implementation.  No matter what happens in November, real reform is going to require more than a party platform.  It’s going to demand imagination and initiative from countless individuals to make our institutions more vital and responsive at all levels; and I think it will only help matters if we’re not (completely) heartbroken by the limited role the federal government will invariably play in our efforts.