President Obama on Baltimore Riots

Fifty years ago, the Watts section of south Los Angeles erupted in violence after a police encounter with an African American man. For the first time, television covered this sort of urban rioting, looting, burning of businesses, police beating of rock-throwing protesters, and National Guardsmen fully armed, enforcing marshal law in an American city. In the next few years, other cities followed ... 

Promises were made ... nothing changed ... things actually got worse ... 

Meanwhile, we wasted trillions in Viet-Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan ... 

Ignoring the Third World neighborhoods with their permanent underclass of hopelessness ... 

Yesterday, President Obama, the first Black president, who began his activism as a community organizer in Chicago slums, was asked for his reaction to the events in Baltimore. 

Thoughtful and infuriatingly articulate, as always, he made six points. The first five related to the incident that ignited the protests, the police, the criminality of looters ...

The sixth point was the most insightful ... and this is a transcript of those remarks (the italics are mine):

We can’t just leave this to the police.  I think there are police departments that have to do some soul searching.  I think there are some communities that have to do some soul searching.  But I think we, as a country, have to do some soul searching.  This is not new.  It’s been going on for decades.

And without making any excuses for criminal activities that take place in these communities, 

what we also know is that if you have impoverished communities that have been stripped away of opportunity, where children are born into abject poverty; 

they’ve got parents — often because of substance-abuse problems or incarceration or lack of education themselves — can’t do right by their kids; 

if it’s more likely that those kids end up in jail or dead, than they go to college.

 In communities where there are no fathers who can provide guidance to young men; communities where there’s no investment, and manufacturing has been stripped away; and drugs have flooded the community, and the drug industry ends up being the primary employer for a whole lot of folks — in those environments, if we think that we’re just going to send the police to do the dirty work of containing the problems that arise there without as a nation and as a society saying what can we do to change those communities, to help lift up those communities and give those kids opportunity, then we’re not going to solve this problem.  

And we’ll go through the same cycles of periodic conflicts between the police and communities and the occasional riots in the streets, and everybody will feign concern until it goes away, and then we go about our business as usual.

If we are serious about solving this problem, then we’re going to not only have to help the police, we’re going to have to think about what can we do — the rest of us — to make sure that we’re providing early education to these kids; 

to make sure that we’re reforming our criminal justice system so it’s not just a pipeline from schools to prisons; 

so that we’re not rendering men in these communities unemployable because of a felony record for a nonviolent drug offense; 

that we’re making investments so that they can get the training they need to find jobs.  

That’s hard.  That requires more than just the occasional news report or task force.  And there’s a bunch of my agenda that would make a difference right now in that.

Now, I’m under no illusion that out of this Congress we’re going to get massive investments in urban communities, and so we’ll try to find areas where we can make a difference around school reform and around job training, and around some investments in infrastructure in these communities trying to attract new businesses in.

But if we really want to solve the problem, if our society really wanted to solve the problem, we could.  It’s just it would require everybody saying this is important, this is significant — and that we don’t just pay attention to these communities when a CVS burns, and we don’t just pay attention when a young man gets shot or has his spine snapped.  We’re paying attention all the time because we consider those kids our kids, and we think they’re important.  And they shouldn’t be living in poverty and violence.

That’s how I feel.  I think there are a lot of good-meaning people around the country that feel that way.  But that kind of political mobilization I think we haven’t seen in quite some time.  And what I’ve tried to do is to promote those ideas that would make a difference.  But I think we all understand that the politics of that are tough because it’s easy to ignore those problems or to treat them just as a law and order issue, as opposed to a broader social issue.

That was a really long answer, but I felt pretty strongly about it.

... AMEN...

Feel No Pain

Bijou would come home from a frustrating day at work
and want to talk about it
... and talk about it.
I would come home from a frustrating day at work
and want to forget it.

So she talked
... and I listened.
Then I made a terrible mistake.
I suggested solutions for her problems.
She became enraged.
"Don't solve my problem.
Just listen to me and empathize."

I protested.
I am a lawyer,
trained to hear my clients' problems
and to solve them.
Imagine if I told my client that I empathized,
and then left the jail.

Eventually I learned to speak the language,
to sense the warning signs
that marked the beginning of the burst of emotion
that demanded attention.

