Language of a Liberal

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

No single individual built America on their own. We built it together. We have been, and always will be, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all; a nation with responsibilities to ourselves and with responsibilities to one another. Members of Congress, it is time for us to meet our responsibilities.

— Barack Obama, speech to the nation on 09/08/2011

While it’s doubtful that many Republicans watched the Presidents speech this week, I hope some of the disgruntled progressives did. They might have recognized the Obama they voted for. He spoke with passion and sincerity. He abandoned his professorial persona and used short no-nonsense words and repetition that even a child would understand to pummel the opposition party’s inaction.

He came out swinging against the obstruction that has kept him in a straightjacket for months on end, locking his options and stopping any progress he might propose for the commonwealth. In ‘Big Dog’ Bill Clinton-speak, he “felt the pain” of the average citizen spiraling downward into fiscal oblivion and called upon the nation to return to its democratic principals.

Once more braving the political field with unpopular news, Obama called for spending $447 billion in an attempt to boost our flagging economy. Facing the headwinds of Republican rhetoric, our “tax and spend” president called for more spending during a period when tossing Granma from the old folks home rather than supplementing her income is gaining in popularity. While the decision is still out on how well he did in turning the Pubs toward cooperation, let’s give him his due: he moved the national conversation away from enforced austerity and toward growth and opportunity, no easy task in our current political vacuum.

There are those, mostly on the right, who insist that the initial stimulus did nothing to provide jobs for the nation; over at FAUX News, that’s a mantra. But non-partisan studies show us that over two million jobs were created by the original stimulus bill, and assures us that while the nation can still borrow for pennies on the dollar, kick-starting an earn/spend cycle for the average citizen is the fastest way out of this fiscal straightjacket. Of course that’s the kind of Keynesian economic policy that GOP partisans refuse to support and anything that might assist the Obama administration is out of the question, which pretty well defines both our current legislative stand-off and our coming electoral season in a nutshell.

Economist Robert Reich was impressed with both Obama’s grasp of the situation and his impassioned plea for the Congress to step back from politics and up to accountability. Still, like most of those who favor a policy of spending our way out of this crisis, Reich remained critical of the amount proposed as well as Obama’s continued civility toward the rancorous GOP. He rightly assumes that the President is attempting to thread the needle between what he wants to do and what the House majority will allow.

The amount proposed is too small, Reich asserts, much as was the original stimulus which was, as Dem advisor Paul Begala said recently, a two trillion dollar hole we attempted to plug with a few billion bucks. With some reservations on its efficacy, then, Reich supports the presidents plan, as does Paul Krugman; both wishing for something bigger and bolder but acknowledging the immovable Republican stonewall in the way. This, then, is blanket approval from the economic left. The jobs proposal also enjoys the endorsement of unions and iconic populist hero, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

In fact, for a man who has been hammered politically since day one of his term, the President has received a surprising amount of bipartisan support for this speech. This time around, he came prepared with a laundry list of places to put funds, shoring up programs that benefit the public from home foreclosure to school districts to the creation of small business. Unfortunately, this amount of money will only just begin to address our national challenges. Our infrastructure issues alone run into the trillions, and proposed tax cuts, designed to allow businesses to hire, assume that the company will use the funds for that purpose; too often, such “found” money is used to pay down debt.

These proposed billions are not enough; but it’s enough to provide a bit of stability to a troubled economy. Literally, the reconstruction and innovation that Obama and his party approve will take a generation of progressive leadership and support to create. Will they have that opportunity? As 2012 Pub candidate Newt Gingrich recently reminded the nation, Republicans have a singular goal that overrides economy or foreign affairs: ridding the nation of its first black president. As well, according to candid conservative pundit, David Frum, the right is set on destroying whatever remains of FDR’s New Deal.

Coming on the heels of the well-publicized GOP debate — the one Mr. Boehner considered more important than national leadership to alleviate suffering for the unemployed middle and lower class — the differences between these two political visions of the future couldn’t have been clearer. One is painfully aware of the income inequalities, the financial challenges and even the despair of a population holding on by its finger tips — the other apparently doesn’t (ahem!) give a shit. And I’m not kidding.

