http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2008/dec/09/obama-white-houseIf it's true that nature abhors a vacuum, then that rather unnatural state of man known as cable television is positively repulsed by one. And so, during this lugubrious interregnum in which millions of us are still coming down from the months-long high of checking Nate Silver and Real Clear Politics nine times a day and dying inside because the polls out of Ohio contradict one another, the political class needs something to chatter about.
It has chosen, for more days running than I'd imagined necessary, the story of the liberal activists who already feel betrayed by Barack Obama. The Politico weighed in Monday with a piece noting that some liberals (actually, it didn't even qualify it with "some"; it just said "liberals") "are growing increasingly nervous – and some just flat-out angry – that President-elect Barack Obama seems to be stiffing them on Cabinet jobs and policy choices." Well, they didn't call me, and you can place me well outside the magic circle. I'm not nervous or flat-out angry or even concerned. I'm excited. And by the way, the vast majority of the people I know are excited, too.
Obama is still seven weeks away from taking office but has already signaled that he's going to do grand things, huge things – dare I say heretofore unimaginable things. A half-trillion dollar (at least; some suspect it may end up being more like a trillion) jobs-and-infrastructure program, which he wants to enact as soon as possible after he takes office? Liberals have complained for decades – yes, decades, since the 1970s – about the creaky state of America's bridges and roads and the need for more spending on transit. Ditto the schools. We live in a country of which it's still probably true that most schools were built in the 1920s (New York City, for example, opened a new school building once every three weeks for that entire decade). Again, we have complained and complained and complained about their condition, and quite rightly so, for decades.
And here comes a president who is about to do something about all this, and do it more grandly than most liberals would have dared to imagine just a few months ago. And do it immediately. And he's not liberal enough? Please. If President Obama were to pass a trillion dollar jobs-and-infrastructure bill and, Heaven forbid, drop dead on his elliptical machine in March, that single act alone would be enough to make him one of the most progressive presidents in the history of the country.
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