Bill Clinton is credited
with mastering personal politics.
He made everyone,
especially female voters
feel as if he understood
and empathized
with their problems.
In the jargon of the time,
he felt their pain.

Barack Obama has a hard time with Clintonspeak.
His approach is more lawyerly,
less emotive.
In a crisis he will first seek facts,
then seek solutions.

The press and shallow observers slam him
for failing to show emotion
(i.e., anger) at enemies of the state
-- like BP and GM.
The media wants him to be more like an action star
swearing revenge.

Would they prefer the G.W. Bush tactic
of manipulating the overwrought emotions
of the nation following 9/11
to lead us into disastrous wars?

Give me libertarian or give me breath

Chutzpah is blaming the the BP oil spill on the federal government after years of insisting with equal vigor that government should not interfere with business, especially the big ones involving national security - like oil companies.

Both Left, Right and Center share responsibility for this and other crises of our time. De-regulation began in the 1970's with Jimmy Carter, accelerated under Reagan, and was embraced by Clinton, who declared that the era of big government was over.

There is grumbling on the Left because Obama's style doesn't permit him to rant and rave. He has not threatened to nationalize the oil, auto, coal, financial, or insurance industry as much as his supporters would wish him to do it. This is the same Left that called Bush an immature cowboy for his ravings about terrorism and macho threats that alienated our allies and independent nations.

The Right also blames Obama for the recession, for bailing out companies whose failure would have destroyed our economy for fifty years rather than the time it will take to dig out of the mess they left for him.

The Right laid the groundwork for the worst epidemic of corporate incompetence and greed since 1929. From Exxon to Enron to Goldman Sachs, from General Motors to Toyota, from coal mines to oil rigs, big government cannot compete with big business for gross negligence, fraud, or greed.

Bush / Cheney produced an era of incompetent and corrupt government that challenged the Harding administration of the early 1920's - which also permitted big oil interests to buy the government. In Afghanistan and Iraq, in New Orleans, in Texas, on the coastlines, on Wall Street, government policies resulted in disaster.

Every crisis Obama has had to deal with for the past year and a half has had roots deep in the past. The truth is that there was nothing more he could have done in the time he had to forestall or even mitigate the damage.

Calls for kicking ass are like cries to shoot first and ask questions later. It is akin to the traditional witch hunts and scapegoating that accompanies every crisis.

Principled Centrist Revisited

Last year I published a post based on an essay I originally wrote in the 1990's. I updated it to apply the ideas stated to Obama. I tried to fit him into the traditional mold of the "principled centrist," a tradition which included the best presidents in our history: notably Washington, Lincoln, F.D.R. It also encompassed some failures.

Bill Clinton's presidency showed how difficult it is for a centrist to govern in this era. With the pervasive sniping of 24/7 media critics, ideological and cultural polarization that approaches the sectional suspicions preceding the Civil War, and the absence of public consensus about any particular crisis, the ability of even the most charismatic president to lead is doubtful.

I am re-printing the essay again because it seems that its points are still pertinent to the political climate today.

Like many of my peers in the late 1960's, I entered a law career with a radicalized illusion that I could shake up The Establishment from within. But early in my career as a public defender, I became persuaded that idealists made lousy lawyers.

Viewing a case as "a cause" led to ineffective advocacy for the individuals who were our clients. Railing against "the system" was a losing strategy; tweaking it to make it work led to some success. To work from within demanded adherence to core principles - like those expressed in the Bill of Rights, but also a rational sense of moderation. Seeing the flaws of radical ideologies of Left and Right, I came to think of myself as a principled centrist.

The flaw of this philosophy is that it can easily lead to indecision, timidity, and a loss of confidence. Weak compromises are tempting when the risks are great. Uncertainty leads to failure and depression.

Barack Obama, by education and inclination, is a principled centrist. His legal education, which suited his innate propensities, prepared him well for effective advocacy. The first attribute of the lawyerly approach is the ability to see all sides of a question. The second is the exercise of judgments based on reason and evidence rather than faith and ideology.