If you are a conservative and you cannot imagine voting any other ticket, you are in a bind. Moderate conservatives — what are now being called Eisenhower Republicans — are few and far between in today’s GOP. Boehner and Mitchell, old hands in the Red tent, are constantly moderating themselves to accommodate fringe positions like those proposed by Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and Rand Paul. They are far too experienced to approve the high-jinks of their newest members, pushing the party line toward conservative purity the nation cannot afford or sustain, yet they have no choice but to accommodate the t-evangelical clamor. The freshman class will not yield their position.

And while an anxious nation looks at this kind of behavior with disapproval, Republican presidential candidates vie with one another over who can be the most disrespectful of the black guy and which can top the other with loony proposals for a future that only my great-grandmother’s generation would recognize. Reasonable people look at this group of political wannabe’s with fear and loathing for good reason: consider the full-throated criticism of that evil Ponzi scheme, Social Security, by next-Texan candidate, Rick Perry. If it were up to him, we’d all be like so many of his constituents, each holding down a couple of minimum wage jobs and too exhausted at the end of the day to complain. Good times.

For inexplicable reasons, the American people have been tolerant of Republicans doing as little as possible in fear of benefitting Obama for the last two years. The GOP’s refusal to compromise with the majority party and fully 70% of the American public — on issues of Social Security, Medicare, holding bankers and corporations responsible for their actions as well as draw-down of troops — has become a point of pride for the conservative purists but has created a period of shame and international embarrassment for the nation. With each day dawning just a little more sharply anxious than the next, Obama made it clear that the country couldn’t countenance GOP “gridlock and games” any longer.

Said the President:

But know this: the next election is fourteen months away. And the people who sent us here, the people who hired us to work for them, they don’t have the luxury of waiting fourteen months. Some of them are living week to week; paycheck to paycheck; even day to day. They need help, and they need it now.

Reich would have had Obama do more blaming, while he was at it. He wants to see mainstream America riled up against this current GOP, exacting pressure from all sides. In that, I wholeheartedly agree — and I would respectfully disagree with the president’s statement that this is not a class war. When school teachers have been named the demon spawn of the socialist left, it’s a class war all the way home.

But perhaps, rather than coming to that point of hyperbole that sends us all out into the streets with pitchforks, we can embrace the moral compass Obama speaks to in this speech. It’s been awhile since we’ve heard it referenced and it’s what Obama does best; it’s arguably why we trust him, despite his moderate views. When selecting a Supreme Court candidate, Obama spoke of empathy; no Republican anywhere will talk to us of empathy. Now, Obama reminds us of the nations suffering and asks us to embrace compassion as we consider our way forward.

Using language that George Lakoff — a linguist long critical of the Democrats inability to effectively frame arguments — resoundingly approves, the president spoke of the heart of the matter in his speech, asking the nation to come together, responsible to and for one another. We never hear that kind of language from Republicans, who prefer patriotic rants and Rambo-esque talking points; indeed, we rarely hear that from a stilted and battle-worn Democratic party. We only hear that kind of talk from deeply committed liberals who continue to hold the vision of a nation united in common values, working for the common good.

Lakoff applauds Obama’s attention to our common values and savors the corner into which the GOP has painted itself:

“If you look at policies alone, policies that have been proposed by both Democrats and Republicans, you miss the main event. The very idea of working together for the good of fellow citizens in need of help is a progressive idea; it is the idea behind the view of democracy that has sustained America from its beginning.

“Conservatives are not going to like cooperating on Obama’s jobs plan. The very idea contradicts much of what they believe.

“Meanwhile, the president put them in a bind. If they co-operate in helping their fellow citizens, they violate their code of personal responsibility without social responsibility. If they don’t co-operate, they look callous and irresponsible.”

And it’s about damned time we took a good long look at the obstructionists. It’s time we stood up for what we need because the sad truth is, Obama doesn’t have the votes to pass this Jobs Act for the nations benefit. Maybe an awakening public can finally sort out the differences between those who work for all of the nations people and those who only work for a few of them. Maybe it’s time to call our congresspersons and let them know we expect them to support the American Jobs Act because this stimulus may not be enough in the long term, but anything else is blatantly callous and irresponsible. And while we’re at it, maybe we should remind them that fourteen months is just an eye blink away.