The term itself is an oxymoron in presidential politics. The centrist is wedded to no firm ideology that huge numbers of people can identify with. It is historically rare to satisfy enough of the people enough of the time from the middle of the road.The centrist is not an ideologue, except to moderation. Idealogues have a rigid vision, a religious faith in their righteousness. Moderation and consensus are lukewarm ideals. Neither notion stirs passion.

Ronald Reagan’s simple ideology allowed him to be certain and clear about every issue: lower taxes, secure defense, less government, American domination of foreign affairs, strict Christian morality and adherence to normative lifestyles.

A centrist cannot be sure about any of these things, is sometimes for some of them, against some at some other times. He is a relativist - his motto must be "It depends." His survival depends on compromise.

A principled centrist in American politics is, by definition, in trouble. First, he states his principles, then is forced to compromise them.

Bill Clinton’s adventure with the health care issue in the 1990's is a cautionary tale. He stated a principle: universal coverage. Eventually, he had to temporize, and was seen as weak, the inevitable risk of centrists. The result: his leadership coinage dissipated. He could not fall back on the moral leverage of ideology, had no constant constituency on left or right.

At first, it seemed that Obama had advantages Clinton never had. Times had changed. In 1993, Clinton’s "mandate for change" was tenuous at best. G.H.W. Bush had alienated a chunk of the Reagan coalition - the middle right - with higher taxes and a weak economy. Because Clinton was a "new" Democrat, based on a sensible, more conservative model, who shied from liberal doctrine, he was positioned as non-threatening. On the left, he was pictured as youthful, a JFK disciple, compassionate, with a feminist wife - a guy of the sixties, who had matured to moderate progressivism. Many "boomers" could identify with that beause they had moved that way as well.The two-faced picture was enough to gain him a slim plurality in a three way race. Perot's candidacy made it clear that the only consensus in the public mind was that government was distrusted, and that the majority of voters were slightly to the right of center.

But that is where the consensus ended. There was no singleness of mind in the public for where it wanted a president to go. There was no mandate for any particular change.

Clinton thought it was there for health care reform, fooled by the fact that he spoke about it in his speeches and he was elected. But the public was never fully committed to it, and was easily swayed by fears of expense and bureaucratic incompetence.

In this as in every other issue the people wanted reform, but didn’t want to pay for it: crime, the economy, services, campaign reform. The public was schizophrenic: apathetic and impatient at the same time.

When the Republicans reclaimed the Congress in 1994 with a severe ideological conservative agenda, it forced Clinton the centrist to waffle to the right. The lesson was clear: a centrist may only succeed as a progressive leader if the public is ready to be led and only then by a leader who is perceived as a hero without baggage.

The commentators of the time blamed Clinton for a lack of leadership. The great leader defines the issues and unifies the people behind him. That Clinton failed to do.

What he was forced to do is what a centrist does best: react to the extremes of left and right. He must be the captain of a sailing ship, tacking left and right but steering the middle. Clinton’s political acumen was such that he was able to survive well enough to be re-elected and, despite his tragic personal flaws, his presidency is now remembered as a time of peace and prosperity.

At the beginning of his term, Obama’s seemed to have an advantage: the crises caused by the failure of G.W. Bush’s failure, which is ascribed rightly to the flaw of rigid ideological governance, had forced public opinion to coalesce into a coherent consensus for change - not necessarily "radical" change, but at least, meaningful reform.

The last time that happened was in 1964, when L.B.J. took advantage of his opponent’s extreme conservatism, to form a strong coalition for social change. He succeeded in passing meaningful civil rights reform and programs that began a "war on poverty", only to self-immolate over Viet-Nam.

F.D.R. is probably the better model for Obama. F.D.R. was (and still is) perceived as a decisive leader because his motto was "do anything, but do something." He was able to take chances because the public of the time was willing to be led - almost anywhere. The times were that bad. His one principle was that government had to put people back to work.

Everything he proposed, supported, persuaded, was directed toward that goal. He had many detractors from the left and right, but he had such a convincing presence to a people desperate for charismatic leadership that he prevailed and is revered as a great leader.

Bear in mind that in F.D.R.'s era, "charismatic leadership" in the form of dictatorships were preferred by mainstream political theorists to democracy, which seemed in the period between the World Wars, to have failed. Today, there is an echo of that era --- extreme fear caused by economic collapse and democratic institutions unable to ameliorate the crises --- China seen as a paragon of successful governance ---as many had perceived Italy of the 1920's and Germany of the 1930's.

FDR revived the democratic system because he was able to form a consensus from huge chunks of the public: union members -- in a time of solidly unified, active and powerful unions, Southern poor, the unemployed --- 25% unemployment in the depths of the depression ---and the educated un-rich.

At the start, the Obama constituency seemed to be similarly broad: the educated and hopeful young, aspiring Hispanics and proud African-Americans, depressed boomers. Those who voted for him, adding to his landslide and coattails, were also a significant number who were not committed to any "change" except that which threw the rascals out.

Like F.D.R., Obama benefitted from a bankrupt and disillusioned opposition party. The fatal flaw of ideological and faith based governance is that when exposed as false by incontrovertible evidence it collapses.

The strength of principled centrism is that its flexibility and foundation of moderation and reliance on evidence permit fine-tuning alterations without conceding defeat.

Parenthetically: in the view of many historians, FDR’s policies failed to end the Depression because they were not radical enough. His centrism was a flaw, led to inconsistent contradictory policies. He wavered from his initial policy of governmental activism, caving to budget balancing contraction of spending, overly fearful of the political consequences of huge deficits. He was saved by the war which reinvigorated the broad consensus and commitment to action.

Now, Obama, faced with apparent dissatisfaction by a vocal minority to his policies, has to decide whether to reclaim the centrist ground by accepting compromise, or to retreat to the right by abandoning any progressive agenda, or to try to forge a new coalition on the left to push through an aggressive program.

Obama, the principled centrist, walks the dangerous tightrope, his only net is his legal background, which, I hope, will permit him to find his way through analysis of facts, collection of evidence pro and con, and submitting all potential policies to thorough logic based argument before moving.

Obama and The Supremes: hit or miss?

The political spin amounting to a tornado is beginning in the imminent choice of a replacement for Justice Souter on the Supreme Court.

The Right righteously demands a non-activist moderate instead of a radical liberal. Coming from the same shrill voices that applauded the nominations of Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, John Roberts and Sam Alito, who were intended to and have tilted the Court sharply to the right for the coming decades, amounts to monumental chutzpah.

None of these men is moderate when it comes to the critical close calls (the 5-4 votes) on social issues that have the most impact on our country. On issues such as racial and gender equality, access to the courts, executive vs. legislative power, federalism, government vs. business interests, criminal rights, all four of these men always — I mean always — find rationales to serve their radical biased personal views against abortion but for capital punishment, against expansion of civil liberties and for expansion of corporate freedom, against regulation to redress inequality and for limiting access to justice for individuals.

They mouth the words of respect for precedent unless they can find intellectually dubious paths around it. They decry judicial activism that overturns laws that express the will of The People unless they disagree with such laws and can find excuses to overturn them by resorting to a strict construction of the Constitution.

Reaction from The Left has been predictably disorganized. The most vocal have been particular one issue interest groups : environment, labor, press and so on. The loudest voices have called for an "identity" choice, i.e, a woman, Hispanic, or other minority to make the Court look more like America – as if that is a good thing in and of itself.

My view is that choosing on those bases could be disastrous. Clarence Thomas and Sandra Day O’Connor are examples. Single issue candidates might be just as bad. In my legal experience, for instance, those only interested in womens’ issues are often disinterested in criminal rights for others, especially where women are the perceived victims. The same is true about any single interest group.

On the other hand, Obama has made comments that might presage other problems. He wants someone who, though intelligently grounded in The Law, is also compassionate, possesses common sense, and understands the struggles of people in the real world. This scares the indignant intellects of The Right, who read liberal judicial activist into the definition.

It scares me for a different reason. I remember California’s recall of state Supreme Court justices, including Chief Justice Rose Bird, on the complaint that she and her allies on the Court imposed their personal views against capital punishment to overturn numerous death sentences. The recall campaign was actually funded by corporate interests that were more concerned with the Bird Court’s bias against them. A succession of conservative governors — Republican (Dukmejian and Wilson) and Democrat (Grey Davis) made appointments that turned the Court around. The result pleased corporate lawyers. The California Supreme Court now affirms virtually all death sentences, overtly favoring compassion for crime victims over the perceived sympathy for criminals of the previous Court. The conservative justices are no less result oriented than those they replaced. They just support their rulings with different reasons.

The lesson I learn reading these cases over the last thirty years is that "compassion" and "common sense" is just as subjective and useless a standard as "strict construction" and "judicial activism".

Obama’s dilemma is that he is intellectually honest, respectful of the Constitution, and a decent person. I fear that he will not be as ruthless in his choice as W. and his neo-cons were. Obama is not likely to insist on a litmus test that includes ideological orthodoxy. In other words, Obama will not choose someone as far to the Left as those chosen for the Right.

Pundits and Court historians like to observe that presidents have been often surprised and disappointed by their choices. True, Eisenhower regretted Warren, FDR regretted Frankfurter. But modern appointments have not provided such shocks. Vetting is much more thorough; no longer are justices seen as rewards for lengthy service. Disgusted by the Warren experience and Roe v. Wade, the Right has been vigilant about critical issues and disappointments have been rare exceptions. Nixon misfired on Blackmun and Powell, but he satisfied the Right with Renquist who Reagan elevated to Chief.

The truth is that Obama’s first choice — and any he is likely to make in this or his next term — are not likely to radically alter the Rightward lean of the Supreme Court for the foreseeable future. Except for Scalia (73), the other sure reactionary votes are in their prime: Thomas (61), Alito (59), Roberts (54). John Paul Stevens (89), Ginsburg (76 , with cancer), and Breyer (71) make up the usual opposition to the four votes from the unified Right. Souter, now retired, sometimes joined the three moderates. The so-called swing vote is usually cast by Anthony Kennedy (73), a Reagan appointee.

So replacement of Souter with a certain vote on the Left will not change the Court’s math. But a mistaken choice — a stealth conservative on issues other than the one the judge has clearly in focus, a weak personality who cannot influence others on the Court, or an older person who will retire too soon — would be a tragedy.

Here Lies My Generation (1968-2008) R.I.P.

To use an old "Ghostbusters" phrase, the streams of crime and politics crossed this week with nearly cataclysmic results.

In Pennsylvania, a young white woman who claimed to be a McCain worker played a nasty race card, trying in her sadly psychotic way to "work" for her candidate. Conspiracy theorists didn’t need to sound paranoid to question whether she was a designated "suicide bomber" for her cause rather than a weird sick kid acting alone. Certainly, it can be reasonably argued that in the least, she was inspired to her crime by the panicky rhetoric of her candidate’s supporters.

Maybe I’m a bit paranoid to suggest that a shiver goes up my spine imagining what would have happened if the cops believed her story and if she had picked some black man from a line-up, but I don’t think so. I’ve seen too many such cases end up with long prison sentences.

It didn’t take Nostradamus to foresee that Barack Obama’s presence would stir thousands of ugly and dangerous vermin to rise from the substrata where they hibernate. Such creatures thrive during hard times. Economic distress releases forces that drift on the air, demanding scapegoats for the coming bloodlust. It is possible to read too much into the shouts of "terrorist," "socialist," and "kill him" that have been heard on the fringes of crowds or in blogs. But the law doesn’t think so. It is a crime in California and most states to threaten death or injury even if there is no intent to actually carrying it out if the person threatened can be said to be reasonably placed in fear. (Penal Code section 422).

Campaigns of the recent past haven’t stirred such juices on any side. I haven’t seen this much emotion since 1968, and I think I know why.

The screams are the death rattle of a generation, at least the half of the generation that fought the central wars of the last half of the 20th Century from the Right.

The Cold War, The Civil Rights struggle, and The Viet-Nam War each revealed (or caused or exacerbated) traditional cultural divisions in our country. Most people aligned themselves on the same side of all three issues. If you were anti-communist, you were against "radical" solutions for racial equality, and certainly against terminating the Viet-Nam War without "victory" and "honor".

If you favored rapprochement with the Soviets and opposed support for dictators, even if anti-communist, the odds were that you supported civil rights and liberties, and also, you protested and opposed the Viet-Nam War.

All of the ancillary battles of the era generally found the same alignment. Your attitudes about The War also predicted your feelings about women, gays, immigrants, crime, welfare, drugs, abortion, and often seeped into many other tangential cultural issues, including parenting, religion, education, rock music, fashion, entertainment, movies.

Of course, race was the initiating wedge issue. Nixon's southern strategy of 1968 and 1972 was premised on the South's resistance to racial progress, and bled into every other cultural issue we live with today.

The cultural divisions were so bitter that they colored every election since until each side was polarized, manipulated by hot button wedge issues. Throughout the next thirty years, the generation was split down the middle on virtually every issue and presidential candidate. The more or less permanent 45% to 45% permanent split reflected in divided government for most of the time, with the "swing" 10% of "independent" voters in a few states becoming the deciding vote, sometimes tweaked by third party nuisance candidates (like Perot and Nader).

George W. Bush’s pitifully flawed presidency with its disastrous policies and incompetence has caused severe mental depression for the aging pro Viet-Nam half of the generation. They are almost too old to have the energy to fight back this time. Katrina, Iraq Cheney, Gonzales, Rumsfeld, Libby, and all the other blows have taken most of the fight out of them.

This happened to the Left after Carter’s debacle laced presidency, with oil crises, inflation, high crime rates, the Iran embarrassment, leading to Reagan "democrats" crawling to the right, until redeemed by a triangulating centrist, Bill Clinton, who cruised barely left of center, co-opting some previously divisive issues by conceding them (welfare, fiscal restraint, crime).

The Crash of 2008 is the final crushing skull exploding blow to the other half of my generation. They must now go hat in hand and beg BIG GOVERNMENT to save them so that they can crawl away into retirement.

Yet, I see a weird, almost tragic irony to McCain’s status. He reminds me a bit of Hubert Humphrey, a man with a reputation for decency, a pioneer of civil rights, who found himself running in 1968 as the supporter of the war despised by his own party. He became an object of ridicule, an anachronism on the wrong side of generational shifts.

But John McCain is no Hubert Humphry. He is psychologically incapable of disassociating himself from his side of the '60's generation struggle. He remans a prisoner of war.

McCain sees "victory in Iraq" as a way to disprove the truth of Viet-Nam, to justify his life. He represents the last gasp of his frustrated and terrified lost generation. That is why, for all his obvious deficiencies as a perfect candidate, for these unreconstructed survivors of the "Silent Majority" of the 60's and 70's, he is the appropriate symbol.

Then again, maybe this election is also the last best hope for my side of the generation war as well. Obama seems like JFK reborn for many of us, and maybe it is wishful thinking. But we haven't got too much time left to wish or to dream impossible dreams. One last gasp of optimism is all we have. So we're going all in this time.

Seems Like Old Times

I can keep silent no longer. Politics is not usually my blog fodder, but sometimes I simply have to stand up and squawk.

Today it is mostly the Obama thing. I’ve heard and read some of my generation talk of him as the ghost of JFK and /or RFK spectrally merged with the soul of MLK.

I admit that when I listen to his speeches, I feel a chill breeze that often accompanies ghostly visions. I get a flashback to the long suppressed tingle my people felt when those apparitions first spoke to us. I was still in high school when I first heard the word "charisma" in the summer of 1960 after JFK’s speech accepting the nomination. From then on, words like "the torch has been passed to a new generation" ... "ask what you can do for your country" and "I have a dream," were intoxicating ... yes, I blush to say, inspiring.

How much substance there was beneath the soaring rhetoric was not in issue back then. That feeling is like the hope of puppy love - it blots out all reason, resists logical analysis, thrives on chemically induced passions.

By the time I graduated law school, eight years later, all such passion had been sapped. We had barely survived the macro i.e: BIG events: The Bay Of Pigs, The Cuban Missile Crisis, The Dallas Weekend, The Warren Report, Goldwater, The John Birch Society, Viet-Nam, Governor Reagan, Mario Savio, Watts Riots, Detroit Riots, Stokely Carmichael, The Black Panthers.

Then came 1968.

The year began by cruelly reviving some of our hopes. The Prague Spring promised freedom in Eastern Europe, Gene McCarthy defeated LBJ in the NH primary & RFK entered the race. LBJ quit. By the end of the summer, while I studied for the Bar Exam, any residue of hope was gone.

We turned away from it all. Some time later, while moving in with Bijou, I found an old college textbook: sociologist David Riesman’s "The Lonely Crowd."

Riesman divided personalities in three general types: Other directed, Outer (or Tradition) directed, and Inner directed. His theory seemed apt to what happened in the following decades. Most in my generation spun inward for satisfaction, first to drugs, sex, music, "self-realization," then to career and acquiring things, and eventually to outright greed. It was a dizzying trip from "I have a dream" to "Greed is good."

By the 90's we were ready for Bill Clinton. His style was a stew of JFK’s voice, gestures and virile persona calculated to attract listeners to his earnest caresses. Like the therapists most of his generation trusted, Bill convinced people (mostly women and minorities) that he heard, understood and cared about each of them, one at a time.

I never felt the magic. I had watched his rise as a "new democrat" in the DLC, knew that he was not about ideals or visions, but compromise and finding ways to win. Not that there is anything wrong with that ... in fact, it is a fine strategy – as he proved. But it is not "inspiring," not likely to move a generation to action. It is notable that Clinton achieved most while Congress was in Newt Gingrich’s control, between ‘95 and ‘97.

After abandoning his "radical" health care plan, he admitted that "the era of big government was over," and got do-able things done: he balanced budgets, reformed welfare, made trade agreements and crime laws, embraced globalization and technology. He was credited for prosperity – which was in part fueled by the disintegration of the Soviet Empire’s threat that permitted lowered defense spending and the tech bubble.

Bill Clinton’s willingness to find a "third way," a strategy that was more cynically labeled "triangulation," also permitted him to raise more campaign money than any Democrat before him. His policies were not threatening to corporate contributors and they preferred him to riskier alternatives on the Left. Positions were calibrated by polls and focus groups to a finer point than ever before, straddling the Center with deft balance.

Bill’s eventual fall was the stuff of Greek Tragedy. Like his model, JFK, his womanizing, ruthlessness, deceptions, were the flip side of his character. But unlike JFK, his times did not permit concealment until after his legend was secure. Ironically, by legitimizing the politics of personal appeal, Clinton opened himself to scrutiny of his personal flaws. Character would now be fair game and whether we would lose the "great" leader in search of the "good" person would be a question.

Now we find Obama presenting himself as the leader who can heal polarization and inspire a "new generation" to believe in the democratic illusion: that government can solve problems. He wants to change direction, not only from the Bush mess but also from the style of creating "wedge issues" that stir anger against ... the enemy. His"story," his appearance and his demeanor all personify the difference in a way reminiscent of TR, FDR, & JFK.

When he speaks, those of my generation can’t help but think of him (wishfully) as the shocking proof that we were right after all back when we were young — integration, optimism, public service, good faith, eloquence, excellence, ideas — they can lead to progress.

But now the inherent filth of campaigning in a democratic election is testing that wish. One of Borenstein’s favorite Laws is that anyone who wants to be president should be suspect. Obama certainly "has the bug." He wants it bad. In recent debates, he’s played the dirty game, rising to the bait all too readily, risking everything, exposing his weaknesses.

A recent New Yorker article pinpointed the theoretical differences between Hillary Clinton and Obama. As defined in a recent debate, Obama sees the presidency as the pulpit to inspire movements for positive change; Clinton sees it as a seat of limited power to do enough to get re-elected.

My suspicion is that, although we always seek the inspirational leader, the fact is that the pragmatic compromiser almost always accomplishes more good.

The trick is to find one who can do both. Inspirational leaders can only move the ball when events conjoin to form strong coalitions, dissolving the usual American public’s polarized state of apathetic skepticism. When the stars align, as for a few years for TR, then for Wilson and again for FDR and even LBJ (from ‘65 to ‘66), the ball can be moved forward in greater increments.

2008 seems to be a time when the seas are ready to part. I might even say that if it doesn’t happen, the Democratic Party should declare bankruptcy and flee.

Yet, it can happen. If Clinton and Obama scratch each other’s eyes out and if Clinton wins the nomination, alienating Obama and his base; and if, say, Romney is nominated, the scenario might make him the candidate of "change" and her the return to the bad old days.

What a revoltin’ development that would be.